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Turns out BREXIT is about sovereignty and democracy after all….The shift of one and the death of the other.

03 Tuesday Sep 2019

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Maggie Lennon may have stumbled on the blueprint for Johnson’s recent actions. In 1997, the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg co-authored a book called The Sovereign Individual, addressed to the super rich which stated that from around 2000 a new age would dawn, one in which sovereignty would pass to super rich individuals and that the nation state would die.

 

When I hear the phrase post-Brexit I can’t help thinking Post-Apocalyptic. And like all post-apocalyptic futures we are rapidly moving to the dystopian model.

If ever there was case of knowing what we know, knowing what we don’t know, or not knowing (or recognising) what we do know, or even (and it’s just getting silly now) not knowing what we don’t know, then this is it.

Though what we do know is that it WILL happen. We can’t keep our fingers in our ears singing lalala go away. It now only a matter of to what degree will it happen, over what timescale and for how long will we have to measure the fallout, possibly, indeed most likely, in decades.

The British State is on the brink of a disastrous isolationist leap in the dark and to the right, and into the arms of Trump’s America with all chlorinated chicken you can ask for and all the privatised healthcare nobody wants, except Cabinet Ministers with shares and off shore investments in private health care.

The result? Well if I knew that I’d be a very smart cookie indeed. Without doubt at some point (and I’m not hedging my bets) it will see the break-up of Britain, not least because the current constitutional arrangements and devolution across all the devolved administrations isn’t working—quite literally in the case of the North of Ireland.

But the situation, as they say, is fluid, and until last week, the British state was balanced on a precipice as the rise of right wing populism looked set to push us over that cliff. With Johnson’s flagrant disregard for the constitution (yes, it’s not written down but we do have one, it’s just that it’s nigh impossible to re-enforce); possibly the law (and certainly its spirit if not the letter) and the very basic rules governing representative democracies, we have now tipped over the edge. Once Parliament is deemed irrelevant, even for a brief period, precedent suggests it will become so again until maybe that’s becomes its default position.

When the Brexiteers said they wanted to take back control, we now realise they meant for their own small cabal.

The triumph of what is claimed as the will of the people (however narrow a triumph) over the idea that you elect people to represent the best interpretation of that will, has led us to this sorry state.

But Power To The People is a catchier, sexier chant  is it not, than Power In The Hands Of The Elected Representatives Who Are Elected By The People. But then right wing populism in all its forms is an easier and simpler message to sell than left wing populism. Not least because for those proposing it – white middle class men of money, privilege and entitlement, whether new or old money, the establishment – are the ones who benefit for its outcomes. They have a vested self-interest in promoting it. While they always know we are most not certainly not all in it together, unless you mean the shit, they are in fact best placed to take advantage of deregulation, of tax tricks, of neoliberalism, of othering people to distract from the harsh economic realities of the policies they push. And they are the ones in charge. Unlike the working class women and men who have been taken in and who will at some point in the not too distant future – witnessing the erosion of their rights – begin to wonder what all that talk about the will of the people was. There’s a lovely scene in the film version of Doctor Zhivago when on discovering that the country estate has been sequestered by the will of the People’s Government, the old aristocrat picks up a shovel intent on smashing the lock and shouts “Well I’m one of the People now”. But just as Nikolai Nikolayevich discovers, the will of the people, doesn’t belong to the people any more. It’s been misappropriated for nefarious means.

Left wing populism on the other hand, which has in the past appealed and should appeal again to the masses, is targeted at exactly these bastions of establishment. So it’s fairly self-evident that an ideology that promotes the state over greed, that promotes wealth distribution rather than iniquitous wealth gain (that NEVER trickles down) is never going to get the support of the establishment especially an establishment who now more than ever have their grubby little fingers in the pies of the media, industry, offshore tax havens, self-interested policy making; in effect controlling how society works. So in times past in the UK, when the left have made advances, it’s been despite of the odds stacked against them. And so I really fail to see how we would ever see a socially democratic UK again, let alone a socialist one.

But I digress and let us be clear,  rather like Theresa May (remember her) used to say she was……

Brexit isn’t new; it isn’t even a result of a hard core of nanny boys in the Tory party rattling their sabres. It’s not about giving anything back to the people who voted for it, if it is about sovereignty it’s not about the sovereignty of the State and I’ll return to that in a minute.

There are 3 things that have driven this:

Firstly Brexit is the inevitable result of a project in certain parts of these benighted isles that goes back at least 80 years, with its toxic relationship with Europe. Because while we may have won the war, we most certainly didn’t win the peace and that is just not cricket. And if you  want a definitive guide to that relationship and to fully understand the relationship and all that has led to where we are today please read Fintan O’Toole’s masterly book Brexit the Heroic Failure

Secondly, it’s the inevitable outcome of the rise of neo-liberalism with its creed of deregulation, free market capitalism, individualism and the shift away from the “big state”; and if you want to learn more about that try Naomi Kline’s The Shock Doctrine, if that doesn’t make you angry, you best check you are still breathing. There’s even a chapter on Brexit!

And thirdly that old chestnut sovereignty. I turn to a little known book – outside extreme right wing think tanks – written by William Rees Mogg, father of Jacob, and hirer one presumes of the infamous nanny. In 1997 he co-authored a book called The Sovereign Individual, addressed to the super rich which stated that from around 2000 the big millennium projects weren’t going to be dome stadia or other legacy projects but in fact  a new age, one in which sovereignty would pass to super rich individuals and that the nation state would die.

“The nation state will not endure in anything like its present form it will starve to death as its tax revenues decline because the new elite have declared itself sovereign and thus are no longer taxable Mass democracy and citizenship will be left behind; it is only a matter of time before mass democracy goes the way of its fraternal twin Communism.”

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what Johnson has been up to, it’s the opening act of this Brave New World.

While Teresa May attacked citizens of the world as being citizens of no-where, that is in fact what the super-rich elites are, who run our economies. They operate outside of political and certainly tax jurisdiction boundaries

And there’s no room in the Rees Mogg vision for the workers, or for you and me. Just as gated communities are springing up as children from social housing in some parts of London are not allowed to play in some playparks, so the masses the citizens will be walled out…or walled in.

