Migration
‘Get Brexit Done’ is now ‘Stop the Boats’: Is the Rwanda Bill the Conservatives’ Trojan Horse?
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One of the lines that stays with me from learning Latin at school is from Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid – “Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferrentes” ("I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts”). This line was uttered by the Trojan priest, Laocoon, who was warning that the Trojan Horse apparently gifted to the city of Troy by the departing Greeks might actually be a trap.
In similar fashion, I can’t help feeling that 'I can’t Trust the Conservatives, even when they obey the Law'.
A huge song and dance was made by the Government before last week’s first vote on its Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill that the legislation – just – stayed within the framework of the European Convention of Human Rights.
The Bill, if adopted, would allow government ministers to ignore temporary injunctions raised by the European Court of Human Rights to stop flights taking off at the last minute. However, it would still allow asylum seekers to launch legal appeals to argue that they should be spared deportation, if they can claim various special circumstances.
Supporters of the Government’s approach argue that the Bill goes as far as it can, without breaching international law – and that Rwanda itself would withdraw from the scheme if the UK went any further.
Conservative opponents of the bill, including 29 MPs from the right wing of the party, who abstained on the vote, argue that it does not go far enough and that the language should have explicitly ruled out the scope for any legal challenges to deportation, whether under domestic or international human rights law.
Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, who resigned over his disagreement with Rishi Sunak’s migration policy, was even quoted (ironically, on Human Rights Day) as saying that the Government must put "the views of the British public above contested notions of international law" and that MPs are "not sent to Parliament to be concerned about our reputation on the gilded international circuit".
I feel a weary sense of déjà vu. This is Brexit, on repeat.
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Yet again, we have some members of the Conservative Party arguing that the UK needs to abandon another European institution – this time the European Court of Human Rights – in order to 'take back control' of immigration.
Yet again, they scapegoat others – on this occasion 'lefty lawyers' – for 'thwarting' the will of the people.
Yet again, they claim unique knowledge and possession of what that 'will of the people' actually is – though there has been no explicit vote put to the public as to whether they really do support the Rwanda scheme, even if it involves the UK derogating from some aspects of human rights law. Just as there never was any explicit indication in the EU Referendum that the British public wanted the most hardline break with Brussels, including departure from the Customs Union and Single Market.
Yet again, we have Conservative MPs misrepresenting the facts, to argue that the Rwanda scheme will brilliantly solve all of the UK’s immigration problems – despite the evidence that it will only ever be able to remove a few hundred migrants, at most, and only at vast expense; that it will do nothing to resolve the massive asylum claim backlog; and the fact that most immigrants to the UK come here legally, partly as a result of the Government’s own migration policies.
But then, Conservative MPs never acknowledge inconsistencies in their arguments, whether over Brexit or now over immigration.
Just like during the Brexit debates, Conservative MPs now are also happy to gloss over inconvenient facts regarding migration – such as that our health, care, agriculture and hospitality sectors are dependent on affordable immigrant labour, and that there are no 'safe, legal' routes for asylum seekers to come to the UK.
Instead, they waffle on about this being yet another issue of 'sovereignty'. Indeed, the Rwanda Bill goes one step further than Brexit, in deliberately overriding the Supreme Court’s judgment on Rwanda, to assert that Rwanda actually is a safe country. So now, not just laws, but facts, are whatever the British Government says them to be.
Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping are no doubt delighted to see members of the British political establishment adopt their practices of disinformation and disdain for international law. How much easier it makes it for them to continue gulling their own citizens, and defying international conventions and treaties, when they can point to a country like the UK – previously a stalwart defender of the international rules-based order – doing the same.
And just as during Brexit, so now, we have different factions of the Conservative Party tearing themselves to shreds, while critical national and international problems go unaddressed.
The hapless Sunak is in the role of Theresa May, desperately trying to hold his party together and risking pleasing none. The same Goldilocks dilemma prevails – his immigration policy risks being too hard for the One Nation group of MPs on the moderate wing of the party, but too soft for the so-called 'Five Families’ factions on the right wing of the party.
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Terrified of losing voters to Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, Sunak, like May, will keep trying to appease the migration hardliners, though they will never be satisfied until he has fully ruptured relations with the ECHR. Terrified of alienating traditional conservative voters in their constituencies, the centrist MPs will hold their noses and keep going along, putting party before principle, time and again.
The one advantage Sunak has over May is that it would be hard, even for this shameless party, to seek to replace him as party leader, without triggering a general election, in which – on current polling – many MPs would lose their seats.
But this is precisely why I sense a trap.
For now, Sunak can play the role of responsible statesman, doing his best to restrain the more extreme members of his party, and insisting that any British legislation should stay just on the right side of the law. If the legislation passes, and asylum seekers start being deported to Rwanda – even if it’s only a few dozen – he can make the case that his scheme works, and campaign in the general election for voters to back him, in order to allow it to continue.
But if the legislation falls, or squeaks through only to be defeated again in the courts, before any asylum seekers are deported, Sunak can switch tactics to campaign full bore in support of leaving the ECHR – on the grounds that he has exhausted all options and that his hand has been 'forced' into accepting the most extreme approach.
