Javid migrates to the right
GORDON Brown had been prime minister for just over a month in 2007 when he rushed back from holiday to chair a Whitehall meeting on a new outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
The PM was accused of over-reacting but didn’t look as foolish as he did that October when he called off the snap election he was due to win.
Fast forward to this week and Home Secretary Sajid Javid high-tailed it back from his South African safari to take charge of a migrant “invasion” along Britain’s channel coast.
It is quite amazing that 239 people have arrived by this treacherous route in small boats since November. You’d have to be desperate to chance it, and rich, as smugglers charge thousands of pounds for the crossing.
A couple of dozen boatpeople on the Kent coast hardly rates as a national crisis but Javid declared the situation a “major incident”, presumably on the grounds that the more xenophobic elements of the press already had.
He summoned the National Crime Agency, the Border Force and senior Whitehall officials to an emergency meeting.
Like Brown before him, Javid wanted to be seen to demonstrate command of his relatively new brief but the signal, and the motivation many suspect, was more sinister.
Javid was brought in, remember, to clear up the Windrush deportation scandal caused by Theresa May, which Amber Rudd had to carry the can for.
The son of a migrant, Javid had the right credentials to end the shameful episode that caught long-resident Commonwealth citizens in the net of the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policy towards migrants.
But the harsh political truth is that in the Conservative party, an Asian politician seeking advancement will always have to prove their nationalistic credentials to a party faithful who are in the main old, white and reactionary.
Taking a tough line on migrants, in fact any immigration, is a necessary requirement for Javid’s ambitions. It’s often assumed that the descendants on migrants will take a liberal line towards others following their family journey. The opposite is often true – look at Donald Trump.
To give Javid the benefit of the doubt, he tried to walk both sides of the street by insisting in the Daily Telegraph that there are no easy answers to the migrant phenomenon. True, but attempting a more nuanced message after sending out a dog whistle about immigration simply doesn’t cut it.
Two of the UK’s Border Force cutters have been brought back from the Mediterranean not to save lives but to save face. The Royal Navy are to reinforce the image of a Brexit Britain pulling up the drawbridge to the world.
Javid is a fascinating politician, not fully formed for party leadership, a selfmade millionaire who made it to the top with a great backstory. But often a detail reveals everything you want to know about a whole character.
He claims to reread each year a passage from a novel by Ayn Rand, whose loopy, far-right philosophy was the inspiration for Reaganomics, to remind him of the free market individualism that really does claim there is no such thing as society.
Competing with Javid to replace Theresa May as leader is Jeremy Hunt.
Not only did the Foreign Secretary climb over Javid to be involved in the immigration debate, he upped the ante.
Hunt declared he wanted to turn Britain into a Singapore-style economy with low-tax, low regulation for international corporations.
Brave politician to tell the truth about what Brexit actually means – low wages, no work rights, fewer holidays.
This is not the milk and honey Brexit anyone was promised but it is the cruel consequence of the rightward, xenophobic Brexit parade to lead the country after Theresa May.
MANY’S the Ne’erday in the past I have been convinced I had woken on the dark side of the moon but I never saw anyone else there. Now the Chinese have landed a robotic lunar rover there in a giant leap for human space exploration and giving us our first new word of the New Year. The Chinese expect to have taikonauts, their version of astronauts, on the moon surface by 2030. You might wake up hungover but at least you won’t be alone.