Would people be so keen to cross the channel to the UK in dinghies if they knew the Tory government is likely to leave them to starve?
It seems our asylum system’s problems are twofold: getting into the UK is one part and the other is the way people are treated once they are here.
Mercy Baguma, originally from Uganda, was discovered by police in a Glasgow flat on August 22, after friends said she had not been seen since the previous Tuesday.
Her malnourished baby boy was found next to her. He was rushed to hospital for treatment and is now with his father.
Ms Baguma, aged in her 30s, had lost her job after her leave to remain expired, meaning she was no longer allowed to work.
She had contacted the charity Positive Action in Housing after making an application for aid to MigrantHelp.
Robina Qureshi, Director of Positive Action in Housing said she would have been a high priority for a crisis payment – had she lived:
“The fact is there is no safety net if you’re a refugee or migrant. You are left destitute and without resources. And you’re left silenced by far right rhetoric for being forced to ask for help.
“Would this mother be alive if she was not forced out of her job by this cruel system that stops you from working and paying your way because a piece of paper says your leave to remain has expired? I’m sure Mercy’s son will want to ask this and other questions once he is old enough.”
Clearly there is more to this story. We don’t know why the government decided Ms Baguma should not have leave to remain in the UK any more or what was being done about it.
But the evidence we have is clear: she died, and her son nearly starved to death too, because our Tory asylum system said they should.
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Look at the state of this, about the Labour conference vote yesterday that supported the leadership’s position on Brexit, rather than changing to support remaining in the European Union:
"For spectators like me – who spent 15 years observing the tactics of China's leaders – all this is quite familiar.
"For passionate Labour Remainers, it's infuriating."
In his article, Robert Peston states: “The Brexit position of the trade unions was always a red herring, what magicians call misdirection. What mattered was who was in the hall.
“And that was sorted weeks ago though the choice of delegates.
“For spectators like me – who spent 15 years observing the tactics of China’s leaders – all this is quite familiar.
“For passionate Labour Remainers, it’s infuriating.”
This is a lie. Peston was claiming that delegates to the Labour conference were chosen by Jeremy Corbyn to support his position on Brexit, when in fact they are chosen by their fellow constituency party members.
As Richard Seymour states: “This is literally a conspiracy theory about the official opposition being published by a major national broadcaster. They ought to withdraw this.”
And he’s not the only one to react furiously:
I'll tell you how it happened, Robert. CLPs, by and large, voted for delegates who support Corbyn's compromise position. Those delegates proceeded to vote… for Corbyn's compromise position. It's called democracy. https://t.co/Omwh2id9Gx
So Mr Peston changed tack and decided to suggest he was joking. That didn’t go down well either:
Ah, the old " it was a joke " line that arseholes use. Your absolute desperation to smear & discredit Labour / Corbyn at every turn for your masters is turning you into a cretin. You really are a sickening little man, I truly hope karma makes you pay dearly.
Last night and today I witnessed Labour Members from across the UK respectfully debate Brexit and democratically vote on our position. That’s DEMOCRACY
Sadly, the mainstream media seem determined to mislead the public about Labour’s attitude towards Brexit. Consider this, from the BBC’s Norman Smith – and the response:
SO – to be clear – Labour will go into the next election as the only party not trying to further split the country AND the only party offering transformative policies to the benefit of the 99%.
Labour is now the only mainstream political party that will give all UK electors a voice on the UK’s exit from the European Union.
The Tories will take us out on terms that seem most likely to benefit Boris Johnson’s business partners.
The Liberal Democrats will keep us in, without offering the people a chance to make a decision.
Labour will honour the 2016 referendum by negotiating a new exit deal with the EU, and will bring this deal back to the electorate for a decision, alongside the possibility of remaining in the EU after all.
This is the only way democracy may be honoured in this matter.
Now all we need to do is get rid of Boris Johnson’s attempted dictatorship and bring in a Labour government. Right?
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Jo Swinson: A recent Liberal Democrat campaign stated “Bollocks to Brexit”. As this image shows the last two words may be removed to show what the Lib Dems are talking now.
Jo Swinson keeps trying to get us to listen to her lies about Jeremy Corbyn – and she keeps getting what she deserves in return.
