The campaign to leave the EU takes British politics to a new low [View all]

[T_i_B]

http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2016/01/22/campaign-to-leave-eu-takes-british-politics-to-new-low

Nigel Farage today once again sought to use the dreadful recent sexual assaults in Cologne to further his own campaign to leave the EU. "I think a lot of women are saying 'Goodness gracious me, if we vote to stay in, is this what's coming to this country?'," the Ukip leader told LBC. "Those 1,000 young men that were outside the train station in Cologne will, within three to four years, have German passports, which means effectively they can come here.

It is easy to dismiss these comments as the sort of fear-mongering rhetoric which Farage has made an entire career out of, but it appears to be part of a deliberate strategy from the campaign to leave the EU.

Farage's comments follow those from the former aide to Michael Gove, Dominic Cummings, who is the current campaign director of Vote Leave. Cummings wrote on Twitter last week that: "EU law = once Cologne sex abusers get citizenship they can fly to UK & there's nothing we can do. #VoteLeave = safer choice".

Disingenous as it may be, this stuff cuts through. It conflates post-Cologne fear of refugees with post-Paris fear of terrorism and general disquiet over European freedom of movement and melts them all into one shrill dog whistle. Handily, it doesn't even need outright racism to hit home. After all, who doesn't want to keep rapists out?