So when people say BREXIT is all about sovereignty and democracy remember what they really mean is it’s the shift of one and the death of the other. Boy that’s one millennium project with some legacy. Because if by some magic and the wishes of Unicorns BREXIT were to get stopped in its tracks, the threat of this dystopian vision of William Rees Mogg and co. won’t go away, it won’t go back in the butler’s pantry. We are the head of a juggernaut, it’s going to happen, BREXIT just makes it happen quicker and pulls off that most brilliant of political shape sifting….it’s made the electorate believe it’s what they want, its giving them what they say they want, it’s giving them the illusion of control while in fact taking ALL the control back to themselves. The turkeys literally are voting for Xmas

So far so disastrous. Have I told you anything you didn’t know? Maybe? Maybe not? But  at least I’ve given you some suggestions for a good read in the cold evening ahead when power cuts mean only reading by candlelight will be open to us as entertainment. You know what they say: You can take the girl out of bookselling, but not the bookseller out of the girl.

The British State is going rogue. It’s eating itself, and I for one, don’t want to be on the menu.

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When Democracy descends to the level of conkers and football its time to leave the pitch

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

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The English version of democracy is broken, so tarnished, and so last century they have no moral high ground left on which to stand and wouldn’t recognise a truly democratic action if it bit them on the bum.

 

Twitter sphere and the Book of Face is close to meltdown today with the news that Boris Johnson is about to ask Mrs Windsor to shut down Parliament in what is, of course, a blatant attempt to close down any legal means of opposition to a No Deal Brexit. Well at least my feeds are. I have no doubt there are some parts of those worlds which remain untouched and that are still awash with pictures of people’s lunches, cats that look like Hitler (in Brexit land probably) and quizzes which invite you to discover what shape you aura is, or indeed what shape it is in (should be so inclined to find out).

Someone asked somewhat incredulously “Who saw this coming?” or perhaps they were being ironic – seeing as Mr J has been running it up the flagpole quite a bit recently, while Mr Bercow has in response, puffed himself up to his full 4 feet 10 and a half inches to say he will fight this with his last breath, preferably on a beach if he can find one I shouldn’t wonder. And that’s saying something for Mr B, given his breath is more usually reserved for the promotion of the sound of his own voice snipping and sniding at MPs, especially those light on the Unionist persuasion.

But finally it has come to pass. Responses against this move are  varied, ranging from  incandescent to very very angry indeed and all points in between. It’s making strange bedfellows of political opponents, and causing some (it is to be hoped) to temporary abandon firm principles. Republicans for example who wouldn’t give Betty Windsor (not to be confused with Babs of that name) the time of day are now demanding this most constitutional of Monarch, defies that very tenuous basis on which the whole bunch of them are tolerated (i.e. that they have no power anyway) and  that she tells Mr J that he is a very very naughty boy, and probably not the Messiah afterall.

That of course isn’t going to happen. Apart from anything she’s on her summer hols up in Scotland and probably just wants shot of the delegation of “senior cabinet ministers” braving the midges and Prince Philip’s driving to ask her permission. One wonders if Ma’am has considered Skype. After all she could claim poor rural Broadband speeds made the connection difficult, and that she didn’t quite hear the conversation and gave consent instead to suspending Arlene – not the Parly; and as broadband matters are reserved, it’s all the Tories fault anyway!!

Meanwhile legal minds are whirring away trying to mount challenges to this and that and all things Brexit related and much of MSM is appropriately Armageddon like in this assault on our democracy and constitutional outrage. Whether it can be averted, whether it will lead to a Vote of No Confidence, or a General Election is beyond me. Although it seems whatever happens Parliament will not be sitting for enough days to really stop this No Deal juggernaut which, after all, has been nearly 3 years in the making as opposed to a much more recent and flimsy coalition of opposition against it. Even without the prospect of prorogation (a deliciously cigar scented leather chair men’s clubby sort of word), Parliamentarians were still intent on having their long summer break and are still planning their self-imposed conference recess when everyone goes off to the seaside to preach to the converted and gambol about our EU awarded blue flag beaches. So if democracy is truly under threat. If we are suffering an unprecedented constitutional crisis are we now reaping what we have sewed? One thing’s for sure if this is allowed to pass unchallenged, we have crossed the Rubicon and future assaults on the rights and liberties of the people in these benighted islands could make this lot look like a picnic.

The simple fact is that people in the UK and especially in England have been sleepwalking into this, in a wholly mistaken belief that in fact fair play and cricket – and an irrational fear of things that aren’t cricket – are somehow in the national DNA. We have become a land of “Things like that don’t happen here”. Where as of course we can see, we are exactly the sort of place that these things happen. There is no great “decency” regulator in the sky that comes along and says just a minute here, that’s not how we do things. Just like Police people haven’t resembled Dixon of Dock Green for quite some time (they didn’t in truth even when that was on our screens) similarly the idea that public servants (both elected and appointed) have a   default “country before party/common good before personal gain” vision is woefully wrongheaded.

And the problem lies within the very structure of our democracy as it manifests itself in the fully national context. The Mother of All Parliaments with its First Past The Post two party dominated political landscape is of barren stock. Is no longer fit for purpose.

A political system that relies on an outmoded  system designed to  create and perpetrate dominance from only two parties, locked in mortal combat, has no room or mechanism for compromise. Without electoral reform to allow some sort of proportional representation, the middle ground, the smaller parties, the parties of special interest stand no chance. The real third party in the UK in the last 10 years hasn’t been the Lib Dems despite holding cabinet office, or abandoning long held cherished policies at the first whiff of the Downing Street cat’s litter tray. It has in fact been UKIP and all the subsequent manifestations of Farage. Not ever elected to Westminster yet spurred on by a fawning media, it didn’t need to be. It was allowed to effectively shape Conservative party policy, and therefore the destiny of 65 million people, without coming under the scrutiny of the British electorate. Had PR existed I have no doubt UKIP, or the Brexit party as it might have become earlier, would have taken seats and perhaps instead of their idiot elected reps being confined to local politics, or the Parliaments in Brussels and Strasbourg which are so ignored by the media in this country, then more people in more places might have seen them for what they are, been able to hold them to account and perhaps, just maybe, we wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place. The biggest assault on our democracy isn’t whatever the current Prime Minister is trying to pull, it’s been the unfettered and unchecked influence of Farage and his cohorts operating outside of parliamentary process.

In the devolved administrations in the UK of course FPTP has been abandoned as the only way to elect our representatives and, as a result, in all 3 (while Stormont was sitting at any rate) we saw a rise of multi party democracies, with formal power sharing in the North of Ireland, only one outright majority in Scotland in a system that was deliberately designed to make that all but impossible. It also means that the voters have more choice, 4 parties minimum, each with a real and genuine chance of taking seats, with all the coalition, compromise, consensual politics that can and has meant.

