The chief reason the British voted to leave the EU was the issue of immigration. Before the vote, David Cameron (Britain’s Prime Minister) “re-negotiated” the relationship of Britain with the rest of the EU. However, he was unable to get any concessions on EU immigration because it is one of the “four freedoms” which is central to the EU.
Could there be a conspiracy at work?
It seems everyone has forgotten that, when, in 2004, ten East European countries joined the EU, Germany and Austria, fearing a massive influx of immigrants, were granted a seven year “transition period”, where citizens of the new member countries were not allowed to work in Germany or Austria, i.e. in direct opposition to the “four freedoms”.
Of course, the result was that hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, etc. moved to Britain and France. Britain was specially favoured because in France it is necessary to have a national Identity card to work. Over 500,000 Poles now work in Britain and Polish is the second most common language. Immigration on this scale bred resentments and put strains on various services such as the National Health Service (though these strains really indicate poor planning and allocation of resources by professionals with six figure salaries).
Had the EU allowed a “temporary” restriction on EU immigration, say to 50,000 per year, then the Brexit vote may have gone the other way.
For lovers of conspiracy theories, could it be that Merkel, Hollande and Juncker really wanted Britain out?
The irony is that Britain has about 1 million EU citizens, most of whom have similar cultural values as the British so can integrate easily, while Germany has over 1 million “refugees”, most of whom have cultural values that are antithetical to German values.