The latest idiocy from the leader of the party soon to be known as the Lib Dims is a claim that Mr Corbyn – one of the most active campaigners for remaining in the EU during the run-up to the referendum in 2016 – didn’t campaign to remain.
Jo – being divisive isn’t helping. Lib Dems are responsible for plunging Britain into crisis, having campaigned for EU Referendum and propped up Cameron. Here is your chance to redeem yourselves. But will you take it? #nationalinterest or #selfinterestpic.twitter.com/mGltw9EQFw
(And if you want to see her voting record, read it here.)
It will be hard for the Liberal Democrats to come back from this blatant lie with any credibility for her campaign to undermine Mr Corbyn.
She could give up now, and get behind his plan for a vote of ‘no confidence’ in Boris Johnson and his ‘no deal’ Brexit.
Or she could make way for a Liberal Democrat leader who will.
She knows, now, that what she can’t do is lie about Jeremy Corbyn.
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Just when the Liberal Democrats thought they were electable again, Chuka Umunna looks set to join them.
That’ll mess things up. According to the Mail – so an unreliable source – he wants to represent the Party of Remain in Streatham, his current constituency, which has a “safe” Labour seat but voted very strongly to remain in the EU in 2016.
In the spirit of giving news stories all the space they deserve… that is all.
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Motivating the masses: Jeremy Corbyn speaks to a crowd on the EU elections campaign trail.
Zoe Williams in The Guardian marks out important reasons for ‘Remain’ supporters to vote for the Labour Party in the EU elections.
Her article is a bit long and rambling so I’ve isolated the main points for you, below. They are persuasive.
Now all we need is an article explaining why ‘Leave’ supporters should vote Labour too.
It runs counter to every democratic instinct to see candidates you admire and not vote for them. The Labour candidates are the kind of representatives I would like to see populate the coming era of politics. They are pluralistic, imaginative, radical, ambitious, patriotic.
These elections may be of symbolic significance for our national politics. But they are also of pressing, concrete importance for Europe’s future direction. The rise of the far right in the European parliament constitutes an urgent threat to everything that matters to Labour voters, from human and workplace rights to climate crisis. More than ever, that parliament needs a coherent left bloc.
Someone needs to oppose Nigel Farage, and that will come much more convincingly from somebody with a track history of fighting racism – Clive Lewis, say – than it does from a clubbable Lib Dem. The days when the mainstream right and centre were morally capable of resisting untruth, corruption and racism on their own terms are over: only Labour can do this.
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Liberal Democrat values: Vince Cable sold Royal Mail at a bargain price so the buyers could make a fortune on the property value of its sorting offices – and the public lost out as the quality of service plummeted.
There seems to be a wave of collective insanity sweeping the UK as people prepare to support the right-wing, neoliberal Liberal Democrat Party at the EU elections – because it claims to be “The Party of ‘Remain'”.
Party leader Vince Cable even parroted the Tory mantra of “Strong and stable government” to Andrew Marr:
Unfcknbelievable!!! Vince Cable on his horrific austerity cuts “it was Strong and Stable Government” are you joking!!! 120,000 austerity deaths, benefit sanctions, homelessness crisis, child poverty, people found fit for work dead communities broken FFS!! Stop LibDems pic.twitter.com/OCQBU6ls1F
Bear in mind that the EU elections should not be about Brexit at all.
No candidate gaining a seat in the European Parliament after Thursday’s election will be able to either hasten or foil Brexit. That is a matter for the UK Parliament.
But they will make a difference to the political make-up of the EU, where some member states have encountered serious problems with the resurgence of fascism.
The EU needs a socialist majority to fight that – not right-wing, neoliberal austerity-enablers like the Liberal Democrats.
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Gavin Shuker: Labour wants to run a normal election campaign so he’s going to sulk.
How ridiculous of the most ridiculous political organisation to turn up (until the Brexit Party arrived).
Apparently Change UK, the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats have been discussing the possibility of uniting behind an independent candidate in the upcoming Peterborough Parliamentary by-election.
This candidate would have supported remaining in the European Union and would have advocated for a “People’s Vote” second referendum on that subject.