Across the globe just over 60 nations cling to this British legacy, by far the largest proportion of them being former Empire colonies or members of the Commonwealth and, Canada, USA and India aside, the rest are small beer in terms of geo-political influence. But even those 3 don’t also have their democratic hands tied by an un-elected second house to boot. The farce that has become US elections doesn’t exactly make a good advert for FPTP at any rate. No EU member state uses it apart from Poland for elections to its Senate. Most EU members (not including those in the former Eastern bloc) having given it up in the early years of the 20th century. And the most recent country in the world to turn its back on FPTP was Lebanon in 2017.

But when so  called democracies rely on a system dominated by just two parties, it means that as often as not, voters are voting against things as much as for them, as the use of tactical voting makes clear. It is in reality a sort of disenfranchisement just as bad as rotten boroughs. It relies on the voters doing all the work. Unless fatigue or personality “turn off” occurs they have to make the shift away from policies they once found appealing, rather than parties turning towards them with policies which might persuade people to try a new lot based on a chance of improving the lives of a country’s people. In other words it puts all the onus on the voters and none on the policy makers. And just like football – that other ultimate game of sides, it relies on – and encourages – tribalism. It means that each major party doesn’t have to find common ground with the other, or the common good, it just keeps bashing away, taking even more extreme positions. Positions  which supporters both within and outwith the party structures feel that have to adopt just in case the other side wins. A bit like playing conkers in the playground. And we all know that cheating is the best way to play and win at football and conkers. Is it any way to run a country though?

And can we be blind to the move to the right? Can we deny it? The anti immigrant rhetoric, not from pub landlords only, but people in power. A home secretary openly in favour of bringing back the death penalty. Inhuman treatment of the poor, rape clauses,”protection” of paedophiles through lack of robust examination of historical cases  and so it goes on. Neo-Liberalism has its nasty little claws in us and there is no shaking it free.

Yet despite this we can see the cracks, the hung parliaments of recent UK GEs, suggest that perhaps the voter isn’t as content with the way things are done as they once were. Yet the inevitable horsetrading, the bribes, the deals, the endless “kingmaker” analogies of Clegg,  frankly seemed a complete mystery to European colleagues and friends who are so used to coalitions and politics of compromise they simply could not fathom why the UK seemed to be eating itself in 2010. Compare that with the SNPs brave decision to run a series of minority governments, relying on support at times cross party for policies.

So England I’m sorry you had it coming! Your stubborn rejection of a devolved parliament for England, your rejection of FPTP for GEs, your slavish following of red and blue has led to this. Ultimately few parties have all the policies for all of the people all of the time unless you are a rabid Tory or Labour person. So instead of trying to find alternatives, realising FPRT means that millions of votes are effectively wasted,  people turn off.

Perhaps the biggest indictment of all was the man who voted Brexit “as a protest” but he didn’t think his vote would count “as it never did in other elections”. Now leaving aside the acute stupidity of someone who couldn’t understand the implications of a binary vote, if your voting citizens are so mired in the belief that they and their votes don’t matter, can you really trust the system to deliver for those citizens at any time?  So is it any wonder they turn off. Get caught up with populism, slogans on and off  buses. I weep for friends down south who really have no alternatives. I’ve seen two major theatre events recently which were at heart bleating liberal mourning for the death of the Labour Party and/or Socialism, as of course they are no longer the same thing. But all the time I was screaming inside that doesn’t reflect where I live and at the end of the day is sort of unavoidable.

The devolved administrations have shown an alternative way forward. It’s a way some view with envy, might like to try, might even embrace with a change of scene. But it’s not really up to us to save England from itself  any more. Two of the three said a firm NO to Brexit. So let’s have no more nonsense about Scotland, Ireland or Wales wanting to choose a new future, as being somehow undemocratic, or their being no mandate for it. The English version of democracy is broken, so tarnished, and so last century they have no moral high ground left on which to stand and wouldn’t recognise a truly democratic action if it bit them on the bum. And as a result, England’s green and pleasant lands may very well be welcoming back dark satanic forces, if not mills: unless the way of doing business is changed. But now that the neo-liberal genie is out of the bottle, god alone knows what horrors are yet to come.

History repeats itself for a reason, and we ignore it at our peril

26 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in History, Migration, Politics

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History also tells us that governments like nothing better, when their backs are to the wall economically or politically to divert attention away from the mistakes of their own making, and to focus instead on the problem of the others. And history also tells us when Government think “the others” are a problem they also find solutions, sometimes final ones

 

Back in the day, I can remember a parade of eloquent and committed teachers, urging us to consider history as a subject for advanced study and maybe even a post school discipline. Among the many arguments the one that stuck with me, and which continues to have currency, is that a proper and thoughtful study of the past not only can help us make sense of the present (on the assumption that in most things there is very little new under the sun) but that with a critical and questioning eye it can help us avoid the mistakes of our forbears (if that is our bent) or indeed repeat their folly with alarming regularity (should we so choose). In either scenario knowing how certain courses of action have played out in the past, we can make a decent stab at how actions today will play out in the future. And like a hall of reflecting mirrors we can see that pattern repeat and repeat into infinity.

You don’t have to be a genius of physics or quantum mechanics to understand  that doing the same thing over and over again in the same fashion and expecting a different outcome, may indeed be madness, but is also just incredibly stupid and arrogant. Which is why Politicians and governments are the biggest culprits of this infantile belief in their power (or indeed god given right)  to do something truly original and different.

And so we  have seen in the last week or so a series of stories relating to the treatment and singling out of refugees and migrants that has chilling resonance back to  1930’s Germany. First asylum seekers in Middlesborough, it transpired, were being housed in accommodation with distinctive red doors, ostensibly so that their landlords the government contracted private security company G4S could find them! One might have assumed they had a list (and maybe some maps). But of course at the same time as their housing officers could find them so could other people in the city with an agenda of harassment and intimidation. And they did find them with alarming regularity, with the asylum seekers reporting graffiti sprayed on their houses and dog shit and used condoms pushed through their letter boxes. While G4S have agreed to replace the doors with a more neutral colour akin with their neighbours, their attitude in conducting this little social experiment in the first place is telling. Despite being paid to deliver a contract to provide safe and secure housing for people going through the  asylum process, they put the convenience and needs of their staff beyond that of those in their care. It shouldn’t have taken the media and concerned citizens and a directive from Her Majesty’s finest to make them stop the process, they should have just known it  was a bad idea. Stars of David on windows anyone?

