European countries cannot have it both ways on immigration

Commentary feature. Europeans cannot protect their high living standards and social and economic model while simultaneously ring-fencing their national cultures, writes Tony Barber. But Europe’s feeble demographic outlook makes the first goal incompatible with the second.

A culturally defensive approach to immigration is shared across a significant part of the western European political spectrum, not to mention society at large. Europeans should get used to the idea that its future prosperity will come at least to some extent from immigration.