Desperate to reclaim the huge lead Labour has held in opinion polls since Boris Johnson’s disgraced ousting last summer, the government is playing the tried and tested refugee demonization card, unflinchingly stigmatising desperate asylum seekers arriving on small boats.
Following Brexit, a slew of measures aimed at curtailing basic liberties, such as the right to strike, protest, and even freely vote, were enacted. Dominic Raab, the latest Justice Secretary, has also been intent on destroying the Human Rights Act.
A common theme is also the questionable legality of planned laws, like the way the government played hardball in confronting the EU over the status of Northern Ireland after making a hash of forcing what was supposed to be an oven-ready Brexit deal.
The most recent highly contentious issue is the much-trailed and emotively titled Illegal Migration Bill which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is seeking to steamroll through parliament under the cheerleading slogan ‘Stop the Boats.’
As has been pointed out, making asylum seekers the latest sitting duck has echoes of hostile rhetoric that fuelled the toxic public debate and sought to dehumanise people fleeing their homelands in Australia.
Even the BBC, accused of being a Tory mouthpiece, has admitted the Prime Minister copied the identical headline-grabbing slogan of Tony Abbott a decade ago to help him win an election. Criticism of the rhetoric landed former England striker Gary Lineker in unprecedented trouble with the BBC for equating the bill to the language used in the Third Reich.
“Leadership is about taking the tough decisions to fix problems,” Sunak has said to justify his volatile policy. Yet, what makes it any different from the failure of last year’s Nationality and Borders Act? As the cornerstone of the government’s extreme hostility towards migrants, they again sought to punish those seeking refuge by wanting to deport them to Rwanda.
At the root of the problem is (once again) Brexit, about which no one appears to want to talk, not even Sir Kier Starmer’s revived Labour in the style of his predecessor Tony Blair.
The UK has no return agreement with any EU country. The issue is much deeper though; it is the country’s attitude towards anyone fleeing persecution and not wanting any longer to fulfil its duties under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which is also enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
(Photo credit: Ggia)
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