No sooner had the red door debacle died down when Cardiff announced it was their intention to force asylum seekers to wear red wrist bands in order to get fed. When it was pointed out that the wearing of said bands was opening the men and women to racial abuse and hate crime, the answer was pretty much, tough. No band, no dinner! A similar outcry of the lily livered liberals amongst us (I’m getting in that slur before the Daily Mail does!) has resulted in that policy being “re-thought” and overturned. But the real question is who in heavens name thought it up in the first place. Pink triangles ring any bells people? Once again the interest of the asylum seekers and the duty of care the local authority have for them is way down the list of priorities

And we wake to today’s news that in a Denmark very very far away from the land of Borgen, Danish asylum seekers will have to part with cash or personal effects that they have brought with them be they family heirlooms or treasured possessions, before they get support, in order to “pay” for that support, although those good hearted Danes are allowing people to keep their wedding rings….for now. So far there doesn’t seem to have been a directive on gold fillings. Anyone who has visited Auschwitz  and Birkenau and heard the stories of the warehouses  called “Canada” (because it was a place of abundance) where personal effects were removed, sorted and distributed, might be feeling a little queazy at the moment. And there is absolutely no justification for this brutal action other than to humiliate, demonise, and punish people taking up their legal right to seek protection in a country nominally signed  up to the UN Convention of Refugees. Of course  EU member states the UNHCR are up in arms about this, but then the UK, Ireland and Denmark have an automatic exemption for ALL EU wide asylum policy guidelines and directives so frankly the EU can go on about it as much as they like, the UK, Ireland and Denmark will continue in their own sweet way thank you very much.

And  it’s not so long ago that the shadow of the transit trains fell across Glasgow. When the housing contract for asylum seekers was moving from the Glasgow Housing Association  – into which Glasgow Council’s owned social housing had morphed – to yet another private contractor, it looked like many asylum seekers across the city would have to undergo forced removals from one badly insulated, run down council house on a sink estate to another. They were told in a letter from the private profit driven accommodation provider – in a chilling parallel to  instructions given to Jews across Europe from 1939-44 that they could take “only up to two suitcases each” despite the fact many had lived here for years and had accumulated the same detritus of their lives that we all do. In the event the housing swap didn’t mean a move for most people, but all the same the callousness in which the instructions were given and the tone and content of the letter made  this refugee support worker and others write stiffly to the Home Office and the accommodation provider. We are still waiting on an apology for the insensitivity. But then where does sensitive handing of vulnerable people stand against the profit driven self interest of the people at the top of the procurement tree?

And we continue, in the UK, to ignore the recent history of refugee settlement (less than 40 years ago) in the most amazing way with the forced dispersal of the Syrians coming in from camps, to the far flung corners of the UK (over half the local authorities in Scotland for example) to places that in many cases have no specialist services, history of supporting or understanding of the issues facing traumatised vulnerable people. The numbers in each area are tiny, so people get lost in a system that wasn’t designed for them in the first place. The isolation they are feeling, the confusion and ineptitude of some local authorities is exactly what happened in 1979 when a then newly elected Tory Government in its first few months  of power (a co-incidence…I don’t think so) had to deal with the Vietnamese boat people. Instead of housing people near to areas of the country that have the services, expertise and support that is needed , people are being spread to ease in he Home Offices words the “burden”. (I’ve seen the poweRpoint!)

The outpouring of sympathy across the Europe for the plight of the asylum seekers coming across the Med and overland was extraordinary, and at that point people didn’t see “them” as a burden, But I said at the time  that this humanitarian response would  fade, and that in its place would develop self interested harsher regimes dolling out tougher measures all geared, not to support the vulnerable huddled masses, but the governments and local authorities  where they settled. even if only temporarily. And I said that, because history tells us that this is always the case. But history also tells us that the mass movement of people is a historical phenomena, that borders shift, and that some are no more than recent drawings in the sand. History tells us that  it has happened before and that it will happen again, so we need to get smarter, better and more humane in dealing with it. History also tells us that governments like nothing better, when their backs are to the wall economically or politically to divert attention away from the mistakes of their own making, and to focus instead on the problem of the others. And history also tells us when Government think “the others” are a problem they also find solutions, sometimes final ones.

And for those of you that think this doesn’t affect me. I’m not an asylum seeker or  a refugee. Well lucky you, but you might be old, vulnerable, poor, unemployed,  weak, sick or have people in your life that are. History tells us when governments want to demonise the other they start with the people that look different, sound different, dress different; then they move onto those that pass amongst us as one of us. A voice from the crematorium years of the last century should not be ignored

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemoller

Maggie Lennon is founder and Director of the Bridges Programmes working to promote the social and economic integration and inclusion of asylum seekers refuges and migrants in Scotland

 

Aylan Kurdi’s very public death must not be forgotten when the social media feeds move on

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in Migration, Politics

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Seven years ago in July, and before social media was quite at the heights we “enjoy” today, several broadsheets in the UK ran the story of two teenage Roma girls washed up drowned on an Italian beach. The story wasn’t so much that once again people from a disadvantaged and persecuted race had been left to rot like so much rubbish; but that the bodies lay decomposing and lightly covered in full view of Italian families enjoying a family day out.

The picture (opposite) wasn’t widely romareproduced, whether out of a sense of decency or a collective editorial view  that the “victims” didn’t merit it, wasn’t clear; but the story had some coverage, but very little reaction outside of Italy. And nothing like the global outrage to the mass reproduction of the images of Aylan Kurdi. The girls it appears had been selling trinkets on the beach when they decided to enter the water, though it was unsure if either knew how to swim.

Seven years on and the public reaction to human tragedy of the loss of a young life in appalling circumstances on a beach in Turkey, that most of us couldn’t contemplate, has quite rightly caused horror and outrage; and appears to be having an impact on our political leaders in the UK, though by how much and with what strings attached, is way too early to say. The image of a child lying dead face down in the surf on a beach that many other 3 year olds were playing on, only weeks before, is imbued with such tragic irony that few could remain unmoved. For those of us with children, no matter how grown, it sears into us the primal fear of having a child die before us. And for people everywhere it’s the image that is the antithesis of hope, a life ended too young.

