Tag Archives: illegal

Illegal Migration Bill returns to Parliament – and Braverman badmouths migrants AGAIN

Labour leader Keir Starmer backpedals over GaryGate (VIDEO ARTICLE)

After days in which Labour politicians have lambasted BBC Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker for publishing entirely reasonable comments about the Tory Illegal Migration Bill on Twitter, party leader Keir Starmer has changed course radically.

Mr Lineker said the rhetoric used by Home Secretary Suella Braverman was similar to that of Germany in the 1930s.

He has since been shown to be right.

There is no stipulation in his BBC contract to suggest that he, as a sports presenter, should not be allowed to discuss politics on his own personal Twitter feed.

But Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had this to say about it when she was interviewed on LBC, after the row initially broke out…

Contrast her words with Keir Starmer’s comment, after the BBC suspended Mr Lineker from presenting Match of the Day, prompting a huge walkout by his fellow sports presenters that critically hampered the Corporation’s sports coverage and brought its decision-making into question.

This was just bandwagon-jumping by Starmer.

He saw an opportunity to hammer the BBC for pandering to Conservatives and he took it – never mind the fact that he was speaking in opposition to his own shadow ministers.

With acknowledgement of the video work by:

Jonathan Pie – https://youtu.be/jXqVGtxFppQ

Kernow Damo – https://youtu.be/eedogABKFec

Also LBC and the BBC.

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BBC besieged – over support for TORIES

Question Time audience member explains Tory immigration policy

Immigration/Nazis: read history more carefully, says Cleverly – and so he should

5 Replies

James Cleverly: has he ever read a history book – or, indeed, any book at all?

Look at the state of this:

Nick Ferrari: For those that say the illegal migration bill is cruel, inhumane & has echoes of Nazi Germany of the 30s… how would you respond?

James Cleverly: Some people want attention by using offensive language… they should read their history books more carefully#LBC pic.twitter.com/y85kg8Om6O

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) March 10, 2023

He’s right and wrong at the same time.

People should indeed read their history books more carefully – he’s right on that! – but if they do, they’ll find that the UK is not – historically – a welcoming country.

See for yourself:

Amidst all the "small boats" chat yesterday I randomly came across this image: British police try to deport Oskar Goldberg, a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, in March 1939.

Goldberg was eventually allowed to stay, but tried in vain to obtain visas for his family. pic.twitter.com/mItXM7tKde

— George Bodie (@george_bodie) March 8, 2023

Louise London has shown that roughly 80,000 Jews were granted refuge in the UK by September 1939. At least half a million, probably significantly more, had sought it unsuccessfully: "escape to Britain was an exception for a lucky few; exclusion was the fate of the majority."

— George Bodie (@george_bodie) March 8, 2023

AFAIK no one has tried to work out how many people who were denied refuge in the UK died in the Holocaust. But the cruelty of the small boats bill is probably best understood as the latest episode in this island's long history of cowardice and callousness toward refugees

— George Bodie (@george_bodie) March 8, 2023

So half a million Jewish people were denied entry into the United Kingdom in the 1930s, despite the obvious cruelty of the Nazi regime in Germany – including Oskar Goldberg’s family who died at Auschwitz as part of the Nazi Holocaust.

And – how convenient! – nobody knows how many of the others, who were turned down or turned away, also died in the Nazi Holocaust.

And now Suella Braverman – with the support of the rest of the Tory government including Cleverly – wants to turn away similar numbers of refugees, behind a smokescreen that she is foiling “criminal gangs”.

How many of them will suffer and die on foreign soil, after being denied safety here? How can anyone with a conscience look at the UK’s own history and support this inhumane and internationally illegal policy?

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Never mind the Nazis – do you know what the BRITISH were saying about immigrants in the 1930s?

4 Replies

Gary Lineker: he opened a debate on Channel migrants by highlighting similarities with Nazi Germany – but our politicians’ speeches have far more in common with BRITISH MPs of the 1930s.

Tory chameleon Grant Shapps (as he styles himself today) has been quick to jump into the controversy around Gary Lineker.

