Cameron picks a dangerous fight

The Prime Minister’s speech to the Conservative conference was rhetorically strong, but there was little evidence of specific policy proposals.

The one moment when the Prime Minister came close to specificity was on the Immigration Bill, which will shortly come before Parliament. The Bill, said Cameron, “will make sure some simple and fair things, that should have always been the case, are now set in stone.”

First, the Prime Minister said: “If you are not entitled to our free National Health Service, you should pay for it.”

Then came: “If you have no right to be here, you cannot rent a flat or a house. Not off the council, not off anyone else.”

Third: “When you are a foreign prisoner fighting deportation, you should pay your own legal bills.”

And finally: “If you appeal, you must do it from your own country, after you’ve been deported, not from here.”

Those are tough suggestions and ones aimed at the right wing of his party—the wing that has been perhaps a little too impressed by Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, who did his best to hijack this year’s Conservative conference. Although UKIP has made much capital out of its euroscepticism, polls show that the voters who are turning to UKIP are strongly attracted to its tough immigration policies.

And now the PM has his own tough immigration ideas—but under EU law, would they be legal? Denying medical treatment to foreigners; also housing, legal aid, the right of appeal? The removal of access to such things would bring howls of protest from the European jurists, who see the European project as isonomic: as predicated on the provision of precisely such common goods to citizens irrespective of their background or circumstances.

If he were to push ahead with these suggestions, Cameron risks triggering a legal challenge from Europe, and European interference in British affairs is the one thing more than anything else that whips the Conservative party into an antagonised frenzy.

To judge from today’s speech, it seems Cameron is gearing up for a European fight that could do him more harm than good.