But Aylan isn’t the only child to die too young this week. In fact he wasn’t the only child to die on that beach. Aylan’s brother Galip perished too along with his mother and nine others including other kids. The thousands of children who have died this week across the globe, through hunger, poverty, disease, war and crime; won’t be the last. We know this and we know we know this, but in our busy lives it’s as if we need to know this, at a distance, removed from view, and not over the cornflakes thank you very much. With every capsized boat during this summer’s sailing season, with every group of a hundred or so refugees dying on our beaches, still the politicians turned a blind eye, still the right wing press perpetrated the myths, still most people turned away uncomfortable, uneasy maybe, but still unsure about “these” people.

Then came the picture. I said to someone yesterday that I thought the image was exploitative. The look of distaste on the face of this person who has, to be frank, come late to the party of humanity and concern was almost comic. How could I, of all people, say that? Didn’t I understand what was happening? Look at the impact it has had. And it is precisely because of the impact it has had that I stand by my claim. Exploitative in a general sense as no family member back home, I believe was consulted or asked about a having this image splashed across the world and exploitative because it was published with only one aim in mind, precisely to get the reaction it did. But saying that it is exploitative is not to condemn its use or to criticise the decision firstly to take it or publish it. Far from it. Though I would prefer that reason and argument and evidence of the needs of refugees and migrants were what shaped policy, I’ll take what I can get. The fact that our and other European governments, are immune to reason, argument and evidence is shocking and ultimately very worrying. So if it takes the image of a dead child to galvanise public opinion and make a difference then the use of it is justified but it doesn’t change the fact that it was a calculated decision. For those of us who believe that generally the end justifies the means, remember that that’s fine just so long as the ends are the ones we want. And remember of something is exploitative someone else is being exploited.

The fact that the media shapes public opinion rather than reflect it is something I have written and spoken about many many times. The fact that it is often in cahoots with government is something responsible citizens not only have to wake up to but to challenge at every turn. Yet on the issues of refugees and migrants fleeing impossible conditions for the last 15-20 years, both the media and many responsible citizens have not only been silent on, but deliberately misleading. The case of the Roma girls 7 years ago (not markedly different) proves that.

So let’s be thankful for the light that has been shone on the misery of our fellow human beings but let’s be wary too. The people in the boats, behind the razor wire in Hungary, in the camps in Calais and those yet to flee Syria or where ever will still be there when the papers carrying the pictures have  been thrown out, and when the social media chatter has slipped down our page feeds. One they are settled in communities they will continue to need support. They might become your neighbours, your workmates, use your health services, attend your schools, hell they might even get a job you apply for. And when that happens or when people think that will happen or the media tell us it will happen, how supportive will you be then?

I’m pleased and relived that hundreds of thousands of people are discussing the issues that every day as Director of the Bridges Programmes me and my team deal with. Let’s hope it makes our job of promoting economic and social inclusion and integration of asylum seekers and refugees in Scotland easier. Let’s hope more doors are open, less hostility is evident. Send your dry goods, warm clothes, toys, but also send you hope, compassion and humanity. But can I also ask you when the pastas been cooked the clothes distributed that you keep your hope, compassion and humanity flowing. That’s the only way to make sure politicians listen, to make sure that things will change. That is the proper legacy for the Kurdi brothers.

Maggie Lennon is director of the Bridges Programmes, based in Glasgow working with asylum seekers refugees and migrants http://www.bridgesprogrammes.org.uk

What price humanity? Ours is more fragile than you think

14 Friday Aug 2015

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Fleeing in fear of your life, fleeing towards a better life is NOT a criminal act

Tomorrow it will be seventy years since the end of the Second World War with the surrender of Japan. Not only is that important because it saw the end of the largest loss of life both military and civilian in a conflict, whose combatants encircled the globe; But because it was a war that witnessed the obscenity of the attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima; And a war that let powerful men play powerful games and start the cold war and the even larger loss of life in the pogroms throughout the former Eastern Bloc.

But it is important because it was a war that showed that it was actually possible to wipe out almost an entire race of people without much resistance if the fear of the other could be stoked and fanned. And partly because of that, it is also important for giving birth to the United Nations Convention on Refugees and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet 70 years on this same Europe at the epicentre of the conflagration, is facing the biggest migrant crisis in our combined and separate historie

And I use migrant crisis – not as our politicians do as an inconvenient chorus to their seemingly unstoppable capitalist neo-liberal drum beating dream. I use it in the sense that it is meant, a time of intense difficulty or danger, for the people going through it not for us standing at the sidelines.

From the Med crossings to the build up of human misery in Calais, to the unrelenting onslaught on people’s human rights during the journey and once they have arrived. The crisis of the migrants is also the crisis of our own humanity. For when we can speak of desperate people in terms of insects, when we can erode basic human rights just to get at them, then our humanity in Europe, that so many died for 70-76 years ago is in peril itself.

Yet this link between the founding of mechanisms to protect people fleeing from the aftermaths of conflict and what we are facing in the summer of 2015 is hardly being made. But it was today in a packed seminar in Glasgow arranged by Caledonian University and the Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migrant Network (GRAMNET) called Responding the Migration.

No talk of dogs and how high the fence in this room, except to condemn them both. The discussions were led by one of the most compassionate voices I have heard in a long time, Lilja Gretarsdottir from The Council Of Europe. Not unaware of the mountain to climb to change government and public opinion, her message was clear, it’s down to us as citizens of Europe and citizens of our own states, to challenge the seemingly pervasive myth that we are under attack from the barbarians at the gate.

And while that might not seem like much of way to initiate change, it is, in all honesty, I believe all we have. When I speak about refugees and migrants, which I do a lot, I always start a speech by asking who in the room does not wish for a better life, an improvement in salary or prospects, or place to live, or more money in their pockets, better holidays, happy less stressed lives, children who thrive? It’s an odd group that doesn’t universally admit to that. So why is it that so many believe the better life is fine for us but not for them, the others? While we in Europe benefit from democratic (mostly) governments, an abundance of resources we control, or can afford to acquire (legally or otherwise) and a level of unprecedented social mobility in Europe since 1945; we forget with dangerous carelessness that the world is ill divided and most of the world’s peoples do not share in that good fortune. And so for them those goals are harder to reach.

