by Sarah Ingham, Conservative Home
The re-Reconquista? In 1492, Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula ended after seven centuries as Granada was surrendered. Last Friday, it seemed possible that 500 years of history was about to be overturned as a 70,000-strong force invaded Spain’s sovereign territory, Ceuta.
With the crisis coinciding with the release of his summer reading and music playlists, Spain’s Prime Minister seemed to be having a siesta at the switch. In contrast, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni – at tempo furioso – demanded Spain be suspended from Schengen and free movement curtailed.
What prompted the mass movement into Ceuta from Morocco, and why it rapidly dissipated, remains under-explained.
This time last week, the shocking images from a north African coastal backwater led to many a penny dropping in Britain. Nothing has better illustrated that this country has been similarly occupied by unwelcome hordes in their tens of thousands.
Britain is Ceuta – year-in, year-out – just in slow motion. Unlike Ceuta’s unwanted trespassers, those in Britain have no intention of going home – and successive governments have lacked the political will to send them on their way.
A cross-Channel tracker by Migration Watch UK suggests that more than 205,000 illegal immigrants have entered Britain by small boats since 2018. Last year, 41,472 were recorded.