This ploy might not be enough to prevent Conservative defeat to the Labour Party, but it might be enough to save a few seats and to allow the party to keep posturing in hardline fashion on immigration, without ever having to suffer the embarrassment of the Rwanda scheme failing, or having to deal with the damaging wider consequences of leaving the ECHR, such as for the Good Friday Agreement, or our post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
Like the Trojan Horse, I believe the Rwanda bill is a set-up. 'Get Brexit Done’ is now 'Stop the Boats’. But, unlike the good citizens of Troy, I believe British voters will not let themselves be suckered a second time.
Never trust the Conservatives, even when they bring 'gifts'.
China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics – review
In China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics, Chris Alden and Álvaro Méndez examine Latin America and the Caribbean region’s interactions with China, revealing how a complex, evolving set of bilateral economic and political relations with Beijing – from Buenos Aires to Mexico City – have shaped recent development. Mark S. Langevin contends that the book is a noteworthy contribution to an understanding of China’s footprint in the region but does not offer a robust framework for comparative analysis.
China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics. Chris Alden and Álvaro Méndez. Bloomsbury. 2022.
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China and Latin America offers a thoroughly researched account of China’s economic and political impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Alden and Méndez pivot on China’s centuries-long presence in LAC to weave an analysis of trade, investment and migration patterns, detailing a thick description of economic and political relations with the region’s governments and stakeholders. Their historical examination and assessments of national government responses to China are appropriately framed by the unfolding geopolitical rivalry between Beijing and Washington. The book details China’s underlying logic and overwhelming importance to LAC, providing a valuable contribution to the growing literature assessing Beijing’s role in the region’s economic development and international relations.
China is not new to LAC; its longstanding ties with the region provide an economic and social foundation for the massive trade and investment flows in recent decades.
In the introduction, Alden and Méndez remind readers that China is not new to LAC; its longstanding ties with the region provide an economic and social foundation for the massive trade and investment flows in recent decades. In chapter one, the authors tell an intriguing story of China’s dependence on “New World silver,” European and LAC elite thirst for Chinese-produced silks and ceramics during the fall of the Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century, and the enduring impacts of the flow of indentured Chinese workers to the region in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, Chinese working-class immigrants settled in “cities like Lima, Tijuana, Panama City and Havana…” providing a human bridge to China while suffering through waves of xenophobia and anti-Chinese repression. China and Latin America documents the economic and social linkages tempered through centuries-long trade, investment and migration – a neglected foundation for understanding LAC’s economic development in recent decades.
The book raises several leading questions. In the introduction, Alden and Méndez explore the “interests, strategies and practices of China,” questioning whether Beijing’s approach to LAC is similar to its role in Africa (14). They ask what motivates Beijing’s interests in the region and how LAC governments, firms and social actors have responded to China’s “deepening economic and political involvement in the region” (15).
Although the book is thick on economic and historical detail, its thematic analytical framework does not guide comparative explanation within LAC and across developing regions, including Africa.
Although the book is thick on economic and historical detail, its thematic analytical framework does not guide comparative explanation within LAC and across developing regions, including Africa. Alden and Méndez offer three “broad themes” for narrating their analysis: development, agency and geopolitics. These dimensions can guide examination of Beijing’s underlying logic and regional economic and political relations but are insufficient to explain the variable regional results that could stem from Chinese policies, trade and investment or even geopolitical endeavours. Consequently, Alden and Méndez emphasise “diplomacy and statecraft” and “sub-state and societal actors” as conceptual references but without the formal specification for selecting cases, testing explanations and comparing outcomes at the national and regional levels.
For example, the book explores several groups of Latin American nations and case studies of Brazil and Mexico. Chapter three’s treatment of Chile, Peru and Argentina, chapter four’s analysis of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, and chapter seven’s assessment of Central America and the Caribbean reflect similar patterns of development and diplomacy. However, these chapters do not present a systematic comparative analysis between these cases. Moreover, the authors’ slim selection method excludes Paraguay and Uruguay without assessing these nations’ participation in the Common Market of South America (Mercosur) along with Argentina and Brazil. Indeed, Uruguay’s recent proposal to ditch Mercosur and negotiate a bilateral trade treaty with Beijing makes it an interesting case for comparison with Mexico, given its longstanding ties to Canada and the US through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor pact (USMCA).
In chapter four, Alden and Méndez explain how the “sustained rise in commodity prices” – much of it fuelled by Chinese demand – “enabled these governments to seek rents from export tax revenues and direct them toward development and social programmes,” an approach the authors associate with “neo-extractivism.” Accordingly, the so-called Bolivarian republics of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia sought to replace their dependency on the U.S. with China. Beijing embraced the opportunity, but the growing Chinese footprint “obscured the commercial intent and practices pursued by Chinese firms” (103). In response, these nations’ governments grappled with increasing Chinese debt, among other externalities brought by Chinese firms, including the “willful neglect of the concerns of local communities, environmentalists and labour activists.” Indeed, as the authors point out, even Beijing grew weary of the region’s “high expectations” and the growing “costs of entanglements” (104).
The book’s treatment of Venezuela is pivotal because it details the most extreme case of commodity export dependence and debt-trap diplomacy in the region.
The book’s treatment of Venezuela is pivotal because it details the most extreme case of commodity export dependence and debt-trap diplomacy in the region. This sets an analytical benchmark that sharply contrasts with Brazil’s diversified commodity exports to China and the parallel influx of Chinese goods, foreign direct investment and migrants, along with the incipient pattern of technology transfer through the localisation of Chinese manufacturing firms in Brazil.
