We have seen that there was a sense on all sides of the post-referendum conflict that immigration control was intrinsic to Brexit, and rejection of freedom of movement was common ground across the Conservative Party and much of Labour. The Labour and Tory MPs who continued to pursue the Norway option highlighted its economic benefits rather than movement rights, and freedom of movement was explicitly defended only by the European movement, for whom it was the core of European citizenship. Immigration declined rapidly in polling salience after 2016; while this was sometimes attributed to the reduced numbers of new European immigrants, it was much more likely to have been because of the fact that Brexiters – having won the principle of ending freedom of movement and being focused instead on blocking May's deal – no longer felt the need to campaign on these numbers, while many of their supporters believed that they were actually being controlled. Even Farage, when he launched his Brexit Party for the 2019 European elections, did not campaign on immigration. Followers who had attended one of his rallies boasted to me on Twitter that he had not mentioned it in his speech; it was so central to Farage's brand that he did not need to emphasize it at every twist and turn, since when he talked of the “betrayal” of Brexit his supporters would have understood that immigration control was part of what he was complaining about. The position of Conservative leaders, in contrast, was more ambiguous, and whenever they appealed to the public or their party membership over the heads of parliament, political racism came into the open. When May wrote an “open letter” to the public on 25 November 2018 in an attempt to get support for her agreement, her first point was: “It will honour the result of the referendum. We will take back control of our borders, by putting an end to the free movement of people once and for all” (BBC News 2018a), and official advertisements reinforced this message.

The extreme right, Farage and Johnson in the crisis

By this point, May's project was in deep crisis and this represented Johnson's opportunity.