Politics: not making a difference

By Richard North - November 16, 2023

As the news emerged of the Supreme Court decision yesterday, you could almost hear the cry of exasperation spread throughout the land as the judges, in their wisdom, sought to protect innocent asylum seekers being returned to whence they came.

Even though it was largely expected that the Court would declare that sending illegal immigrants to Rwanda was unlawful, this represented yet another misstep of a government that seems to tread from cowpat to cowpat and revel in the experience.

Suella Braverman got her alibi in quick, using social media to tell us that the judgement had come as no surprise. It had been predicted by a number of people close to the process, she wrote. Given the current state of the law, she added, there is no reason to criticise the judges. Instead, the government must introduce emergency legislation.

In her view, there must be a new Bill to block off ECHR, HRA, and other routes of legal challenge. This, she asserted, will give Parliament a clear choice: control illegal migration or explain to the British people why they should accept ever greater numbers of illegal arrivals settling here.

Those who, like me, she went on to say, who believe that effective immigration control is vital, must understand that they cannot have their cake and eat it. There is no chance, she declared, of curbing illegal migration within the current legal framework. We must legislate or admit defeat.

This sterling message was somewhat undermined by what was styled as an “anonymous comment” in the Telegraph headed: “My Home Office colleagues are secretly overjoyed by Rwanda ruling”, with the sub-heading: “Every day, I witness the tenet of civil service impartiality go ignored as any suggestion migration be reduced is met with horror”.

Despite our change in boss, this civil servant (as we were to find out) said, when it comes to controlling Britain’s borders nothing will change. “I know this”, he she or it said, “because I have worked for some time as a civil servant on immigration policy, and – in my experience – no priority is further from the Home Office in 2023 than stopping the boats or cutting net migration”.

Taking some of the gilt off the new-found right-wing heroine, this not so civil of servants spilled the beans with some verve, telling us that, for all her strident bearing, Suella was cringingly apologetic in speeches to Home Office staff.

Instead of instilling much needed discipline, we learn, she would tell us what a great job we were doing, not that this got her any kind of loyalty. “She was mocked and insulted by London-based staff furious at the refusal to extend safe routes to an ever-growing number of countries”.

As the papers are keen to tell us every time they quote an IDF spokesman (but less often when citing Hamas sources – or the BBC, which amounts to the same thing), this information has not been independently verified, but there can’t be anyone on the planet who really believes that the Home Office is intent on stopping – or even reducing – immigration.

Our anonymous source is keen to expand on his thesis, though, and the more I read, the more I get the feeling of the ring of truth. It is worth quoting at some length.

The practice in the Home Office, we are told, is to accept the bien pensant view that immigration cannot and should not be controlled, overruling the instructions of ministers and thereby their democratic mandates.

Many “colleagues” see their role as being part of the resistance to what they see as a radical Right-wing Government determined to ignore the rules to punish innocent migrants. This culture of defiance, we are told, is so widespread that any suggestion of border controls is sneered at or ignored.

This gets worse, as we are then told that there is widespread understanding that our asylum rules are open to abuse. Any Border Force officer or civil servant who works on asylum policy will tell you this openly. Yet any suggestion that asylum rules be tightened, or asylum seekers be refused is rejected out of hand as cold-hearted evil.

Says our source, “If I were to walk into a meeting and suggest reducing migration or ask how we could immediately deport small boat arrivals or foreign criminals, my colleagues might think to ring the many mental health services we are provided to check in on my sanity”.

Even the most moderate attempts to do anything about migration are met internally as either unreasonable or not legally possible, with discussion being stopped dead by allusion to “international law”. We are then told:

Instead of dealing with the national crises facing Britain, including record legal and illegal migration, endless time is wasted. Senior staff hold events on Black History Month, Windrush and microaggressions. We are told to attend quarterly “away days” (held online usually, most of us are in the office just one day a week) where we are given prizes and are told by senior civil servants just how wrong any political or press criticism of our work is. In meetings nominally discussing policy, we are forced to listen to HR directors give lectures on diversity and hand out awards about inclusivity. We are patronised and treated like children.

