On a snowy Sunday in Bern, the Swiss did something that made Brussels bristle and British eurosceptics cheer: they voted on whether to cap immigration. The initiative, proposed by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party, would have set annual limits on residency permits. It failed, but only just.
62 per cent of voters said no. But the 38 per cent who said yes represent a seismic shift in Alpine consensus. And amid the fallout, a curious thing happened: Britain’s points-based immigration system, once dismissed as a pariah model, was suddenly held up as a template for balance.