On the energy front, Venezuela shifted to government control over petroleum production after Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in the late 1990s, while Brazil partially liberalised the sector during the same period. The authors assess China’s rise and growing demand for petroleum products but do not explain the divergent policy approaches taken by Caracas and Brasilia. Did Venezuela’s deepening authoritarianism and Brazil’s vibrant democracy shape Beijing’s approach to these countries and help determine the different outcomes in the petroleum sector, or are the differences limited to these countries’ respective opportunities for crude oil production for export? Moreover, do these contrasting policy-response patterns explain diplomatic outcomes, including Caracas’ growing distance from Washington? Alden and Méndez contribute to our understanding but fall short of a comparable explanation of Venezuela and Brazil’s two very different paths.
Chapter eight offers a vital perspective of China’s presence in LAC within the emerging geopolitical landscape that pits Washington against Beijing.
In conclusion, chapter eight offers a vital perspective of China’s presence in LAC within the emerging geopolitical landscape that pits Washington against Beijing. The authors explain China’s deepening engagements, becoming an observer to the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2004 and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 2008, and President Xi Jinping’s trip to Brasilia in 2014 to attend the first Summit of Leaders of China and LAC. Xi’s confident embrace of the region did not initially spark concern in Washington, according to Alden and Méndez. However, as the authors recount, by 2018, the US National Defense Strategy Summary confirmed Washington’s acknowledgment of the strategic competition with Beijing throughout LAC.
Alden and Méndez raise a central question that should frame research and policymaking in the coming years: at what point do the citizens and leaders of LAC search for alternatives to ‘China’s dominant position in their country’s economic and political life?’
China and Latin America concludes, “No longer passive, Chinese diplomacy now looms large in the capitals and boardrooms across the region, leaving the once-unassailable US dominance scrambling to regain its standing” (175). Hence, Alden and Méndez raise a central question that should frame research and policymaking in the coming years: at what point do the citizens and leaders of LAC search for alternatives to “China’s dominant position in their country’s economic and political life?”
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Nadezda Murmakova on Shutterstock.
Asylum Waiting Lists Rocket by 236% as Migrant Housed on Cramped Barge Takes Own Life
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The number of asylum seekers waiting three years or more for a decision on their future has more than trebled in the past year, according to exclusive data obtained by this newspaper.
During the same period, those who have been waiting at least a year have seen their number almost double, Byline Times has learned, as has that of those awaiting any kind of outcome.
Our findings come a day after a man who was waiting to be processed took his own life onboard the Bibby Stockholm barge, which houses asylum seekers offshore, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship Rwanda plan scraped through the Commons.
Migration experts say the uncertainty asylum claimants feel about the future, and the indefinite waiting time for a decision, cause intense feelings of psychological distress, which can lead to suicide.
Added to that are issues around the quality of accommodation, such as the cramped conditions aboard Bibby Stockholm, which has the capacity to house around 500 people in little over 200 rooms smaller than a parking space, described by one MP as a “quasi-prison”.
The former Home Secretary showed no interest in urgent threats to the UK as the National Security Strategy Committee reveals that Vladimir Putin made attempts to interfere with the last General Election
David Hencke
Responding to our data, Labour's Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock told Byline Times: "Under the Conservatives, the asylum backlog has spiralled from just 19,000 in 2010 to 165,000 today.
"These long delays mean people are stuck in limbo and hotel use has reached a record high costing more than £8m a day.
"Labour will hire more than 1,000 new caseworkers to clear the backlog, and set up a new cross-border police unit to work with Europol to stop the criminal gangs in the first place."
A spokesman for Labour leader Keir Starmer, when asked whether Mr Starmer believed the huge waits for an initial decision could be having an impact on the mental health of asylum seekers, told Byline Times: "I’m sure that it is and that’s why Keir believes we need to increase the number of caseworkers that there are.
“We have set out plans to do that so we can have 1000 more caseworkers so that we can process claims more quickly and we can also reduce the hotel bill for taxpayers."
Today’s Byline Times data, obtained via a Freedom of Information request, highlights the human cost of the government’s ongoing immigration disaster and lays bare the full extent of asylum delays. Between January and March 2023, the number of people waiting three years or more years has increased by 236%, from 531 to 1,789, compared to the same period the previous year.
Over the same period, the number of those waiting a year or more to learn their fate has jumped 96% from 3,634 to 7,124. The number awaiting any decision has gone up 122% from 4,827 to 10,750.
Of Barges and Banishments: What the Bibby Stockholm Reveals About Our Dark History
Suella Braverman’s asylum barges are tied up with Britain’s imperial past, writes Iain Overton
Iain Overton
In the past few years, legal asylum routes to the UK have become largely cut off, leading to an increased number of people arriving in small boats. A shortage of social housing has seen those seeking asylum increasingly housed in hotels. However, the policy has been unpopular due to its perceived cost and impact on local services.
In an attempt to appease this, and end the reliance on hotels, the government has sought alternatives, such as former military bases, and the Bibby Stockholm, moored off the Dorset coast.
