The Observer view on the European elections and Nigel Farage’s malign message

The hostile environment, designed to make Britain a sufficiently cruel place that it drives out illegal immigrants, has ensnared people who have legally lived and paid taxes in Britain for decades, who have been denied NHS treatment and wrongfully deported. May has made it far harder for young people who have grown up in Britain to secure their permanent status: they face extortionate fees of thousand of pounds. The irony is May is an outrider: the public is far more pragmatic on immigration than the Conservative party; the proportion of the public whose hostility to immigration is driven by opposition to ethnicities and religions other than their own has fallen dramatically in the last few years.