Never mind that actions by European and American government since 1945 (and before in the case of the Middle East) have combined to ensure that countries are invaded, bled of resources, left with corrupt governments propped up in the name of trade “national interests” and that once stable states – and especially those not to our taste – have become failed states, with all the human misery that entails.

We cannot deny what is happening in North Africa, Syria, Iran and still in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know deep in our hearts that if it were us on those boats and in those lorries, that we would break laws, defy dogs, smash fences and risk our lives to save ourselves and our children. Because the need to survive is what makes us human. And we forget at our peril that every outstretched arm through a roll of razor wire, that every scream of a hungry child belongs to a member of our human race. Whether refugee or economic migrant whose own personal economy has been destroyed by things over which they have no control, fleeing in fear of your life, fleeing towards a better life is NOT a criminal act. Punishing sanctioning, vilifying detaining those who do however, is criminal.

In breach of so many parts of the European Human Rights Act, our governments’ joint and several actions trample their – and ultimately your – human rights in the dust. It is time to realise and acknowledge that the dialogue of then and us is empty. That how we in Europe and other developed countries deal with this and other migrant crisis, speaks directly to our own humanity and asks questions, serious questions, about the basic principles by which we live and bring up future generations.

Calais and the deaths in the Med are holding up a mirror to us and the image reflected back is ugly.

The detention of hundreds of thousands in conditions which would breach EU law on the keeping of animals goes unquestioned. The question from government isn’t how do we make conditions behind the fences better, but how high should we build them? It doesn’t really matter where this is happening but 146 people being detained for over 4 weeks in a cage 112 square metres, men and women and children mixed in with no access to clean clothing is medieval.

That 70% of global migrant deaths are happening in the Mediterranean, some within sight of beeches where as Europeans we go to distress, goes unremarked. The suspension of the Mare Nostrum project was on the dubious logic that if you rescued them, more would come. Yet there has been no let up in the numbers coming, so knowing that and doing nothing is tantamount to murder, surely?

By depriving people of their rights when they do make land, giving them leave to remain yet not leave to work what are we driving people to?

A woman at the seminar, a migrant herself asked quite simply why Migrants were now regarded by the UK government as the third biggest problem behind the economy and the NHS. And why such a ridiculous scapegoating was being promoted by the media.

That at least is an easier question to answer. One of the greatest myths of all is that governments respond to public opinion and the media merely reflects that; as if Pubic Opinion drops from the heavens above. The truth is far simpler and all the more chilling. Governments faced with the inability or the unwillingness to solve problems, create instead a problem that doesn’t exist and then helpfully suggest a solution – maybe the final one- and the media merely manipulates public opinion into that acceptance. Those would be the listening governments we are so sick of listening to. Scapegoats! Yet Europe from Nazi Germany to Stalinist Europe at least knows what scapegoating is, and what results, doesn’t it? Yet we seem not to have learned. The very reason so many people flee is that they are the scapegoats of their own governments and now become that when they arrive looking for safety. The irony is strong enough for even the most irony averse American to get.

But you, reading this are one of the public, you have an opinion. The wide outrage to Cameron’s inhuman labelling of the migrants in Calais, from many sources, was a cause of some hope. And if you don’t know how to answer those who are unmoved by the plight of wretched people in desperate straits. Try this. Tell them, “they are people, humans just like you, with children just like you, with bodies that break and spirits that can be crushed, just like you, and one day it just might BE you that becomes the other. the outsider”.

Compassion, mercy, they cost nothing yet are the richest gifts we can give our fellow men and women and the only way of showing that we too, are human.

Maggie Lennon is the Director of the Bridges Programmes an organisation in Glasgow that promotes the social economic integration and inclusion of Refugees Asylum seekers and Migrants.

Whether we sing in tune or not, after the Revolution, Scottish Labour are facing the music.

31 Friday Oct 2014

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There is an iconic scene in David Lean’s  Dr Zhivago, where the rich and privileged are dining in glittering splendour  and the huddled masses marching for bread, stop their march and sing outside.  In an effort to remove the tension  Viktor Komarovsky  quips “No doubt they’ll sing in tune AFTER the revolution” to laughter and a standing ovation.  Thus demonstrating how unassailable the privileged in Czarist Russia believed their positions to be, and how small a threat revolution posed, but ultimately how out of touch their instincts were.

Later the same scene is described from the point of view of the hungry, Pasha Antipov claims “There’ll be no more peaceful demonstrations. There were women and children, Lara, and they rode them down. Starving women asking for bread. And up on Tamskaya Avenue the pigs were eating and drinking and dancing.”

On October 30th in Glasgow, Gordon Street became Tamskaya Avenue for a few hours, as hundreds of protesters, many homeless, many representing the 34 food banks in Glasgow, demonstrated outside the Grand Central Hotel where Scottish Labour held their £100 a plate dinner, and  eye witness reports claim that diners looked down on the crowd while sipping their champagne. Many of the diners, perhaps their consciences pricked, or vaguely aware of the grotesque juxtapositions of the positions of those inside to those outside, or for fear of reprisals eschewed the main entrance opting instead for the back door. Jim Murphy, Westminster’s leader in waiting for Scotland, brazened it out at the front, dropping off a food parcel at the food bank collection as he went in, though whether it matched the value of his dinner in contents hasn’t been revealed

And all of this carried on against a back drop of resignations within the party leadership in Scotland and a poll suggesting Labour could lose 36 seats in Scotland, all but destroying Miliband’s  chance of a majority in Westminster in a tight General Election race. The placards said it all “Labour the Judas Party, Enjoy Your Last Supper”. All the while Miliband, with  Komarovsky like dismissal of the reality facing him, deludingly claimed “We will do what the SNP has not done and will never do: deliver an agenda that meets the needs of working people in Scotland.” All of this, despite the reality of Labour voters in their heartlands deserted them over independence and the SNP now being the second largest political party,  by membership, in the UK  from a population smaller (as were always being told) that the city state of London

Labour talk of the “revolution” that Scotland demand, of the extraordinary events which unfolded in this small country, of the profound difference the debate has and will generate, while the media claim that  post “indy”  UK politics will never be the same, that moulds have been broken. No-one living here could disagree. Meanwhile those that campaigned for independence continue to grow in numbers  and say there is no going back, and a further momentous political ground shift may occur at the General Election if even half of the expected number of SNP seats are won. Yet Miliband continues to think that an £8 an hour minimum wage, a 50p tax rise for those earning over £150,000 and a promise to tax bankers bonuses are so revolutionary and are so breaking of the mould that they will turn the tide up here back in their favour. Where as in fact they are the very least a so called just society could demand. The only thing the Johann Lamont has said in recent weeks that was accurate and heartfelt, is that Labour have no idea what’s happening in Scotland to their vote.