However, the use of the three-storey barge – which in 2008 saw two deaths when used by the Dutch authorities to house asylum seekers – has been controversial.
While the Home Office admitted it would house around 500 people on the Bibby Stockholm, an official brochure released by owner Bibby Marine shows there are only 222 “single en-suite bedrooms”. Cabins designed for single occupancy now have bunk beds, and people must share with strangers. Each person's living space is smaller than the average car park bay, in conditions likened to a “quasi-prison” by Conservative MP, Richard Drax.
From the start, there was considerable opposition to the plan, both from local people and national organisations, with campaigners calling it "cruel and inhumane". The vessel was first used for accommodating asylum seekers in August but was evacuated after Legionella bacteria was found in the water supply, with people returning to it in October.
Yesterday, on the day the government avoided a damaging defeat as the second reading of its Rwanda bill passed with a 44 majority, the Bibby Stockholm experienced its first death while under UK control.
Police were called to the 506-person capacity vessel in Portland Port, Dorset, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and its officers are carrying out enquiries. The man, who has not been identified, is thought to have taken his own life in a communal bathroom. He was found dead at 6.20 am yesterday after reports of his screaming and banging on the walls of his shared bedroom.
Mr Drax, MP for South Dorset, said it was a "tragedy born of an impossible situation". "One can only imagine the desperate circumstances which led to this sad outcome; we must do all that we can to end this evil trade in human misery."
Home Secretary James Cleverly told MPs the death would be fully investigated, adding: "I'm sure that the thoughts of the whole House, like mine, are with those affected."
‘We Need to Confront the Lie That There are ‘Safe Routes’ for Refugees to Come to the UK’
The truth is that Rishi Sunak’s Government is complicit in forcing desperate people to risk their lives in order to seek refuge in this country
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Several studies have highlighted the human impact long waits can have on asylum seekers. A 2018 paper published in the British Medical Journal on the health of “forced migrants”, including asylum seekers, said that “unemployment exacerbates social exclusion”, while “long periods of inactivity provide time to ruminate on past experiences and worries about the future.”
A second study, published in 2022, examining the experiences of asylum seekers in Sweden, found that “overwhelming uncertainty about the future and the indefinite waiting time for a decision” on asylum claims” caused “intense feelings of psychological distress” in participants.
The Home Office told Byline Times that the department had taken steps to reduce the legacy backlog and that it funded programmes aimed at providing mental health and wellbeing support to adult asylum seekers.
Of the Bibby Stockholm, it added that all accommodation provided met regulatory standards.
A spokesperson said: “The government is committed to processing asylum claims without unnecessary delay. “We have more than doubled the number of decision-makers and have significantly increased productivity which has reduced the backlog of legacy asylum cases by over 60%
“We take the welfare of those in our care extremely seriously and at every stage in the asylum process our approach is to ensure that the needs and vulnerabilities of asylum seekers are identified and considered including those related to mental health and trauma.
“The Home Office, Dorset Council, local public agencies and the vessel’s management team work continually to ensure life on board the barge is positive for asylum seekers.”
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But Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, said: “This is an appalling loss of life but tragically not surprising.
“We know from our work supporting men, women and children in the asylum system that many are deeply traumatised and feel isolated, unable to get the help they need. Some are so desperate they self-harm and feel suicidal.
“Nobody who comes to our country seeking asylum should be left without the support they need yet the system has more hostility than compassion built into it. It is imperative that an independent review is carried out into this death so that lessons are learned to avoid any further tragedies of this kind.
“A new approach that always sees the face behind the case and treats every individual person with the dignity and humanity they deserve is urgently needed.”
Rishi Sunak’s Attempts to ‘Vice-Signal’ His Way to Victory are Starting to Backfire
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Some commentators have questioned why Rishi Sunak’s Government is focusing so much political energy on a scheme which, even in the unlikely event it ever gets off the ground, would only accommodate a tiny proportion of asylum seekers arriving in the UK.
For context, independent assessments suggest the Rwanda scheme would only be able to accommodate a maximum of a few hundred arrivals each year, compared to the around 175,000 people currently on the UK’s asylum backlog.
Or to put that another way, this is a scheme which, if absolutely everything goes right, will deal with just 0.2% of those currently seeking refuge in the UK. It is an irrelevance, albeit a very expensive one.
So why do it?
The answer is that it is the perfect example of the politics of ‘vice-signalling’.
For vice-signallers, the key motivation is to signal a particular negative political intention, even when the reality of your own actions is the complete opposite. For the Conservative Party this involves signalling their intentions to be as hostile as possible to migrants and refugees, while at the same time presiding over record levels of migration to the UK.
So as immigration numbers hit new highs, so too does the Conservative Party’s attempts to appear as hostile as possible to those who come here. Whether it’s painting over children’s murals in asylum centres, or briefing plans to put wave machines in the English Channel, the strategy involves signalling the greatest amount or vice for the minimum amount of effort.
The Rwanda scheme is the logical extension of this strategy and why the Prime Minister is so keen to be seen as attempting to get it through, even as it becomes clear that he has little hope of ever doing so.
Indeed in some ways, the Government may even believe that it would be better for the scheme to be blocked than for it to actually ever be implemented. After all, if the key motivation is to signal your own vice, rather than actually to do something meaningful, then what better way to achieve that than for your tokenistic plans to be blocked by a coalition of “lefty lawyers” and the Labour Party. The politics of vice-signalling can only work when its proponents are able to drive a wedge between their own vice and others' virtue.
