The Munich attack is a parable for everything that's wrong with European migration policy

Telegraph

13-02-2025

The tragic scenes in Munich today are all too familiar. The lead suspect is, yet again, an asylum seeker – this time with a police history of drug crime and petty theft.
Where once a shocking event like this provoked wall to wall coverage, now many shrug their shoulders, so desensitised are we to this extreme violence that comes with life in Europe. In Bavaria this terror attack comes following an attack last month by another Afghan asylum seeker who killed a small boy at nursery.
It wasn't always this way, and it doesn't have to be this way if Western leaders wake up. A generation of German politicians have operated an open-doors immigration policy, which, coupled with the EU's Schengen Zone, has been nothing short of disastrous. If the German leadership took border security seriously, this man would not have been in the country.
In most respects, the Munich attack is a parable for everything that is wrong with European migration policy. The suspect arrived illegally and managed to avoid deportation for almost a decade despite a history of crime and alleged extremism. He lived with the impunity we've come to expect. But at least in the frankness of the authorities in levelling with the public after his most heinous act, they acknowledged how bankrupt their system has become.
Today was a rare instance where the German authorities did something the British Government should learn from. Within just a few hours of the attack the Bavarian state leader made public the nationality and police history of the suspect. The German press were briefed that his application for asylum has been rejected and that he had posted Islamist content on a social media site before carrying out the crime.
An hour later the German Chancellor told the public the attacker must be punished and deported. If you commit crimes, you should be sent home, even if that is a place which is 'very difficult to live in', as Olaf Scholz put it. Nobody should be made to live next to these dangerous people.
For some reason, Germany remains the only country in Europe deporting migrants back to Afghanistan. For reasons I cannot understand, our courts continue to prevent removals.
The leadership on display in Munich is as night and day to the scenes in the aftermath of Southport, where a news blackout from the British Government – caught in an excess of legalistic caution – allowed a void for conspiracy theory and fuelled deep suspicion. German political leaders appear to have learnt their lessons and taken a different approach to past attacks, bringing basic facts into the public domain quickly, no matter how uncomfortable they were. In contrast our Prime Minister went to great lengths to deny a terror-related motive, and then refused to correct the public record even after being informed privately.
Where German political leaders expressed sympathy for the public anger, we were treated to the sight of our Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, smearing Brits who asked whether the attacker was known to the security services – who could smell something was up – as 'conspiracy theorists'.
The German Interior Minister wasted no time getting to the nub of the issue, stressing the importance of deporting violent criminals. Yet in the aftermath of Southport our political class largely dodged important questions about the risk of violence from migrants emigrating from conflict areas, and distracted ourselves with absurd debates about changing the shape of knives. Don't worry, banning pointed knives – turning every kitchen into a Fisher Price toy-set – will solve the problem, we were told.
It felt as through the Labour Government did not trust the British public with information on migration that challenged the prevailing elite orthodoxy. The public are sick of being infantilised, fobbed off or lied to about the reality of immigration. Nor is this approach likely to work in an age when most of us consume our news online, not in the controlled media of old.
This is a timely reminder for the British Government. With trust in the authorities on crime and immigration ebbing away, we need an altogether more transparent approach. Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism laws, has come forward with sensible proposals to ensure information is provided in a way that does not collapse a trial, but prizes openness and transparency with the public. They have not been implemented.
But to bridge the gulf in trust we need more than just that. If the Government is to be given the benefit of the doubt by a deeply sceptical public it needs to take a far more open approach to the facts on Islamist extremism, migration and crime by nationality. Some data they could publish instantly if they ended the obstructionism, other statistics they need to begin to collect. Until then deep discontent will continue to bubble below the surface – above it on occasion – and more importantly, our immigration system will continue to fail the public.