Those of us who cut our teeth on Labour politics could never really understand why Scottish Labour didn’t back independence fully, assuring them the real possibility of lasting power up here, against the real chance of never having power in the UK again.

Within the Scottish parliamentary Labour Party there were several shaking heads too. The ONLY way Labour in Scotland will ever be the force it once was will be to cut ties with London and be what they say on the tin:  a Labour Party for Scotland. The only trouble is while they hum and haw, and dine and sup, about this and that, they will, on looking over their shoulders, find that others have taken up their mantle of social justice and equality, others are wearing their clothes and others are singing their songs.

We might sing in tune after the Revolution Mr Miliband, but even if we do not; Scottish Labour and Labour UK are sure set to face the music.

And so it begins…..Entente Cordiale at the expense of the vulnerable

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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And so it begins

On 27th October, an event in Glasgow celebrated and rewarded the successes of asylum seekers and refugees in their efforts to integrate- and for those who are allowed to work- to recognise their contribution to their new society. The employers who play such a part in this were also rewarded and applauded by the 120 or so people who attended. In my speech I robustly and passionately defended the record of my company The Bridges Programmes in this work but warned the audience that with just over 6 months to go to the General Election that we knew that race, and in particular, immigration would be one of the main battlegrounds for votes, and with the main UK parties outdoing each other with tough talk, that while we may not know who is going to win the election we know that migrants both forced and voluntary will be the losers.

Expect lazy journalism, I warned, where the difference between those that flea from persecution are confused with, and lumped in with, those that come voluntary looking for a better life. Because wanting a better life is NOT the sole desire of people in the wealthy West.

It started the weekend before with the Defence Minister Fallon’s ill-chosen use of words talking about being swamped and under siege by foreigners. While he apologised later the damage is done the papers and media reported and revelled in it. Like the barrister who in court makes outrageous statements which a judge tells a jury to ignore, these things cannot be unsaid and Fallon and the government know it.

But even Nigel Farage couldn’t have predicted the gift that would be given to the anti-migrant cohorts with the intervention of the centre right self-serving mayor of Calais Madame Bouchart who crossed the channel – in more comfort we have to assume that many migrants- to lecture the UK Parliament no less on its benefits and asylum system. Bit of a turn up that, given that we certainly don’t want Johnny Foreigner to import their brand of trade unionism and activism and we don’t want to know that they think about the UKs involvement in illegal foreign wars, but suddenly it’s fine to have their views on our asylum system and its effect on asylum seekers based in France.

But before we begin to count the holes in Bouchart’s arguments let’s just for the sake of clarity understand what we are talking about.
Migrants as opposed to asylum seeks from outside the EU are not entitled to benefits until they can turn their entry visa into indefinite leave to remain which can be between 5-10 years. Migrants from outside the EU get entry visas to support a work permit for a job they are coming to, for study with restrictions on that too regarding benefits and ability to work, or as family members who have no recourse to public funds.

Migrants from inside the EU have to wait 3 months to be eligible for benefits but those are not the people the Mayor was talking about.
Migrants without entry visas are illegal and not entitled to benefits at all.

So the only people waiting to cross ,by her own admission, and evidence are people coming to claim asylum and just to be clear about this there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker and asylum seekers are not migrants.

Got that?

Good. Then let’s get on with the blog.

The simplistic message from Madame Le Mayor was this: stop being so bloody generous to asylum seekers in the UK and they will stop coming to France and especially my back yard of Calais trying to gain admittance to “Eldarado” as she ironically referred to it. The UK government and the right wing press rubbed their little white hands in glee and will clearly stop at nothing, even colluding with the French, to promote the misinformation and vilification to little Englanders.

Now I don’t expect a reasoned and accurate review of the facts in the UK media anytime soon but here’s a small attempt to set the record straight.

Calais
Mary Tudor on losing England’s last foothold in France said when she died Calais would be carved on her heart. David Cameron might be thinking the same thing. The shortest crossing to the UK it’s been a place where migrants and asylum seekers have gathered for decades. In 2002 the official refugee camp run by the French and the Red Cross at Sangatte was closed down by Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Minister for the Interior, as much at the demands of the UK government as the French. In 2009 when President he went further demanded the destruction of the informal camps that sprung up when the formal camp was taken down. He called for the destruction of the Jungle as he saw it. When President Hollande got his hands on the Elysee Palace however, in a humanitarian gesture he said that a series of small camps with basic shelter and cooking facilities should be re-established in the North of France to support migrants living there, run by officially recognised NGOs to provide a vestige of humanitarian support, and more crucially to countermand the rise of violence, mafia like activities and people trafficking which had increased in the feral atmosphere of the informal and irregular camps. These small camps have now been set up around , though not in, Calais and surprise surprise but Mayor Bouchart has gone on the record to say she SUPPORTS this humanitarian move if it means that these people are no longer living in poor conditions or in her back yard in the suburbs of Calais. She is concerned she says not so much by the plight of the tragic individuals living there as the very same rise in violence, mafia like activities and people trafficking that she has seen develop in the last ten years. So perhaps this is the real reason Madame Le Mayor is exercised. With a view to her own political future and re-election she wants to be seeing tough on asylum seekers and in an example of NIMBYism that is quite breath-taking is blaming an asylum sysstem in another member state for being too generous. That’s a bit like blaming the rise of heart failure and alcohol abuse amongst the middle classes on a surfeit of Camembert and French wine. Ridiculous.
Eldorado it’s not
So let us examine this fabled generosity of the UK system. Asylum seekers are housed in community housing in a number of local authorities across Britain through a contract between private housing companies and the UK government to utilise poor quality housing stock that otherwise could not be rented. As they are living in the community they are in receipt of a single person’s weekly allowance of £36 from which they must feed and clothe themselves and use public transport. It equates to about 50% of income support levels and has remained static for over 5 years. They must live where they are put and report weekly (sometime more regularly) to a reporting centre to prove they are still around. For some in Glasgow the cost of that reporting trip is equivalent to a day’s worth of their allowance. They have limited access to health care, full access to schools for their children and no right to work. Initial decisions (80% are no) are normally granted within 6 months so they have no right to appeal to be given the right to work under EU rules that say if there is no initial decision within 12 months limited access to work can be applied for. Over half of the right to remain granted are as a result of appeal proving that the initial decision system is not robust. In England asylum seekers can access no support, help or training that might promote their speedy integration and entry into the labour market should they being granted Leave to Remain. In Scotland integration is deemed to be from day one so access to wider integration services is allowed including English lessons. So it’s not living in a cardboard box on the French north coast but it’s not exactly easy street.
The French system
Now compare this to the French system. Asylum seekers are housed in reception centres and fully provided with food, clothing, heating and other essential services such as French lessons and integration programmes, so there is no need to grant most of them additional funds though asylum seekers with families are able to access other French social service payments. They have access to Universal Health Care and education for their children. So its arguable that though asylum seekers in France like many other parts of Europe have restrictions on their movements thy are not materially worse off than those in the UK.

