Will Theresa May have to give Michael Gove a visa to work in England?

The future Prime Minister's tough immigration policies will be difficult to implement

Theresa May has suggested EU migrants living in the UK cannot have a right to remain guaranteed (Reuters)

Perhaps the most perverse result of Theresa May’s triumph will be a sudden spike in EU migration to the UK. And for why? Ms May has, after all, made her one misstep in their leadership campaign by suggesting that EU migrants who are resident in the UK cannot have a right to remain guaranteed because we will need to exact from the EU equivalent guarantees about UK citizens living, retired and working, across the EU from Warsaw to the Costa Brava.

But she hasn’t said when you get the right to remain. If you were a Slovak or a Romanian, then, you would want to get into Britain before the drawbridge goes up forever. You may or may not be right in that, but if you don’t get in now, before Article 50 is triggered and/or we finally leave, you have little chance of being allowed to remain, at least if you don’t qualify under the points system.

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The better approach, actually backed by Andrea Leadsom and pointedly mentioned in her statement, is that those already here are OK, but newcomers might not find it easy to stay. At any rate, the law of unintended consequences may well come into force sooner than a law to repeal the European Communities Act 1972.

I know someone who has the best neighbours they have ever had next door, a Slovak family are all always kind and helpful. They have not lived in the UK for five years, which would mean they would be protected by the Vienna Convention on forced movement. The Slovak family came more recently and, therefore are exposed to deportation, if things take an extremely bad turn when Ms May gets going with her talks in Europe. Presumably they will be exchanged for a family of British maoving back from Bratislava or Copenhagen or Milan or somewhere.

Her policy was echoed by Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond in media interviews. That is really not a very nice or kind or humanitarian place to be. The first U-turn Ms May should make, before she even enters Number 10, is to scrap that idea, and offer a unilateral unconditional commitment to allow people already here and making a living to stay. That is the right thing to do because they make such a contribution to our economy. If the EU or the Spanish start making unwelcome noises about the British living in Europe, or the border with Gibraltar, then we can use other weapons in negotiation, not the safety and security of frightened people.

Lumbered with an unworkable Tory manifesto commitment – subsequently downgraded to “aspiration” – to get migration down to the tens of thousands, Ms May failed to control immigration during her time as Home Secretary. She seems to have convinced everyone it wasn’t her fault. Very well, but she will have an even bigger problem quite soon – what to do about the border with Scotland and Northern Ireland. If Scotland becomes independent, then in order to “regain control of our borders” we will also want to regain control of the Anglo-Scottish border. And what will happen then to Scottish citizens living and working in England, including Michael Gove, say? With his part-Welsh wife? Will he need a visa to work here? Or will he need to apply for an English passport, with Mrs May signing the back of his photo as his referee?

More seriously, will we need a quota for Scottish EU citizens coming to work in England? Will they be subject to a points system? Will we not need security to prevent migrants moving across form Dumfriesshire? What about married couples? A strange vista indeed.

In Ireland there is a similar issue. If we want to keep the Ireland-UK free-movement provision dating from Irish independence and before, (and of which I am a personal beneficiary, at least in my opinion), will we not have to deal with what to do about people from Poland, say, going first to Ireland and then getting the through train from Dublin to Belfast? Will the Irish still be able to come and live and work in England as they have since, well, for ever?

It is a serious question, though dismissed by many. Brexiteer and Leadsom ally Theresa Villiers hasn’t been convincing about it yet, and neither has Ms May. It could be that the best way to deal with all this is compulsory ID cards, with random checks as an alternative to border posts and passport checks.

And that is not to mention the question of smuggling and differential laws and rules ready to be exploited across England’s land borders. Lager smugglers operating in Berwickshire? It could happen.

To be fair to Ms May, she was a Remainer, though sotto voce. On the one hand that means it is a bit more difficult to for her to carry the Eurosceptics with her; on the other she can always say her instincts are to work with Europe and not be an isolationist. It is tempting to fantasise about how she might come back with a Theresa May branded package from Brussels ready to put it to the country in a second referendum. Unlikely, but possible. The past few weeks should have persuaded us of the wisdom of not ruling anything out, as Tony Blair reminded us when he was last asked about Brexit.

In any case, Ms May has a different border to police now: who to allow and who to expel from her Cabinet. The hard-working and loyal can stay, presumably; the shifty and dishonest can go. In which case she may also realise in ways she could perhaps not have envisaged that the Tory Party can still be a very nasty party indeed.