Well, on one level that makes it like much else in the UK government right now. But more of that in a moment. First, our “Broken” asylum system.
In her speech to the governing Conservative Party annual conference at the weekend - delivered virtually due to COVID-19 restrictions - Patel promised a new “tough but fair” policy for asylum-seekers. The purpose of the new scheme is to essentially deter refugees illegally entering the UK by hopping into small boats and crossing the English Channel from France.
Patel insists the current legal system for refugees is unfair because it treats those who cross the Channel illegally exactly the same as those who apply for asylum through other recognized routes. In her speech she accused those who attempt to enter the UK after passing through other safe European countries of “shopping around for where they claim asylum” and “lining the pockets of despicable international criminal gangs”.
Such language about people who, more often than not, are desperately escaping from war zones and persecution, is hard to stomach. However, there is little doubt that people trafficking is big business and the criminals running these schemes exploit and endanger those who are desperate enough to fall prey to them.
Indeed, a day after Patel’s speech, members of an Iranian people-smuggling gang, that used small boats to ferry migrants across the Channel were arrested by police in a joint operation across northern Europe. Eurojust, the EU agency for criminal justice cooperation which oversaw the operation, said the gang of mostly Iranian nationals trained migrants to operate the boats and charged $3,500 per person to cross.
However, Patel’s plan doesn’t just stop at the people traffickers. It also includes new laws to ensure failed asylum claimants can’t “clog up the legal system” by launching endless legal appeals against deportation. Such appeals, instigated by what she called in her speech “leftie lawyers” and “do-gooders” have, according to the Home Office, resulted in the top law firms for immigration legal aid work pocketing more than $50 millions of taxpayers' money in the last three years alone.
If all that isn’t enough, the home secretary was already facing criticism - and not just from “leftie lawyers” and “do-gooders”- after it was revealed she was considering plans to use wave machines to push refugee dinghies back across the English Channel, or more accurately swamp them with water.
Indeed, she has also considered transporting asylum-seekers to detention camps in the remaining far flung outposts of what used to be the British Empire, including Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, and St. Helena, where Napoleon was exiled after Waterloo.
To be fair, Tony Blair’s government had also considered using Ascension Island to process migrants back in 2003, but quickly abandoned the idea. Patel has refused to deny the plan has been discussed.
Why? Well, the real reason for both the policy, the inflammatory language, and the deliberate leaking reports to the press about wave machines, is it all plays well to a segment of the government’s electoral support at a time when Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under increased pressure over his government’s shambolic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and never-ending Brexit talks.
There are constant rumors that Johnson wants to quit, exhausted by both his spell in intensive care after he caught COVID-19, and the weight of government.
There are fears the UK may be forced to enter a second lockdown amid a rise in COVID-19 infections due to the government’s failure to set up a robust test, track and trace service. Meanwhile, the European Union last week announced it was taking legal action against the UK over breaches to the Brexit withdrawal treaty.
Patel’s tough talking on refugees is a distraction from these issues, as well as a reassurance to a key constituency of the government’s far right-wing supporters who believe the UK is in danger of being swamped by immigrants.
For the record, asylum claims in the UK are falling, although the number of desperate people paying people traffickers to transport them across Europe and then across the Channel has increased. Around 7,000 people, the overwhelming majority fleeing persecution or war in Syria and Somalia, have arrived in the UK this year after risking their lives in small boats to cross the Channel. Last year the figure was less than 2,000. But even at 7,000 we are hardly suffering an invasion across the channel from asylum seekers.
Indeed, under the 2014 Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme the UK promised to resettle a meager 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, considerably less than other European countries, such as Germany. To date, the UK has only taken in around 17,000.
That amount will rightly be seen as small beer to the Lebanese, who are estimated to be hosting around 1.5 million Syrian refugees. Indeed, Lebanon is the country with the largest number of displaced people per capita. Of course, we shouldn’t forget the UK has also given around $4 billions in aid to the Syria crisis since 2012, its largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis and considerably more than comparable European countries such as France.
But according to the UNHCR, 4.6 million Syrian refugees, out of 6.7 million worldwide in 2018, have been hosted by just two countries, Turkey and Lebanon.
Against that backdrop, you could argue the dumping of migrants in places thousands of miles from the UK has been going on for some time.
The problem in the UK right now though is that talk of transporting refugees to faraway islands, or attempting to more or less drown them with wave machines, will be cheered by a worryingly large segment of the country.
Such moments occur from time to time in politics everywhere, and today can be seen across Europe and of course, in the US. The UK is no exception. The difference in the UK now is that the politicians who espoused such views used to be on the fringes of UK politics, not at the heart of government.
Older readers may remember Enoch Powell, an anti immigration but leading Conservative politician (whom Patel was mockingly compared to in a Guardian newspaper cartoon this week). Powell, who oddly enough opposed the arrival of Ugandan Asians such as Patel’s parents into the UK, was sacked by the then-Conservative leader Edward Heath for his views on immigration and race.
Today he would probably be promoted.
As I have noted before on these pages, Patel’s chequered history includes her now infamous “holiday” to Israel in 2017, during which she secretly met Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, among others. Patel was secretary of state at the Department for International Development at the time and following her “holiday” recommended that her department should use its funds to pay for Israeli Defense Force field hospitals in the occupied Golan Heights. When details of her Israeli trip emerged later she was promptly sacked by then-Prime Minister Theresa May.
Her restoration to government came about only because Boris Johnson has surrounded himself with right-wing poodles who won’t indulge in criticism, constructive or otherwise, of what passes for his leadership.
Patel’s new plan is simply a dog whistle to those who want migrants to feel so unwelcome they will not want to set foot in this country.
The odd thing of course is that Patel’s parents arrived in the UK after being expelled from Idi Amin’s Uganda in the early 1970s. They settled in Herefordshire, a rural agriculture county in the west Midlands of England, and prospered, establishing a chain of convenience stores. Had she been home secretary when her parents arrived they might well have spent unhappy years watching the ships sail by on St. Helena, like Napoleon, while their right to live in the UK was decided. I wonder if they would have taken their chances with the people traffickers?
Michael Glackin is a journalist based in the UK and a former managing editor of The Daily Star. This article was published in The Daily Star on Tuesday October 6, 2020.
