Nobody chooses to get in a boat
Deliberate cruelty shouldn’t be a feature of government policy, but sadly it’s exactly what we have come to expect from the UK’s Tory government.
That’s especially true in their treatment of the world’s most vulnerable people.
They’ve deliberately created a ‘hostile environment’ (their own words) for people who come to the UK seeking asylum, often after having taken great personal risk due to the lack of safe routes.
Nobody chooses to get in a crowded boat on a journey that has proved a graveyard for many others without feeling truly desperate.
Just last year, Boris Johnson announced plans – still subject to legal challenge – to detain refugees and asylum seekers who cross the Channel and deport them to Rwanda.
And now Rishi Sunak is promising to “stop the boats” with no regard for international law and the basic right to seek asylum, or for Britain’s role in securing that right in the first place.
Their “stop the boats” slogan tells us a lot.
It deliberately avoids the most important part of this story, the refugees themselves.
It wants us to forget these vulnerable human beings.
I’ve had the privilege to meet many refugees both here and in the southern Mediterranean.
You and I have much more in common with them than we do with the Eton-educated toffs who run Britain.
That common humanity is deliberately eroded by dehumanising language like ‘swarm’ and ‘invasion’ and by referring to people as ‘illegals’ when the truth is that a) noone is inherently illegal and b) claiming asylum is entirely legal.
That is precisely what Gary Lineker was drawing our attention to.
Once we stop seeing vulnerable people as human beings we’re on a very slippery slope.
It’s shameful that the BBC caved to Tory pressure to punish him for defending basic decency.
Our enemies don’t arrive here on dinghies, they come by private jet.
The people putting intolerable pressure on public services aren’t the miniscule number of asylum seekers, nor the much larger number of migrants who are actually crucial to the functioning of our NHS, social care and so many services.
Those truly causing the damage are the ultra-rich tax avoiders with their bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, starving our public services of billions of pounds that they should be paying.
I’m proud to live in a country which is overwhelmingly welcoming.
I’m proud that people in Scotland have repeatedly come to the defence of their neighbours when the racist UK Home Office has arrived to deport them.
I’m proud of the country we want to be, and I look forward to the day where powers over immigration and asylum sit here with us, rather than at Westminster.
RENFREWSHIRE CITIZENS ADVICE BUREAU ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS