Leavers are trying to scare people with immigration - and it's working
Leavers have been whinging about how the Remain campaign, especially David Cameron and George Osborne, is trying to frighten people into voting to stay in the EU on June 23.
Somehow these complaints about a ‘Project Fear’ have become widespread while the Leave campaign is let off the hook for its own efforts to scare voters about immigration.
UKIP’s new EU campaign poster, unveiled today, is a handy symbol of the Leave campaign’s own ‘Project Fear’ – one that, unlike the Remain side’s economic projections, is essentially racist in character.
Depicting a seemingly endless line of swarthy migrants apparently marching towards Britain, (though the picture is actually migrants being marched into some god-awful holding pen on the continent). It reads:
BREAKING POINT: The EU has failed us all
We must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders.
‘Failed us all’ is of course a bit of built-in deniability, implying UKIP considers the super-scary hordes as fellow victims of the EU.
But as with the Leave camp’s crocodile tears for the unemployed in Greece, this is basically for show. The poster is quite plainly designed to frighten people about immigration – especially of the brown-skinned kind.
That the majority of immigrants to the UK are from outside the EU, that Britain is not part of the borderless Schengen Zone, that Turkey will not be joining the EU unless conditions it cannot (and will not) meet are met, will probably not sway voters impressed by this sort of appeal.
And we have the whole Leave campaign to thank for the promotion of this soft-xenophobia. Vote Leave and its Tory spokesmen have pushed the threat to public services from immigrants to every corner of the country and elevated it to become the main issue of this referendum.
This poster is simply an eloquent expression of their own fearful projections – and a symbol of the triumph of UKIPism over the British public sphere.
Adam Barnett is staff writer for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter @AdamBarnett13
6 Responses to “UKIP’s new Brexit poster exposes the Leave campaign’s own ‘Project Fear’”
martin archer
The UK establishment doesn’t care about the people. They want cheap labour to clean their moats and serve their meals even though it means subjecting everyone to another totally unnecessary layer of regulations. Do we really need the EU to tell us we must share our benefits and care and jobs with everyone, what size mustard bottle must be in a restaurant, and require our fishermen to throw usable by-catch overboard and on and on and on. ???
Henry Page
This is typical of Farage and his shameful campaign. The majority of these people are from Syria or Afghanistan and yet we are supposed to ignore their plight because they are not ‘one of us’. Miserbale, narrow-minded bigotry.
Nick
wherever you get ukip voters or right wing conservatives BNP anywhere in the world you have a disaster waiting to happen. they just cant live like normal people without blaming others for their own downfall
society will just have to accept that these people are just selfish and greedy to their core. At the end of the day there is no answer to what they wont as whatever happens in life they will always find fault with others
George Carty
I wouldn’t be surprised though if a significant fraction of immigration opponents are motivated not by racism or xenophobia, but rather by a belief that there are simply too many people in Britain.
Nigel Brett
I think the poster is quite apt because when you take a very close look strangely there are few to no women or children show, so why oh why arent these healthy yoyng men fighting in their own country to make it better. Rather than running to the West expecting everything to be handed to the for free.