A hasty change of heart
A meagre plan to take more refugees is cobbled together
EUROPE is facing its gravest refugee crisis since the second world war. While Germany has shouldered the heaviest burden, Britain’s government, mindful of anti-immigrant feeling at home, has looked on. Yet public opinion seems to have shifted: since the publication of harrowing photographs of a Syrian boy found drowned on a beach in Turkey, even right-wing tabloids such as the Sun have called for more help for refugees. Meanwhile, nudges from the rest of Europe have grown less subtle: Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild, has dubbed Britons “the slackers of Europe”. So on September 7th David Cameron, the prime minister, announced a new plan. Britain would take more Syrian refugees: 20,000 by the end of the parliament, in 2020.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “A hasty change of heart”
From the September 12th 2015 edition
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