Paul Sheehan
Sydney Morning Herald columnist
An estimated 1.5 million immigrants and refugees will arrive in Europe this year, and the inundation is driving Europe to the anti-immigrant right in election after election.

Tony Abbott tells Europe to shut its borders
The recently ousted Prime Minister implores Europe to follow Australia’s lead and bar asylum seekers from entering. Courtesy of ABC News 24.
For several years, the Canadian author Mark Steyn has been starkly pessimistic about Europe. He recently travelled to Europe to see what the immigration influx looked like. He began in Sweden, the most generous country to immigrants in Europe, and had barely arrived when he had an encounter, described on his website on September 29:
“I was looking forward to sitting back and enjoying the peace and quiet of Scandinavian First Class. But, just as I took my seat and settled in, a gaggle of ‘refugees’ swarmed in, young bearded men and a smaller number of covered women, the lads shooing away those first-class ticket holders not as nimble in securing their seats…
“They seemed to take it for granted that asylum in Europe should come with complimentary first-class travel … The conductor gave a shrug, the great universal shorthand for there’s-nothing-I-can do.”
Illustration: Simon Bosch
What Europeans can do is vote, and, in the wake of more than a million immigrants arriving this year, their voting is showing a clear pattern:
Britain. In the general election of May 7, by far the biggest increase in votes since the 2010 election went to the UK Independence Party, up from 867,000 votes (3.5 per cent), to 3.9 million votes (12.7 per cent). UKIP is now the third force in English politics.
France. Opinion polls show that the most supported politician in France is now Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, an anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, anti-European Union party. In national provincial elections in March, the National Front polled the second-highest number of votes, 25 per cent, behind the centre-right UMP, with 30 per cent. Their combined vote routed France’s socialist parties. Le Pen will seek the presidency in 2017.
Denmark. In the national election on June 8, Denmark swung right and the Social Democrats lost power. The anti-Muslim Danish People’s Party surged from 22 seats to 37, while the conservative Venstre party won the highest number of seats, 47, and formed government.
Netherlands. In the months since the immigrant influx, Holland’s most strident critic of Islam, Geert Wilders, has become the country’s most popular leader. His Party for Freedom (PVV), has polled an average 33.5 per cent in recent opinion polls, far more than any other party.



















