Risks to the reputation of ‘global Britain’

As Putin’s tanks rolled towards Kyiv and missiles killed dozens, the government was faced with a dilemma: how many refugees should we take?

It’s a decision made all the more tricky by years of hostility towards those seeking a life in our country.

A strategy literally called the ‘hostile environment’ saw dozens of Windrush generation arrivals wrongly deported having come to build Britain. Nigel Farage’s Breaking Point poster whipped up hatred by showing hundreds queuing at a border. Failures to get a grip on the Channel crossing crisis contributed to a situation where more than 30 men, women and children were able to drown at sea. All this and more meant inmigration minister Kevin Foster didn’t see any issue responding to concerns we weren’t doing enough to help Ukrainians fleeing war by saying they could apply to be seasonal workers. Cartoonist Morten Morland then depicted Priti Patel shouting “I said can you pick fruit?!” at a woman and child in a burning tower block - rarely must his satire have butted against reality so frequently. Patel’s refusal to offer a full visa waiver is based on “security concerns”. But would such concerns, if legitimate, have existed if she’d set up proper asylum routes years ago? People yell about helping our own first, but there’s no reason why we can’t do both, while repeated cries that “we’re full” are not grounded in reality.

There’s tens of thousands of empty homes across the country and one million job vacancies. Oh, and hundreds of empty multimillion pound mansions owned by oligarchs for tax reasons.

The long term impact of viewing every arrival with suspicion rather than compassion won’t just harm those coming but erode ‘global Britain’s’ reputation and standing worldwide.

‘Repeated cries that “we’re full” are not grounded in reality... there’s tens of thousands of empty homes and one million job vacancies’