Mr Lineker compared Tory rhetoric about asylum-seekers – who come across the Channel in small boats because the UK’s current government has closed off all their legal routes to seek sanctuary here – with that of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

Here’s what Shapps had to say about that:

As a Jewish Cabinet minister I need no lessons about 1930s Germany from @GaryLineker. Like Gary, I am hosting refugees in my own home, but unlike Gary, I do not believe it is either right or moral to tolerate criminal gangs trafficking vulnerable people across the channel.

— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) March 8, 2023

Of course the obvious answer to this is to point out that his colleague, Home Secretary Suella ‘De Vil’ Braverman, isn’t targeting the “criminal gangs” at all; she’s persecuting the “vulnerable people” instead. And Shapps is fine with that.

The less obvious answer is to point out that, as a Jewish Cabinet minister, Shapps should be more concerned about the similarity of Braverman’s language to that of UK politicians in the 1930s.

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Here’s Professor Tim Wilson to explain:

When Nazi Germany was persecuting Jews, the UK government “ramped up” laws to prevent adult Jewish people from coming here.

The Kindertransport initiative was laudable, but we should not let it mask the fact that the UK turned its back on those children’s parents and left them to be transported to extermination camps.

The EU and UN conventions on human rights, both of which were created in the 1950s, were set up in acknowledgement of our – and other countries’ – failure to do the right thing.

And now Braverman is turning her back on those conventions because she wants vulnerable people who are fleeing persecution to suffer. It’s the 1930s all over again.

Here’s an example of 1930s rhetoric, pulled at random from Twitter:

What people conveniently forget is that before the war the UK closed it's borders to Jews trying to flee the Nazi terror.
There was the same kind of rhetoric then, from the very same newspapers. pic.twitter.com/50RvVRiDdX

— Malcolm Mair (@Fruich) March 9, 2023

“The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest.” Was it an “invasion”, of the kind recently described by Braverman?

Sadly the UK’s main opposition party – Labour – is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Tories on this issue. In an LBC radio interview, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Gary Lineker was wrong to make his comparison with the 1930s:

Yvette Cooper thinks Gary Lineker was wrong to compare the Government's dehumanising language to that used by Germany in the 30's. Even though a Holocaust survivor confronted Suella Braverman pointed out the same thing.pic.twitter.com/oYW0IiuHHW

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) March 8, 2023

Perhaps she was covering for her boss, Keir Starmer, whose words in Prime Minister’s Questions harked back to the UK’s political rhetoric of the 1930s:

I’d missed this. I didn’t think so could be shocked by anything @Keir_Starmer said or did, but he said, “They sit in hotels and digs for months on end at taxpayers’ expense.” Think about that, in the context of far-right attacks & racism vs asylum seekers. pic.twitter.com/NyIeuRDuio

— Ben Sellers (@MrBenSellers) March 9, 2023

During the same exchange, Starmer equated Channel migrants with rapists:

Sorry, but what is Keir Starmer doing here other than equating migrants with rapists in the public mind, unintentionally or otherwise? https://t.co/HcifXGe0k5

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) March 8, 2023

We should be thanking Mr Lineker for raising the issue of inhumane policies directed at people who are too vulnerable to resist.

But it is clear that we didn’t have to look as far as Nazi Germany to find parallels with the 1930s. Both the government and its opposition are parroting British racists of that time.

They shame us all.

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Gary Lineker has no reason to apologise. The Tory Immigration Bill is Nazi-style immoral

6 Replies

Gary Lineker: once again, his compassion for others has set him against Establishment rhetoric.

The demonisation of Gary Lineker – for pointing out something that should be obvious and uncontroversial – is disgraceful and the Tories doing it should be shunned.

The European Convention on Human Rights was set up in the early 1950s, and Suella Braverman’s filthy little Illegal Immigration Bill spits on it.

She admits it:

Be afraid Britain.
This is where we are…#Braverman #Sunak #Refugees pic.twitter.com/7t6LM6wqrx

— Judy Hamilton (@secretspartacus) March 8, 2023

The United Nations has also stated that the Bill undermines the “very purpose” of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which “explicitly recognises that refugees may be compelled to enter a country of asylum irregularly.” The statement added: “International law does not require that refugees claim asylum in the first country they reach.”

