Ceuta was a carnival of anti-migrant content for hateful opportunists on the right – and a lesson for the left | Jonathan Liew

Why This Matters

Key context: <p>It was framed as a perfect storm because nativists dearly wanted it to be. Looking on, progressives failed to meet the moment too</p><p>The live streams are still running, training their cameras on the beach at Ceuta, where nothing is happening. The self-styled citizen journalists are still pounding the streets, capturing their shaky smartphone footage. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/8/2/spanish-ceuta-witnesses-a-deadly-game-for-moroccan-migrants">Zia Yusuf</a> of Reform UK was out there at the weekend, wearing a crisp white shirt and smart tailored trousers, lest anyone confuse him with the other brown people there. The bad brown people.</p><p>Why was the migrant incursion at Ceuta, on the Spanish-Moroccan border, such a big story across the world? How did it manage to pique the interest of <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/31/trump-calls-ceuta-migrant-surge-terrible-as-white-house-blames-far-left">Donald Trump and Elon Musk</a>, to feature on NBC’s Nightly News, not – shall we say – a programme massively predisposed to spotlighting news stories from continental Africa? What about it so exercised Europe’s heads of government? What made it an irresistible front-page story in the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph?</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/04/ceuta-carnival-anti-migrant-content-opportunists-on-right-lesson-for-left">Continue reading...</a> This development from The Guardian highlights ongoing changes in the sector.