Of course this is not an argument for the Government’s opponents to allow the Rwanda scheme to go through. The Government's plans would not only be a clear breach of international law, but also of the UK’s long-standing responsibilities to offer refuge to some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. It is both legally and morally wrong and should be strongly opposed.
However, it is important to understand what the real motivations are here.
Boris Johnson’s Covid Inquiry Appearance Exposed the Complicity of his Accomplices
The Covid Inquiry has revealed the former PM to be a deeply negligent and dishonest individual. The only question now is how he was allowed to get away with it
Adam Bienkov
The Politics of Vice-Signalling
Once you identify the politics of vice-signalling, then you can see it everywhere. During the debate on the Government’s Bill to declare Rwanda a safe country, on Tuesday, the Conservative MP Nick Fletcher delivered a particularly extreme speech in which he suggested that parts of his Don Valley constituency had become a “ghetto” due to migration.
Fletcher told MPs that “the reason the [NHS] waiting lists are so long is that people do not speak English in these places any more”, adding that “this is what is happening. Members can shout me down. They can say what they want — I really do not care — but this is what is happening.”
Of course the reality is quite different. According to official figures just 0.1% of Don Valley residents cannot speak English, with only 0.8% having lived in the UK for less than five years.
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Yet for the vice-signallers, such facts are an irrelevance. The intention is not to actually examine the country’s problems and to help solve them, but to merely signal their own bad intentions, regardless of what is actually happening in the real world.
The problem for Sunak and his party is that such attempts to vice-signal can often backfire. As he's discovered this week, the problem with any Government setting up a vice-signalling battle is that there are always other people who are willing to raise the stakes much further than your would be able to.
The problem for the Prime Minister is that in attempting to set up a vice-signalling contest with his political opponents, Sunak has so far managed only to create one with his own backbenchers instead.
‘In Fighting for the Cause of Refugees and Migrants, We Fight For Ourselves’
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If Trump wins next year's US Presidential Election, as Robert Kagan in The Washington Post both terrifiedly and terrifyingly says is now inevitable, will there be a flow of intellectuals and scientists out of the United States in a reverse of the flow of intellectuals and scientists from Europe into the US in the 1930s?
A flow of US refugees – genuine refugees, fleeing the collapse of their country into an illiberal, mean-spirited, even perhaps dangerous place for anyone not of the MAGA persuasion – is not inconceivable. Who with a sense of decency could stomach a situation of Donald Trump’s making?
The triumph of the US began in economic power before the Second World War and was sustained and enhanced after it by those refugees from European fascism. What will the world be like with wealth-powerful bullying states overshadowing it and bridling against each other – a Trumpian US; an irredentist, expansionist China; a world dominated by dictators?
This speculation invites analysis, given that the likelihood is that this is our future. But for present purposes let us focus on the word ‘refugees’ just used in this unexpected connection: ‘refugees from the US’. And let us consider that the refugee crises of recent years are as nothing – are as mere Sunday picnics – in comparison to the vast displacements of populations soon to be precipitated by climate change: a catastrophe of hundreds of millions of refugees, not mere millions, into regions unprepared and unwilling.
We have grown used to refugees from the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, but the future’s refugees will be different, from different places, and far more numerous, than those we see today.
The Identity Trap: Race, Representation and the Rise of Conservative Diversity
Rishi Sunak is in the running to be Britain’s first prime minister of colour – but the debate around whether this will be a good thing for ethnic minorities has laid bare conflicting ideas about the ‘individual’ and the ‘collective’, writes Hardeep Matharu
Hardeep Matharu
In the far-right rhetoric of Victor Orbán, Geert Wilders and Suella Braverman, ‘immigrants’ are lumped together – whether they are refugees or migrants – in one unwelcome mass of moving populations seeking (in the case of refugees) safety or (in the case of migrants) opportunity. But as this distinction illustrates, refugees and migrants are not the same.
Many refugees are anxious to return home when peace is restored; migrants are in quest of a new home. Does this distinction show up in the numbers on ‘immigration’, in the provisions made for them, in the way they are dealt with? No. They are all lumped into the category ‘immigration’ because would-be immigrants, when their numbers reach a critical mass, trouble native populations, which – everywhere in the world, when left to unreflective tribalist instincts – are naturally xenophobic if not downright racist.
The resurgence in recent years of far-right politics in Europe and the US is based on the exploitation of xenophobia as the tool of choice for gaining power. Once got, that power is used to roll-back democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law, aimed at reducing the state from a structure of governance on behalf of the people to a structure for wielding coercive power over the people. It is a familiar story to anyone who bothers to read history.
In the UK today, a desperate Conservative Party is flogging the immigration horse as hard as it can to try to save its skin – because it sees how the right elsewhere is gaining ground by means of the anti-immigration agenda. It has not yet finished delivering the state into private pockets and completing its agenda of creating a subject population unable to protest, strike, or expect decent public services. It wants to finish the job of asset-stripping the country for themselves and the masters behind them in the media and tax-havens and board rooms.
