Bill Carmichael: Brussels atrocity reinforces the case for Brexit

And only the most cock-eyed optimist would believe this is the last time jihadi radicals will strike at the heart of Europe.

Listen for example to the words of Rob Wainwright, head of the EU’s own security agency, Europol, who warned that 5,000 jihadi fighters have been able to move between Iraq, Syria and Europe using the wide open borders the Europhiles insist make us safer.

“We are faced by a more dangerous, a more urgent security threat from so-called Islamic State…it is certainly the most serious threat we have faced in at least a decade,” he told the BBC.

The simple fact is that the EU has absolutely no answer to the migration and security problems it faces.

Indeed one of this week’s bombs exploded just 250 yards from the headquarters of the European Commission, killing 20 people.

Could this possibly be the same European Commission that David Cameron insists is the best guarantee of “our safety and security”?

Yes indeed, and it is also the same European Commission that, along with Angela Merkel, thought it was a good idea to accept more than a million migrants, mainly young men of fighting age, from the jihadi hotspots of the Middle East last year without a single security check.

How’s that working out, folks?

At least one of the Paris attackers had travelled from Syria, and one of the Brussels suicide bombers, according to reports this week, had been deported from Turkey after trying to reach Syria.

What is clear is that open borders are a bonus to the jihadi groups and allow them to transport guns and bombs with little chance of being caught by the security services.

As predicted in this column two weeks ago, the much-vaunted EU-Turkey deal that was supposed to solve the migration problem is falling apart even before the ink is dry on the agreement.

The idea, agreed only days ago, was that in exchange for four billion euros and visa-free access to the EU for 70 million Turks, the Turkish government would try to stem migration from the Middle East.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, the man who negotiated Britain’s exemption from the Schengen Agreement, pointed out yesterday, this actually makes the international security situation worse by opening up access to terrorists via Turkey to the EU, and therefore the UK.

The EU wanted to deport migrants en masse from Greece to Turkey in clear contravention of the UN Charter on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights.

But we might not even get that far because this week aid agencies including the UNHCR, Medicins Sans Frontieres and Amnesty International withdrew their co-operation on the Greek islands because the EU plan of mass repatriations breaks international law.

As the weather improves expect more migrants, more riots, more chaos – and, in all probability, more bombs going off in European capitals.

One can understand the grief of the Belgian people – but the simple fact is that candles, teddy bears and signs of peace chalked on the pavements won’t make the blindest bit of difference to the killers who want us dead. Only concerted action to root out the terrorists and stop them travelling freely from the Middle East to Europe has any hope of stopping further atrocities.

In other words the Schengen Agreement has to be scrapped, although it isn’t clear the EU has the necessary will to carry out this radical action.

We in the UK face a simple choice – we can wait meekly alongside the rest of the EU for the next atrocity to happen or we can take our destiny into our own hands and do something concrete to make our country safer – namely by imposing controls on our borders, jailing and deporting Islamist fighters and preachers of hate and closing down extremist mosques.

Of course we can’t do any of this while we remain in the EU. So, what is it to be?