That convention was introduced in recognition of the failure of neighbouring countries to help refugees from Nazi Germany when they needed it.

In Parliament, Braverman referred to her Bill removing “foreign national rapists, drug dealers and murderers” – and was reprimanded by Labour’s John McDonnell for “inflammatory language” that was putting asylum-seekers and those who represent them “at risk”.

In response to earlier such shenanigans, former footballer and TV presenter Gary Lineker tweeted that the language in which Braverman’s plan was set out was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. He has a point, it seems.

This is what ⁦@GaryLineker⁩ tweeted. His controversial comment was about the Govts language – but that’s not how it’s being reported.

I don’t agree with his comparison but I absolutely defend his right to say it. pic.twitter.com/rzgeF6JsKd

— Anna Soubry (@Anna_Soubry) March 8, 2023

But of course he faced a backlash. Braverman herself called his words “unhelpful”:

'It's unhelpful to compare our measures to 1930s Germany'

On #BBCBreakfast Home Secretary Suella Braverman criticised Gary Lineker after he tweeted about the Government's asylum policyhttps://t.co/vUlRBwWLG0 pic.twitter.com/ySUULjAa7w

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) March 8, 2023

But of course Mr Lineker wasn’t trying to help her; he thinks her law is rotten. Notice that she appealed to “the British people”, claiming that her law was in line what the people want. Isn’t that exactly the kind of rhetoric that the Nazis used?

Also:

This is staggering. Let’s not beat around the bush. It is about denying the humanity of asylum seekers, and that is a dangerous, slippery path towards the politics of fascism. Sometimes that word just has to be used. https://t.co/0VxbcYWyqp

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) March 7, 2023

Dehumanising people was exactly what the Nazis did, of course.

And – of course – Braverman cynically inflated the figures on the number of people allegedly trying to come to the UK:

Is there a problem with people illegally crossing the Channel? Yes
Are 100 million people trying to come here? Of course not. The Home Secretary should be utterly ashamed of herself for resorting to the language of extremists https://t.co/32VSvflUzb

— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) March 7, 2023

This 100m figure is – I would guess – a ref to the UN’s calculation that 100m are fleeing conflict and disaster. But most do not cross a border. 55 million are “internally displaced” – eg Syrians who fled from Aleppo to Idlib. The idea they are all coming to UK is absurd. https://t.co/RrMG9PwADi

— David Miliband (@DMiliband) March 7, 2023

The media debate is big on emotion and small on detail, with other claims added in to boost the failing Tory rhetoric.

For example, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Susannah Reid had to torpedo a claim that all asylum claims should be refused (75 per cent are valid) and that civil servants were inclined to grant all asylum claims for an easy life (there’s no evidence to support that at all):

Absolute credit to @susannareid100 for injecting some fact checking into the Tory war on refugees. pic.twitter.com/glt7x0hWTt

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) March 8, 2023

The United Nations has provided valuable insight on the facts here. Its refugee agency, the UNHCR, has stated that Home Office data indicates that the “vast majority” of small-boat migrants would be granted refugee protection if the UK considered their claims.

“Branding refugees as undeserving based on mode of arrival distorts these fundamental facts,” the agency added, calling on the government to consider its own “concrete and actionable proposals” as a way to reduce the demand for small-boat crossings.

Underlying all this is the fact that the so-called “war on immigrants” has been manufactured by the Tories in order to give people a bogeyman to fear and revile.

The reason people are coming across to the UK in small boats is simply that Boris Johnson turned his back on the UK’s former “returns” agreement with the European Union, that allowed a Labour government to return 60,000 people in its last year in office. That’s more than the most recently-recorded number of people coming in. Watch:

Jeez. The Home office video of Suella Braverman saying “Enough is enough. We must stop the boats” is almost at 2 million views. Lets make sure the public know it was her Government which created this situation by sharing this as widely as possible https://t.co/kceiWvtn8o

— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) March 7, 2023

Labour has, at least, recognised that there is an easy way to solve the issue of people crossing the Channel in small boats:

Labour would deal with the Tory-made small boats crisis by:

– Negotiating returns deal with EU
– Cracking down on criminal gangs by boosting police and security forces
– Having well managed safe & legal routes
– Clearing the asylum backlog@UKLabour pic.twitter.com/fgaiKpmwn3

— Stephen Kinnock (@SKinnock) March 7, 2023

Mr Lineker faces a “frank conversation” with his BBC bosses about his criticism of the government, which the Corporation – under its Tory-supporting, Tory-appointed chairman – is claiming contradicts its impartiality rules.