The mood is of self-congratulation and there is a refusal to engage let alone learn from the criticism the department receives, unless of course it comes from the Left or from an incredibly expensive commission finding that we are institutionally racist. There is no self-reflection on the fact we have completely failed to fulfil our democratic duty to reduce migration.

Depressingly, the piece concludes with the observation: “For my colleagues, I suspect James Cleverly’s ascension is merely an opportunity to run rings around an inexperienced minister in a new department. And for Britain, our borders will remain uncontrolled”.

With no need for further elaboration, this brings us to Sebastian Milbank, also in the Telegraph, so he must be very important, despite my never having heard of him. His headline more or less tells the tale, declaring: “The Conservative Party has betrayed its voters for the last time”, adding: “It deserves to be wiped out”.

I doubt very much whether this is the last time we are betrayed by the Tories – they still have a year left in office. But, if the words of our anonymous source have any merit, we are being betrayed on an industrial scale by Home Office civil servants,

Still, Mr Milbank does his best to liven up our day, telling us that the Conservative Party, once famed for a streak of ruthlessness that helped it meet the needs of the political moment, “is now little more than a donkey sanctuary for especially unimpressive animals”.

This, if anything though, is a gross libel on donkeys and his nostrum is hardly helpful. Milbank wants a general election to put the Party out of its misery. It might end its misery, but with Labour as a replacement, it won’t end ours. Like Starmer is going to tame the civil service?

Someone who quite obviously doesn’t want a general election (yet) is prime minister (for not very long) Sunak, and any account of yesterday would not be complete without his input. Like his former home secretary, he too resorted to social media, after a lame press conference, where he said much the same thing only at more length.

Following today’s ruling, he said, “I’m taking the extraordinary step of introducing emergency legislation to confirm Rwanda is safe. I will not allow a foreign court, like the European Court of Human Rights, to block these flights”, adding: “We need to end the merry-go-round”.

Sunak told us that his government had been “working on a new international treaty with Rwanda” which would be ratified “without delay”. We will, he said, “provide a guarantee in law that those who are relocated from the UK to Rwanda will be protected against removal from Rwanda. I will not take the easy way out”.

Said this doleful man, “I am prepared to change our laws and revisit those international relationships to remove the obstacles in our way. If the ECHR chooses to intervene against Parliament, I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to get flights off”.

We have heard this so many times that even he has realised that, as he then wrote, “The British people expect the boats to stop”. Typically, he then offered a dose of spin, claiming that: “whatever our critics might say, we’re making progress”.

Small boat crossings to the UK, he said, were down by a third, and 20,000 illegal migrants had been returned this year. Furthermore, 50 hotels housing illegal migrants had been closed.

Reading the government’s own statistics, though, we find that in the year ending June 2023, there were 52,530 irregular migrants detected entering the UK, up 17 percent from the year ending June 2022. And 20,000 returns is fewer than the numbers for each of the years 2013-16.

It hardly needed Sunak to conclude by telling us: “We need to stop the boats” – we’ve been telling him that for long enough. The Rwanda policy, he says, is an essential part of the deterrent, adding that the Supreme Court has confirmed that removing asylum seekers to a third safe country is lawful. People need to know, he says, that if you come here illegally, you will not get to stay.

What people do know, however, is that there are far too many immigrants, legal and illegal, and far too many are taking the piss. It had to be a coincidence that yesterday, of all days, we learnt of Saheed Azeez, who fled his native Nigeria and gained asylum after claiming he was gay and was being persecuted by Boko Haram terrorists.

After being granted asylum, Azeez settled in Wigan, Greater Manchester, where he fathered three children by three different women, while masterminding a £220,000 parcel fraud scam, before being arrested and brought to court.

There are any number of such tales, far too many to be dismissed as outliers, especially as we look to the carnage of knife crime and disorder on our streets. Yet I doubt whether anyone walked away from yesterday believing that Sunak was going to make any difference.

Until we see scum like this returned to from whence they came, immigration in general will remain a festering sore and an issue of increasing political importance.