There was nothing to stop them from doing this.
But it seems the candidate they chose to support has now withdrawn, after the Labour Party said it would not join this alliance and would campaign to win the constituency on its own terms.
This should come as no surprise because Labour is not a “Remain”-supporting party – or “Leave”-supporting, in fact. Labour respects the result of the referendum but is sceptical about the possibility of negotiating an acceptable decoupling deal with the EU and will support another referendum if a workable deal proves impossible to achieve.
And this is a by-election for a Parliamentary constituency – not a mini-referendum on Brexit – so Labour is well within its rights to want to campaign on local issues.
Change UK’s response was to throw its toys out of the pram. Here’s part of Gavin Shuker’s statement:
“Senior Labour figures, including senior figures campaigning for a people’s vote, made it clear that they would strenuously disrupt the campaign and obstruct an independent candidate, driven by fears that it would harm their party in Peterborough.”
In other words, he was whining about Labour holding a normal election campaign.
One wonders whether this outburst was prompted by the fact that Change UK didn’t manage to register a candidate of its own in time (the Greens and Lib Dems did).
Reaction on the social media has been acid:
Good god almighty, Change UK The Independent Group _whining_ about the fact that Labour intends to campaign in the Peterborough by-election & try to win it https://t.co/zCU9lwWUyi
You know what Gavin, I expect the Tories & maybe even the Brexparty will try to "obstruct" your candidate as well, bc however much you go Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa about it they are different political parties & they are not under any obligation to be nice to you & let you win
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“Today’s 18, 19 and 20-year-olds were not allowed to vote in 2016. 84 per cent of them want to remain in the EU,” tweeted Labour’s David Lammy.
“To ignore these young voices, who have the most to lose from Brexit, would be nothing less than a betrayal,” he added – and This Writer agrees.
Theresa May [has been] warned that Brexit will “betray an entire generation of young people” as a new poll showed teenagers who have now gained the vote back staying in the EU by more than five to one.
The YouGov survey found that 84 per cent of 18, 19 and 20-year-olds — too young to take part in the June 2016 referendum — support remaining in the European Union, with just 16 per cent opting for Leave.
People aged 20 to 24 who were able to take part in the Brexit referendum voted by three to one to Remain.
The analysis suggested the Leave majority of 2016 would be wiped out in January 2019, two months before the UK is due to quit the EU. The calculations were also based on elderly people, who mostly voted for Leave, dying.
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The Conservative Party is moving inexorably into fascism – the latest example being Tory MEP David Bannerman, who wants to execute UK citizens who wanted to stay in the EU – for treason.
It is people like this man who form the government of the United Kingdom and that is why the United Kingdom is falling apart before your eyes.
Here’s Skwawkbox:
A Tory MEP wants to ‘update’ the Treason Act to include execution for ‘extreme EU loyalty’.
David Bannerman tweeted this morning that those exhibiting too much loyalty to the European Union should be treated like jihadis if the law is updated to allow Islamic extremists to be tried as traitors. Although Bannerman later replaced his original tweet with one which did not specify that it was the mediaeval version of the Treason Act to which he was referring, as the original did:
Bannerman considers that those ‘working undemocratically against’ the UK are comparable with those taking up arms against it. Curiously, the Brexit-supporting MEP does not seem to consider that those who have – as already proven by the Electoral Commission – worked undemocratically for Brexit should suffer the same fate.
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This Writer was alarmed to read posts on Twitter by Owen Jones, attacking Lord Adonis’s comments on Theresa May’s Brexit because Lord Adonis is one of the most privileged citizens of the United Kingdom.
Think a Tory Brexit is a disaster? Sure, sign me up. Having unelected Lords talking about resigning from Tory-appointed posts whilst skiing in Austria appointing themselves as tribunes of the people against referendum results? Is Nigel Farage *paying* Lord Adonis to say this?
If you want to take on Brexit, *you have to convince people who voted for it that you are on their side, and not confirm the caricature many have of you*. Why is this so hard to understand?
I note people are ignoring the bit about Adonis – yes, a clever and thoughtful man – being an unelected Lord who’s just resigned from an unelected position, which is rather more important than the skiing! How will he convince Leave supporters?