That the citizenry of the UK is not pouring onto the streets in protest at the screaming hypocrisy of a UK government stuffed out with the offspring of immigrants is testament to the dazement induced by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of these immigrant children. But what is worse is that the rhetoric is so effective in switching off thought on the part of so many.
For if they did pause to consider, just for a moment, what the individual units of ‘immigration’ actually are – ie: human beings; men, women, fathers, mothers, children – how could they persist in accepting the bemusement of their faculties? Readers of these words won’t need reminding, but here is the distinction between a refugee and a migrant, and what each is.
‘Asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’. What is such a person? A human being fleeing persecution, danger, death, struggle, terror, horror. A human being fleeing guns and bombs, prisons, torture, cruelty, murder. A human being traumatised, shaking with fear, desperate. A human being who has heard, who has emitted, screams and cries of pain and grief, who has run away from a nightmare. A human being in dire need of safety.
‘Migrant’ What is such a person? A human being quitting places of hunger, futurelessness, who wants a chance to make a life, for himself or herself and his and her children, who wants stability, opportunity, who wants a new life, who wants a job, a home, security, a chance to grow into something they feel they can be.
People leave places because they are pushed and because they are pulled. The refugees are pushed by danger, the migrant by sterility of opportunity. Both are pulled by places that are better, safer, far more promising. Their situation in either case is so bad where they are that they risk much, often everything, to reach better places. However unfamiliar the new place, the strange language, the uncertainty of their reception, it is better by far than the place they leave.
Their action takes immense courage, resolve and effort. They do what human beings have always done, from the moment that homo sapiens trekked out of Africa 60,000 years ago – indeed, from the moment that homo erectus trekked out of Africa two million years ago – to find better places to be.
And here is the clincher: immigrants add, they do not take away. Look at the US in the years 1880-1939 and ask whether the huge waves of immigration in those decades was a bad thing for it. Well, was it?
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In today’s UK there are 165,000 vacancies in the care industry – yet the politicians, to pander to ignorance and prejudice, bring down the shutters. Our NHS, our universities, our small business sector (99% of British businesses are small to medium-sized enterprises or SMEs), profit hugely from ‘incomers’. Germany and Australia need net immigration lest their economies stall; whereas the saner political parties in the former understand the problem, politicians in the latter play the same tattered card on both sides of the aisle. It is madness.
Among the solutions to the ‘problem’ of immigration are these: (a) educate the home population on the facts: immigrants add value; (b) invest in the countries that drive migrants outward because of the economic insufficiencies there, so that talent remains there and the impulse to leave is lessened.
And as to refugees and asylum seekers: chief among the solutions to this different problem are: (c) work to bring peace and stability to the regions that drive their terrified populations out; (d) be humane, be kind, welcome them when they stagger onto our shores, succour them.
Note always: migrants are those who explicitly seek to be immigrants. Not all refugees, indeed, perhaps not many of them, wish to be immigrants. Do not discriminate against either of them; discriminate between them and treat them accordingly – which with regard to both means decently.
It is essential to recognise, and not be fooled by, the use of the ‘immigration’ canard to blind us to the real agenda of the far-right. The far-right stir up hostility to an easily demonised ‘other’ as a mask for the rest of their wider and equally bad agenda. They are at present winning this nasty game. We must not let them. In fighting for the cause of refugees and migrants, we fight for ourselves.
‘Are the Conservatives Willing to Sacrifice Northern Ireland for the Rwanda Scheme?’
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Another chapter in the Conservatives’ long-running saga of internal division is set to begin this week, as a showdown looms over Rishi Sunak’s controversial Rwanda Bill. However, despite the Government’s efforts to circumvent the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), there remains another oft-forgotten barricade to its assault on asylum rights: the Good Friday Agreement.
The introduction of the Safety of Rwanda Bill follows a legally-binding treaty signed by the UK and Rwanda. The treaty, alongside the subsequent bill, each declare Rwanda as a 'safe’ country, barring UK courts from considering otherwise.
The emergency legislation seeks to neuter domestic courts of their autonomy after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful.
There are few more egregious examples of world leaders inventing 'alternative facts’. The highest court in the UK deemed Rwanda as unsafe, rather than address that legal conclusion, the UK is seeking to create a new one.
Sunak’s Rwanda Bill is a step back from former Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s demands to outright leave the ECHR, which many Conservatives see as an obstacle to achieving their immigration policy, but the Bill still stands at odds with the convention.
The Prime Minister has said that he “will not allow a foreign court to stop Rwanda flights”, referencing the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which has ultimate oversight over the application and compliance to the ECHR.
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The UK has a dualist legal system, which means that it can legislate domestically against international treaties without having to explicitly leave them. This practice does not, however, relieve the UK of its commitment under international law.
What the Government seems to have overlooked with any great detail is that the ECHR isn’t merely referenced in the Good Friday Agreement, it’s threaded throughout. Any divergence from or weakening of the Convention will contravene UK commitments to the 1998 peace treaty.
The Good Friday Agreement placed an onus on the UK Government to incorporate the ECHR into Northern Ireland law, with “direct access to the courts, and remedies for breach of the Convention, including power for the courts to overrule Assembly legislation on grounds of inconsistency”.
It also created an obligation on the Northern Ireland Assembly and public authorities to adhere to the Convention – “neither the Assembly nor public bodies can infringe” on the ECHR – and further “that key decisions and legislation are proofed to ensure that they do not infringe the ECHR”.
