Is free movement good for ordinary Europeans? Wikimedia. CC.
This letter is part of a “Looking at Lexit” series, edited by myself and Xavier Buxton. Over the next 12 months, as Brexit themes emerge in the news agenda, we will respond by posting our respective “commissioning letters”. Xavier questions continued free movement here. These letters will be sent to relevant experts, inviting them to contribute. But this is open commissioning : if you want to have a go at an answer, please PM me (@juliansayarer) or Xavier (@xjb20) with your thoughts. We’ll read everything we receive and then edit and publish those pieces that really move the question forward.
If the debate over Brexit has often been little more than a debate over immigration, then the left-wing incarnation of the ideological struggle has been spared none of the acrimony. Where the arguments of the economic left have posited that some curbs on migration are necessary to protect the conditions of both UK workers and EU workers within the UK, the arguments of the social left have held strong in affirming that the borderless EU is implicit to the spirit of internationalism and liberal values to which any left worth its salt must commit.
