RISHI SUNAK’S plans to forcibly remove refugees who reach our shores by boat and permanently ban them from Britain are cruel and desperate.
They breach Britain’s treaty obligations, but this will not trouble ministers. The UN refugee agency pointed out two years ago that a two-tier asylum system system undermines the 1951 Refugee Convention: but Britain established that through the Nationality and Borders Act anyway.
Channel crossings are rising. But as the Refugee Council pointed out in January, this is because the government has blocked off safe routes.
Since 2019 resettlements are down 75 per cent; the number of family reunion visas issued is down 36 per cent. Refugees from war or terror may not have anywhere to apply safely for asylum, and must seek refuge via irregular routes: but government policy has been to close off the safe routes that did exist, and then criminalise those who try to get here by other means.
The plan won’t work: Lord David Blunkett, who himself as Tony Blair’s home secretary chased headlines by trying to look tough on refugees, is right to note that removing people who arrive by boat depends on co-operation with the country they arrive from, in this case France.
The Tories have not even attempted to work out a joint policy with Paris — but then addressing boat crossings is not their motive.
As with Boris Johnson’s “open letter” to Emmanuel Macron following the drowning of 27 refugees in the Channel in 2021, which predictably derailed an upcoming Franco-British summit on Channel crossings, this is a propaganda stunt.
One from a government trailing badly in the polls, and with good reason.
Its chaotic, callous and corrupt handling of a pandemic in which millions lost a loved one has not been consigned to the past by the palace coup against Johnson.
That premiership continues to leak scandals into the body politic like radioactive waste: Johnson’s finances and their ties to senior public appointments like the chairmanship of the BBC, Johnson’s honours list, Johnson’s Cabinet ministers’ sneering contempt for working people recorded on a hundred thousand leaked WhatsApp messages; handed to a journalist because the venal idiot he placed in charge of health during a global epidemic couldn’t be bothered to write his own memoirs.
But even if Sunak were a clean break from that sleaze-ridden regime the Tories would be in deep trouble.
Their slavish devotion to corporate profits commits them to forcing real pay down and attempting yet another round of crippling cuts. Britain’s workers have been getting poorer for 15 years: now that impoverishment has accelerated.
Fear for the future is compounded by public services that are obviously on their knees, prompting real anger when ministers have the misfortune to bump into a hospital patient or a parent. The Tories have seldom been so unpopular.
Their response underlines another continuity with Johnson’s government — and for that matter its predecessors under Theresa May and David Cameron. It is to mount an increasingly far-fetched blame game demonising refugees.
We are already seeing the ugly result as fascist gangs try to terrorise refugees placed in hotels.
This poison requires a movement-wide response. Unions co-ordinated by the FBU rightly issued a statement blaming government policy for these racist street mobilisations this week.
Unions are engaged in the largest strike wave in decades: one which is seeing significant community engagement and mass support on picket lines.
The labour movement is well placed to counter the rise in racism and call out the Tories’ duplicitous game. Solidarity with refugees can be expressed at strike rallies.
And maximising numbers at UN Anti-Racism Day demonstrations on Saturday March 18 in London, Cardiff and Glasgow will ensure that following the strikes and protests of Budget Day three days earlier, the Tories are told that we reject their racism as well as their pay cuts.
