Airstrip One

Victory over the French

Who said that Le Pen was an unmitigated horror?

The French have for the last few years been taking part in a campaign to shoe-horn us into the Schengen treaty. The what treaty?

Well, its basically a treaty that aims for a "borderless Europe". Not in the sense that any ordinary person would understand it, with the simple lifting of border controls between the countries concerned, but a large and intrusive structure that "harmonises" policies on subjects such as illegal immigration and ID cards.

At a time when the European project is showing no signs of moving forward in the UK on the monetary front, Britain's accesion to a "borderless Europe" would stop the car stalling.

So what were the French doing? Well they opened a refugee camp with the specific aim of clothing and feeding obviously bogus assylum seekers (if they were running for their life they would have stopped in France) attracted by the perception of a generous welfare system.

The French government were quite blatant about this. They would keep this going until we signed up to Schenegen. Their way of relieving the pressure would be to build another camp.

Enter Le Pen. His campaign, with strong anti-immigration overtones, struck big in formerly left leaning Calais, who were sick of the problems from the camp. Suddenly the French government sees maintaining European credentials secondary to taking the wind out of an anti-establishment party. Sangatte gets closed.

Of course we may take in 1000 or so illegal assylum seekers, but its over. There's no need to sign Schengen, and this perfidious attempt at blackmail has failed.