But of course, he was tweeting in a personal capacity.

I am reminded of Rachel Riley’s vigorous campaigning against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the run-up to the 2019 general election.

Her right to do this was not publicly disputed by her employer, the broadcaster Channel 4.

Isn’t it incongruous that she was allowed to undermine a left-winger’s election campaign but Mr Lineker is being reprimanded for passing a reasonable comment on a right-winger’s attack on refugees?

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Sunak is hammered by journalists after ‘future plans’ speech that nobody believes

Rishi Sunak delivered a speech on his plans for the future of the UK – and nobody cared.

He delivered five promises: one was to halve inflation (not hard as it is expected to drop, to improve the economy, to cut the national debt, to cut NHS waiting times, and to stop small boats bringing illegal migrants to the UK.

Journalists took him to task over the Tory government’s failure to do what it said, over whether he would implement any of his five promises this year, over his refusal to negotiate pay with nurses, over what the public could do if he fails to deliver on his promises, over the failure of previous government laws to do what’s needed to combat illegal immigration, and over his failure to resolve the strikes.

His comments about nurses and funding for the NHS are particularly hard to stomach:

If you can be bothered to sit through his speech (and it might be worth having around so we can see if he ever bothers to stick to it), here it is:

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Did Rishi Sunak’s immigration speech seem… familiar to you?

Rishi Sunak in the House of Commons: neither he nor his fellow Tories seem to take their responsibilities seriously.

Rishi Sunak gave a speech in which he set out his plan to reduce illegal immigration.

Maybe you thought it contained some good ideas; on the face of it, it might have.

But it only attempts to handle the symptoms of the problem, and not the causes.

And This Writer fears that some of the measures he introduced may be used to persecute the innocent.

Also, there was something Nurembergian about his delivery – the “enough is enough” rhetoric and the assertion that he would “do what must be done”.

It reminded me of other characters from history and fiction – so I made a video comparison (in this case with a character from fiction).

Do I make a good point?

(For clarity, the clip I’m using is for commentary/satirical purposes and I would not wish to make any attempt to claim ownership.)

The measures announced by Sunak include:

a dedicated unit of 400 specialists to handle claims from Albanians
new guidance for asylum case workers making it clear Albania is a safe country and requiring evidence of modern slavery when considering a claim
UK border officials will also be posted at Albania’s main airport, under a new deal with the country
700 staff for a new unit to monitor small boats crossing the English Channel
a pledge to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers
plans to house 10,000 individuals waiting on claims in disused holiday parks, former student halls, and surplus military sites
a commitment to double the number of asylum caseworkers, who assess claims
more staff and funding for the National Crime Agency to tackle organised immigration crime in Europe
plans for Parliament to set an annual quota for refugees coming to the UK
new laws, to be introduced next year, to “make unambiguously clear that if you enter the UK illegally, you should not be able to remain here”

Refugee charities branded the plans “cruel” and “ineffective”.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer dismissed the proposals as “unworkable gimmicks”.

Sunak also pledged to “significantly raise the threshold someone has to meet” to be considered a victim of modern slavery.

But former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May warned modern slavery was “a very real and current threat”.

She urged Sunak not to “diminish our world-leading protections for the victims of this terrible, horrific crime”.

(He didn’t listen.)

And there are other problems:

The UN’s refugee agency welcomed measures to address the asylum backlog but said plans to limit access to asylum to those arriving through “safe, legal routes” went against the principles of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The UNHCR said the announcements marked “a troubling step away” from the UK’s “commendable humanitarian tradition”.

Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive of charity Refugee Action, criticised the government for failing to commit to creating new safe routes for people to come to the UK, which he said “could end most small boat crossings overnight”.

“Most of these changes are cruel, ineffective and unlawful and will do nothing to fix the real problems in the system,” he said.

The Refugee Council said treating people “who come to the UK in search of safety as illegal criminals” was “deeply disturbing and flies in the face of international law”.

The charity said it was “very simplistic” to label Albania safe “when in reality it has serious problems with criminal and sexual exploitation of women and children”.

It’s another Tory mess.

They could have done something useful but they decided not to – possibly because raising hysteria around immigration allows them to distract public attention away from all their other disasters.

And, considering the effect his plan is likely to have on people who are genuinely trying to flee life-threatening situations, he might just as well have pointed a giant cannon at them and shouted “fire!”

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This is the only way to stop people coming to the UK in boats

Suella Braverman: it would have been good to run a picture of her at the Manston Concentration Camp – but she has never even been there.

Suella Braverman – already under fire for breaching confidentiality rules and lying about reporting it promptly – can’t even do her job properly, it seems.

She is responsible for conditions at the Manston Migrant Processing Centre in Kent – a concentration camp for people who have used illegal means to cross the English Channel in order to seek asylum in the United Kingdom.

It seems 4,000 people are living at the camp, which was only intended to house a maximum of 1,600 – and those only for a short time. People are supposed to be there for a maximum of 48 hours but some have already stayed for more than five weeks.

It is a hotbed for disease, with at least eight cases of diphtheria and one of MRSA.

Hundreds of people were moved there from another facility in Dover after that camp was firebombed – allegedly by a man who threw three petrol bombs with fireworks attached then drove to a nearby petrol station and took his own life.

Home Office advice to ministers has been – for some time – that they should book hotel rooms and put asylum seekers there while they are being processed. According to Robert Peston, this has been largely ignored:

They did this because they believed this was the way to put pressure on their officials to find a way to speed up the processing of asylum applications. 3/20

— Robert Peston (@Peston) October 31, 2022

And now the pressure is on Braverman. Poetic justice, some might say.

Braverman and Patel will be pressed by opposition parties to explain why they refused to follow home office recommendations, when Grant Shapps did take home office advice and started to book hotel rooms in the few days he spent as Home Secretary. 5/20

— Robert Peston (@Peston) October 31, 2022

So Shapps did the right thing. But look at the reaction from just one far-right Twitter user:

We need to stop illegal immigration by boats into this country, and fast.

Words are not enough, action needs to happen. It’s unacceptable to see thousands illegally entering this country, while the tax payers pick up the hotel tab.

— Kevin Edger (@KEdge23) October 31, 2022

Obviously it is not illegal to seek asylum in the UK, even if entry was obtained be illegal means.

And immigration is different from asylum-seeking.

But they both have the same root cause, which is that conditions in these people’s home countries are deemed to be so unsafe that they have to try to go somewhere else.

So the answer to the migrant boat problem is not to try to sour the milk by making the UK an unattractive destination; it is to seek better conditions in the new arrivals’ home countries.

This creates all sorts of problems for UK Tory governments because they are often part of the reasons other countries are dangerous for their own populations.

Like many western nations, we manipulate political circumstances all around the world in order to gain economic power. That’s why we have participated in so many wars in the Middle East and Africa; our businesses have financial interests there that disadvantage local people – and enforce their continuation with violence or the threat of it. If that leads to conflict, it seems a price our government is willing to pay.

We destabilise whole regions of the world in order to make a few quid and think nothing of the harm it does to the people living there.

And when they arrive at our door seeking asylum from the conditions our government has caused, we are encouraged to see them as the villains.

It’s not good enough. The UK government is the villain in this situation – more so for encouraging us to try to harm these refugees as the Dover petrol bomber did.

It is only by improving conditions in the countries these people are fleeing that we can reduce the numbers of people coming to the UK – numbers that are still far lower than are arriving in other European countries like Germany.

Then it will be possible to deal with the separate problem of illegal immigration – which I’m sure does exist but is being used as an excuse to attack people who are already victims.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Tag Archives: illegal

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