French politicians accuse their system of sending out a message that THEY are the soft touch, not the UK. So suddenly the UK system doesn’t look quite so much like Candy Mountain. So maybe the further motivation for Bouchart’s claims is less to do with people striving to get to the UK and more to do with what is widely recognised as a French asylum system in in crisis, at least that’s what a French Parliamentary report in April of this year thinks.  So is the rise of Mme Bouchart a cynical attempt by the French trying to blame someone else for their own mess, sacre bleue!!

The report highlighted long-drawn-out and ineffective procedures and spending way over budget. But, although the number of applicants has almost doubled in the last four years, it is still far from the record numbers reached in 1989 and 2003. And there is NO EVIDENCE what so ever that this doubling of numbers in the last 4 years has meant the numbers congregating at Calais have increased to the same extent. If anything the numbers have decreased, and interestingly the numbers of asylum seekers coming to the UK hasn’t doubled n the last 4 years but has been cut m by more than half!
And here’s another interesting fact about the inefficiency and failure of the French system: costs have soared 70 per cent since 2008 while the number of demands has risen just 55 per cent, so somebody somewhere is being a tad careless with the Euros yet French MPs say that relevant agencies are “chronically underfunded”. Interesting, non?
The report also targets long-drawn-out administrative procedures (sometimes 2 years before an initial decision against the UK’s 6 months, that frequently do not result in failed applicants leaving the country so it can’t be refused asylum seekers “dying” to get to the UK then as according to their own figures France says refused asylum seekers are staying put.

So maybe the reason for all the asylum seekers in Calais is less to do with the race for London and more to do are because of a poorly run French system but a system attractive enough and “generous enough” to mean people are quite happy to be in France. Oh and all those asylum seekers coming to France might just a have a little to do with that country’s colonial past and the fact they are happily bombing civilians in Syrian and Iraq.
Not convinced?
OK if you are still not convinced let’s look at what the people involved are saying about it all themselves. No-one yet interviewed by the BBC has admitted it’s the generosity of £36 a week that’s leading them to risk their lives. What they DO say is they believe that the UK respects and understands Human Right (ironically just as Cameron says we’ll ditch the Human Rights Act) and that British people are fair and kind. They also talk about wanting to work, and no they don’t mean on the grey market. I’ve never met a migrant or asylum seeker yet who gets up in the morning and says yippee I can’t wait to be hired by a gang master today and exploited and work for £1 an hour.
In 2002 the UK government commissioned a huge piece of research through University of Cardiff as to why people come to the UK as migrants and asylum seekers, with the aim of proving it’s all to do with the benefits. Unsurprisingly this research got buried because the results were NOT what was expected. Turns out it’s not the benefit system people are after (most didn’t know anything about the system before they got here) it’s because of our colonial past, the belief that UK does stand up for the underdog, that English is spoken, that we have a multi-cultural and diverse society and more recently, as we have sought to bring down dictators people suffering at the hands of these dictators expect, not unnaturally to my mind, the UK might help them get their lives back.

And every time since 2001 people have tried to prove that migrants and asylum seekers are here for what they can get rather than what they can contribute, the benefit system is never mentioned. And remember from way back up at the top of this blog no migrant as opposed to an asylum seekers has automatic right to benefits when they arrive. But Maybe Madame Bouchart knows something that we don’t.
When is a UK asylum seeker not a UK asylum seeker?
There is another element to this whole debacle that Bouchart surely is aware of but chooses to ignore. Thanks to an odd bit of EU legislation called Dublin II it states that if t can be proved that asylum seekers have entered the EU from any other member state other than that in which they have claimed asylum they must be sent back to that original state. So Mme Bouchart knows that even if lots of asylum seekers make it to the UK there is a very strong chance they will be sent back to France and that France will be required to process them, so the outcome might be that migrants/asylum seekers that the French system deem to be irregular, and not under their jurisdiction, might in fact be ruled to be, thus putting more strain on the system. Could this be a case of passing the buck?

It seems clear to me that while undoubtedly people are trying to cross form France to the UK it’s not in the numbers she claims and it’s not for the reasons she claims. If not a single person crossed to the UK in the next 12 months it would not educe the numbers moving to France though it might mean they don’t make a mess of her little part of France and she might stand a chance of being re-elected.

Colluding with this shameful piece of self-promotion by a minor French official by the UK government, to further add fuel to an incendiary issue, is stooping pretty lo even for them.
And let’s not forget while we get caught up in the finer points of asylum law and variations thereof, what we are dealing with groups of highly vulnerable people who have left their homelands under duress, whether war, famine, persecution or good old fashioned poverty and who are looking for a better safer life. Both countries are signatories to the UN Convention on Refugees and so have to step up to the plate. Playing political football with claimants is despicable, and diminishes both countries, especially when we have to accept that actions by both France and Britain since the second world war, in various parts of the world , has added to the sum total of displaced peoples.

The fact remains that both France and the UK play politics with all sorts of vulnerable people but this is the first time it’s been cross border! Perhaps we are seeing the start of a new Entente Cordiale.

And in a final and ironic twist there is an early day motion gathering momentum in the UK Parliament for the daily rate for UK asylum seekers to raise from the paltry sum of £5.23 a day to the princely sum of £7.17 a day. 80 MPs have signed it so far. Madame Bouchart and her new “compines” in the UK government must be hoping this doesn’t happen otherwise clearly France will empty and maybe not just of asylum seekers. But in the meantime the scaremongering can really get under way with her false claim screamed from headlines that migrants are
dying to get to Britain for our Benefits.
And so it begins