Brexit will affect us all, of course. Some of the most privileged citizens of the UK will benefit hugely; most of the least privileged will suffer terribly.
From my point of view, as a member of the privileged class, it was honourable of Lord Adonis to take a stand against Brexit.
Mr Jones’s argument, that Lord Adonis was unlikely to sway the opinion of the majority because he does not represent them in his social position or lifestyle, won’t wash with me because it’s not about that. It’s about the effect on all of us.
That being said, it would be an easy label for Brextremists to apply, in order to sway the gullible. And we know that ‘Leave’ won by influencing the gullible.
So how do we move forward?
Mr Jones seems determined that the Remain cause needs a figurehead. He’s right that Lord Adonis isn’t it – but for the wrong reasons. For one, Lord Adonis hasn’t asked to be one.
Looking at the article Mr Jones has written on the subject, he names several other high-profile people who have spoken up in the Remain cause, and dismissed them for varying reasons.
Tony Blair is “one of the most unpopular individuals — let alone politicians — in Britain, partly because of the small matter of a war sold on a false pretext which ended up an even worse calamity that many of those who opposed it predicted, and who then got paid millions to work for murdering torturing dictators”.
Nick Clegg, “by undermining faith in democracy and implementing austerity, helped pave the way to Brexit… The messenger does matter in politics, whether you like that fact or not, and no, Clegg is not going to achieve anything other than reinforce the negative image the Remain cause has”. That would be a negative image among Leave supporters, one supposes.
Mr Jones neglects the most important reason of all, despite it being the main pillar of his opposition to Lord Adonis: They represent the 1% – not the vast majority of the people.
Because of that, none of the politicians who might be candidates to lead a revived Remain campaign can possibly hold our trust. Brexit will benefit the few, not the many, and they are members of the few.
Look at all the prominent Brexiters: Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Theresa May, those three Tory MPs who head up the 1922 committee, and any of the Labour MPs who want out of the EU – one per centers, all of them, This Writer is willing to bet. It’s in their job description.
Gina Miller, the woman who challenged the government over Brexit in the courts, is out for the same reason. She is a member of the moneyed class, not a woman of the people.
For a Remain argument to be persuasive – by Mr Jones’s own criteria – it needs a spokesperson who represents us. And there’s a real problem with that.
If there is such a person to be found among the working people, or even the unemployed, of the United Kingdom, then they simply cannot spare the time to go off campaigning. Their employer wouldn’t let them go; the DWP would sanction them.
Any serious campaign to stop Brexit would need to find such a person and then provide an incentive for them to hit the road, campaigning – a financial incentive. And that opens them up to criticisms about doing it for mercenary reasons. To be convincing to a Brextremist, such a person would have to starve for their belief.
If an answer can be found to this, we can move on to some of Mr Jones’s ideas that are actually worth repeating:
“I would tour Leave areas as part of a new grassroots national campaign, emphasising my background, that I know what hardship and insecurity is like from my own lived experience, and directly appeal to Leave supporters.”
To that, I would add an admission that both the Leave and Remain campaign told untruths. The referendum was intended to be advisory, but the leaflet put out by the Conservative government promised flat that the result would be honoured. It perverted the intention. That was wrong.
Obviously, Leave campaigners splattered a lie about the UK giving £350 million a week to the EU all over the side of a bus and persuaded far too many people that this nonexistent money could be given to the National Health Service instead, if only they voted ‘Leave’.
There was a huge campaign to pretend that “unelected bureaucrats” in the EU force their laws on the UK; in fact, all EU laws must be ratified by the governments of member states. That’s why there has been such a huge battle between the UK and the EU over whether prisoners should have the vote. Remember that?
The list is probably very long; any competent Remain campaign would have to address everything on it, to explain why Remain failed in the first place.
And of course there is the issue of illegal interference in the referendum, that should – in This Writer’s opinion – render that vote null and void.
So, come on. It’s not right to run down Lord Adonis for doing what he could to point out that Brexit is wrong for the United Kingdom – not without having something better to offer instead.
It’s time for Remain to offer something better. Let’s have it, before Brexit becomes irreversible (and no, Brextremists, that hasn’t happened yet).
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