This was given legal standing through the Human Rights Act which is the fundamental basis in UK law for implementation and applicable of the Good Friday Agreement. The Rwanda Bill not only opens up the Human Rights Act, it hacks it to pieces with significant sections disapplied in an effort to prevent courts and public authorities from considering Rwanda unsafe.
This is a pandora's box when it comes to Northern Ireland and could easily be seen as a wedge for further derogation of applications of the ECHR and court access.
According to one immigration solicitor and coordinator at the Committee on the Administration of Justice, “the Rwanda bill forms part of a broader pattern where the UK government isn’t outright leaving the ECHR, but instead attempting to dismantle it in UK law piece by piece through legislation like this. For Northern Ireland, any such attack on the ECHR and Human Rights Act is a blatant breach of the Good Friday Agreement”.
If Sunak manages to force this bill through what is to stop the Government from overriding potential future judgments against its contested Legacy Act? Or from further splicing and slicing of the Human Rights Act?
The Rwanda Bill largely blocks direct access to the courts and prevents interpretation and consideration of convention case law – all of which directly contradict explicit provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
A further Northern Ireland based challenge to Sunak’s Bill is the Withdrawal Agreement, which prevents rights in Northern Ireland from being removed as a result of Brexit, including asylum rights, a case could be argued that the Rwanda bill infringes on the right to a safe country.
These difficulties will increasingly rear their head as the Bill proceeds, and the headache of what to do about Northern Ireland will soon return. One school of thought could be to exempt Northern Ireland from the disapplication clauses of the Human Rights Act, but you don’t get to cherry pick the ECHR – it must be applied equally to all citizens.
The Rwanda Bill is likely to be legally challenged, aside from the obvious overreach and interference with the authority of the courts, the UK could still be found in breach of international law. Home Secretary James Cleverly was unable to make a statement confirming that the provisions of the Rwanda Bill are compatible with convention rights, itself a damning indictment –this isn’t a public departure from the ECHR, but rather one undertaken stealthily.
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This Government has long been at war with the rule of law, from attacks on legal professionals, to repeated attempts at circumventing legal obligations and international treaties. The Rwanda Bill flies in the face of international human rights standards, placing the UK on course to potentially breach the Withdrawal Agreement, and threatens the Good Friday Agreement – all of which is still not enough for the Nigel Farage wannabes in the Conservative Party.
The ultra-right wing Tories are already briefing that the Bill does not go far enough. It will never be enough.
The Bill heads for its second reading on Tuesday wherein Sunak faces a revolt from his opponents on all sides, should the bill be successful expect more public funding to be squandered. The Government has already spent more than £140 million on its Rwanda policy, without one successful deportation.
The question at the end of this is just how much are the Conservatives willing to sacrifice to the alter of populist anti-immigrant rhetoric. The rule of law? International standing? The Good Friday Agreement? Or perhaps Northern Ireland as a whole?
The region has been a thorn in Brexiters’ sides, and there is one other alternative that rests not solely on the minds of people who advocate for a United Ireland, but on the minds of those who would sooner be rid of Northern Ireland than to forego their own political agendas.
‘Emmnon’ Revealed: New Anti-Immigration Pressure Group Emerges at 55 Tufton Street
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A new entity has established itself at 55 Tufton St – home to many of the free-market, pro-Brexit, climate denial-linked think tanks comprising the right-wing lobbying scene – with the aim of “moving the Overton window” and operating as a “focal point” for anti-immigration sentiment in Britain.
End Mass Migration (EMM) was incorporated on 17 October and has links to other groups operating out of the same address – the New Culture Forum and Migration Watch, as well as Reform UK.
It describes itself as “a campaign organisation that has been set up by a group of immigration experts from academia, think tanks, politics and the media” to challenge “the myth that mass immigration is beneficial to the UK when it is actually causing enormous economic, social, cultural and political damage to our country”.
The organisation, which accepts donations on its website, blames migration for putting pressure on public services and the economy and plans on demanding a referendum on “limiting the number of immigrants who can come to the UK every year” – as well as claiming that the “political establishment, mainstream media [and] academia” are ignoring the public.
It sets out five key aims as a call to action: “a massive reduction in immigration"; "a referendum on legally limiting the number of immigrants who can come to the UK every year", the UK's "withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Refugee Convention and the UN Migration Compact"; “establishing an open and honest conversation about immigration"; and “exposing the pro-mass immigration lobby”.
This “lobby”, the group claims, “have no interest in the wellbeing of you and your family, your locality, or the country as a whole” – claiming some are motivated by narrow economic interests, while others “are just twisted ideologues who despise our country and Western civilisation generally”.
The “facts” page of the organisation's website argues that “we are not, and never have been, a nation of immigrants” and that “you are told diversity makes us strong. The opposite is true”. It also claims “mass immigration has a negative impact on every aspect of life in the UK" and that "it is destroying your future”.
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The project was launched at an 'Immigration Conference' event run by the New Culture Forum, at which its only director – Neil Philip Anderson – gave a speech entitled “Five Years Left to Save Britain: A Call to Action”.
During the event, Anderson described how “we have to move the Overton window to make immigration and diversity a topic that we refuse to be coerced by” and that the right “need to create a separate ecosystem, or counterculture, through which our ideas can be promulgated”.
