I hadn’t intended to post a blog this weekend, but the events of the last week have been without precedent in British politics
On Monday Suella Braverman sent a letter to the PM resigning from a job she was sacked from a few hours earlier. This was part of a bizarre cabinet reshuffle which saw David Cameron return to politics as Foreign Secretary, albeit sitting in the House of Lords.
Her note itself had all the charm of someone texting their ex at 2pm after a night on the lash. Her main grievance was that Rishi promised her that she could break the law then failed to let he do it, something she tolerated right until she was sacked
With Boris out of Parliament Suella was the favourite of some far right people. People assume that this group voters are northern and “red wall”, but that is wrong, they are most comfortably well off, and live in the South of England. Hyacinth Bouquet, not The Likely Lads. Their reaction was angry:
Her departure followed her attempts to whip up a bunch of boot boys to cause trouble at the Armistice commemorations. The idea of a Home Secretary trying to raise a private army to fight the police is crazy, but it still took Rishi a few days to sack her for it. The Football Lads are mostly the same bunch of idiots who used to smash up stuff at England away days, and drone racist chants at football matches until banning orders put a stop to it. Now right wing politics gives them the opportunity to enjoy their 3 great loves in life; warm lager, cheap gack, and kicking the shit out of someone.
A lot of the people supporting Suella aren’t normally that positive about people from minorities or from an immigrant background. She is one of a line of Ethnic Minority conservatives who have risen to power supporting legislation that would have stopped her own parents coming to the UK; Priti Patel, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak. In the US the pattern is familiar – each wave of immigrants faces discrimination, over a generation or 2 they assimilate, and then discriminate against the waves which come after them. The UK is starting to experience the same phenomenon.
Suella allows reactionary voters to express their anger towards minorities without feeling racist, even when they are being racist. Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley in the US work the same business plan. There are a whole cast of taggers on; Raheem Kassam, Kash Patel, Dinesh De Souza. On the left we have Alexei Sayle, who best gags were 20 years in the past, always available to deny left wing anti-semitism.
Where does this leave Rishi? He is claiming that he will bring forward emergency legislation declaring the Rwanda is a nice place, and will threaten to leave the European Court of Human Rights.
But it isn’t the ECHR that is the problem – Rishi is trying to claim that Rwanda is a great place and it is safe to send people there, but also that Rwanda is such a terrible place that it is a deterrent to asylum seekers coming to the UK. That is why the Government has lost all it’s court cases to date, and will keep on losing them. It was a British Court that ruled in unlawful, not the ECHR, and British Courts which will continue to rule it unlawful.
So far we have spent over £150m on the Rwanda policy, which at most will accept 100 people a year. Given that we are less than a year from the next election by the time the legislation has been passed and the case has gone through the courts there will be no time left to deport anyone. And the more that the legislation of rushed through the harder it is to get it through the courts.
A shame that no-one bothered to check if it was legal before we spent all of that money
