The Tories crippled their own border controls. Don’t let them use their own stupidity to boost racism
Tories like scapegoating immigrants – and have been doing it for decades: the current fad is for claiming illegal immigration feeds modern slavery, but the underlying threat has always been that Johnny Foreigner is taking your job. It’s an old con.
This Tory hypocrisy is a little too rich for our taste.
Boris Johnson’s government is whipping up jingoism against refugees secretly crossing the Channel to get into the UK:
Katie Hopkins: "I would use gunships against migrants boats"
Priti Patel: pic.twitter.com/MUmWp3GmOb
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) August 8, 2020
Patel and the Tories are engaging in blatant racist dog-whistle rhetoric
I hope the leader of the Opposition will speak up loudly and clearly for decency, humanity and the Rule of Law
— Tom London (@TomLondon6) August 9, 2020
This hideous creature is an MP. This is how low the UK has sunk. What, pray, IS the impact on coastal villages? IT clearly isn't impacting on this man's grocery bill. https://t.co/ITLPKfuyUL
— Dr NonnX 🪣 Blue Bucket (indistinct chatter) (@nayright12) August 8, 2020
It seems ministers have conveniently forgotten that successive Tory governments were responsible for stripping the country of its ability to catch the people-smugglers.
Former prime minister Theresa May, during her term as Home Secretary, spent years cutting Border Force, the organisation that – we’re told – protects our borders.
I published this story in 2014 and matters have only become worse.
If it can’t manage now – and the Tories have had to appeal to the Navy for help – that’s their fault and they should own up to it.
It appears that the Royal Navy chiefs are not too keen on their ships being sent out to fight little kids and pregnant women in rubber dinghies. Can't imagine why….
— Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola (@Frances_Coppola) August 8, 2020
"Push-back" of refugee boats would be illegal under British and international law. I don't believe the First Sea Lord would sanction the Royal Navy doing it. Priti Patel is insulting our armed forces by even suggesting they could intentionally put civilian lives at risk.
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) August 8, 2020
Instead, they’re trying to turn their latest fiasco into a crusade against Johnny Foreigner sneaking onto our shores and boosting modern slavery.
https://twitter.com/pauljholden/status/1292405434603712512
Honestly, politicians and journos showing desperate families in dinghies seeking shelter from our bombs and saying they are the problem make me physically sick.
Where’s your HEART?— MM (@2SpencerRoad) August 9, 2020
The calculation is that, with the support of most of the media, the British public can be made angrier about innocent foreigners than guilty politicians responsible for thousands of British deaths.
And all while claiming to care about ‘Christian’ values.
It will work too.— James O'Brien (@mrjamesob) August 9, 2020
How utterly vile.
I accept that it is perfectly understandable to want to keep unmonitored people out of the UK during a time of international contagion.
However:
It’s perfectly legal to sail across the channel in a rubber dinghy, and perfectly legal to claim asylum in the UK once you get there
— Jon Stone (@joncstone) August 8, 2020
The issue is why these people want to come to the UK at all. If we really wanted to stop them, we need to help end their reasons for leaving their own homelands.
(Obviously, making the UK an unattractive destination has failed as a strategy.)
My guess is, these people are running away from wars, and the fallout from wars, that the UK helped start under recent Tory governments.
So whichever way you turn, the finger of blame points at the Conservatives.
It leads me to ask whether this is an attempt at distraction – and if so, I’m wondering what’s so bad that the Tories are happy to expose themselves to ridicule, simply to divert attention away from it.
God we're easily distracted. They don't even have to really try any more. The excess deaths, the hundreds of millions for kit that doesn't work, ripping up regulations to suit donors, the kleptocracy and nepotism. But look…a dinghy!
— nick abbot (@NIAbbot) August 8, 2020
Source: Home Office seeks military help over migrant crossings – BBC News
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I may be miles off the mark here but when George Osborne sold the British half of the Channel Tunnel, whether legally or just perceived, isn’t it the view from the French that the border now starts on the shores of Dover?
When they leave the first safe country they land in and trample through numerous safe countries to get to France, or England, they cease being refugees. They are migrants trying it on. France is not a war torn country, and is safe. That is where they should stay and the rest here should be removed and returned to France.
That may be your opinion – but if you had to leave your country, wouldn’t you want to flee to one where you could believe you were safe?
Consider German Jews in the 1930s. If they were fleeing that country, you would have had them stop in Denmark, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland. What good would that have done them?
Fascist tories have always demonstrated their xenophobic hatred for ‘anyone who is not white, male and British!!! I am surprised that lardy fascist dictator boris hasn’t been deported back to his birthplace which was in America, given he too is another ‘nasty scrounging foreigner!’
Meanwhile the fascist tories state instigated mass murder of over 70,000 women and men who contracted the coronavirus and died is being kept hidden because demonising refugee women, children and men is good fascist policy!!!
Indeed if the fascist tories really cared – (won’t happen because they are greedy; callous sadists) about the refugee situation they wouldn’t be selling arms to Saudi Arabia and other countries. ‘My guess is, these people are running away from wars, and the fallout from wars, that the UK helped start under recent Tory governments.’
Indeed and profiteering from wars is what the fascist tories delight in because it increases their wealth. News flash to the xenophobic fascist tories – your ancestors were migrants too so you too must be deported! Little england must remain a sacred place for white british born men – not nasty (sic) refugee women, children and men. Burn the boats say the sadistic fascist tories – use the military to blow these boats out of the water!