Formally introducing End Mass Migration, he described it as the means by which this new anti-immigration ecosystem could flourish, by creating “a grass-roots presence throughout the country by setting up local chapters and coordinating and messaging our activities centrally". He added: “End Mass Migration wants to become that focal point. It needs to become that focal point."
Anderson explained how the current lack of public trust in Parliament and politicians could be seen as “an opportunity” to apply pressure on parliamentarians, suggesting people might want to instead reject both Labour and the Conservatives at the ballot box, “lending their votes to a smaller party that opposes mass immigration”. End Mass Migration did not respond to a request for comment asking which "smaller party" it was referring to.
Anderson revealed “we have grand plans for this campaign” and that it will "evolve over the coming weeks, months, and years”.
EMM also has links to other groups taking a hardline stance on immigration.
Anderson, for example, previously stood as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Brexit Party (now Reform UK) in Ilford North in 2019, where he secured just 1.9% of the vote. Reform UK campaigns on a platform of “net zero immigration” and has recently faced scrutiny for allegedly offering money to Conservative MPs on the right of the party to defect ahead of the next general election. Leader Richard Tice has denied the claims while admitting he has engaged in “numerous discussions with Tory MPs”.
Many 'Red Wall' Conservatives now reportedly risk losing their seats to Reform, with senior Conservatives calling it a “battle for the soul of the party”. One former minister claimed, after two disastrous Tory by-election losses, that “it shows that the failure to deliver on migration means they [Reform UK] alone could hand Labour the Red Wall”.
Anderson was also previously a director at the Migration Watch UK think tank, founded in 2001 by Lord Green of Deddington. It has historically led Tufton Street’s call for lower net migration and previously been criticised for presenting misleading figures to stoke anti-asylum seeker sentiment.
EMM’s website also states that ‘End Mass Migration’ is the trading name of Emmnon Ltd’, which has its own Companies House listing and was established in February. Both companies feature Anderson as a director, but Emmnon also previously featured among its controlling directors Peter Robin Whittle.
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Whittle is the former 2016 UKIP London Mayoral candidate and Deputy Leader of the party, under Paul Nuttall. He is also the founder and director of the New Culture Forum (which hosted EMM’s launch).
The New Culture Forum states that its aims at “challenging the orthodoxies dominant in our institutions, public life and wider culture” to combat what it perceives as a “left-wing bias” and “woke ideology” in the media and academia. It has previously been described as part of the "infrastructure" of the broader conservative movement.
After initially being approached by Byline Times for comment for this newspaper's first report on Emmnon, the company suddenly changed its registered offices to 71-75 Shelton Street in London's Covent Garden – an address which houses organisations providing for-hire director and company addresses. The newly registered iteration of the company has, however, renewed its open affiliation with the Tufton Street address. EMM did not respond to a request for comment on the change of address.
It appears that End Mass Migration will operate as a pressure group. On the website, it encourages individuals to “form a local chapter of EMM and arrange regular meetings” and to “provide information to EMM about how immigration impacts your locality in areas such as schooling, healthcare, housing, the use of hotels to accommodate migrants, local government policy favouring immigrants etc.”.
“We are not trying to replicate the work of others, most notably Migration Watch UK," Anderson said at the group's launch event. "We are not a think tank, nor a political party, and neither do we advocate a political party… but we are determined to ensure that immigration policy works for the people of this country.”
Anderson added: “We don’t know where this is going to go, but there’s nothing out there doing this; there’s nothing offering this course of action.
“If we can emulate UKIP’s achievements, I’d be quite glad about that. If we can pull the conversation that way. If we can, even if it does take a decade or 20 years to force this onto the agenda of the political parties… we need action on the streets, we need grassroots local action.”
Responding to the emergence of EMM, Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain, said: “This is a new outfit in bed with the same old people. The people who championed a hard Brexit, leaving our economy in tatters, and household costs hiked, who were poster boys for the disastrous Truss-Kwarteng budget, from which ordinary Brits will be paying the price for years to come, and who choose to ignore every leading scientists when it comes to saving the planet.
"Given their heritage, it is clear that these are not serious people but their funding makes them dangerous."
End Mass Migration did not specify to Byline Times whether it was going to primarily target Labour or the Conservatives.
This article was published in partnership with Good Law Project. Read its version of this story here. Additional reporting by Josiah Mortimer
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Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond
Book at Lunchtime seminar held on 16th October 2019. How can Archaeology help us understand our contemporary world? This ground-breaking book reflects on material, visual and digital culture from the Calais 'Jungle' - the informal camp where, before its destruction in October 2016, more than 10,000 displaced people lived.
Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond reassesses how we understand ‘crisis’, activism, and the infrastructure of national borders in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, foregrounding the politics of environments, time, and the ongoing legacies of empire.
Introducing a major collaborative exhibit at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the book argues that an anthropological focus on duration, impermanence and traces of the most recent past can recentre the ongoing human experiences of displacement in Europe today.
Authors Professor Dan Hicks and Dr Sarah Mallet were in conversation at this TORCH Book at Lunchtime event with Professor Mary Bosworth, Dr Leonie Ansems de Vries, Lisa Kennedy and John McTernan, introduced by Professor Wes Williams.
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