Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Looks like it's already starting. Reports that Johnson is facing a second fine for the aide leaving do event.

Looking forward to Tory MPs and cabinet minister threading their tweets on why the PM has accepted the fine and apologise, so it's now time to deliver on his agenda "(2/?)"

[Sheilbh]

Jesus Christ - I'm willing to bet this doesn't happen because of the courts and in public opinion ends up in what Duncan Robinson's called "unpopulism" where the government keeps launching policies that the British public do not like, but they think they do because of a vocal Twitter bubble/commentariat - but what a fucking abyss our asylum policies are.

Sam Freedman
@Samfr
Papers have been briefed that Govt will announce tomorrow that asylum seekers will be flown to centres in Rwanda for the claims to be assessed. Sending people fleeing from persecution to a dictatorship that repeatedly violates human rights might just be a new low.
It's been briefed repeatedly before (and other countries too like Ghana and Albania who rubbished the stories). But this seems to be a formal announcement. And Rwanda have previously signed a deal to do this with Denmark.
That bleeding heart liberal David Davis tried to amend the Nationality and Borders Bill to stop the Govt offshoring due it being v expensive, not stopping dangerous journeys, +, in the case of Australia, the only country to do it at scale, numerous physical/sexual abuse scandals
Here's more info on the disastrous Australian offshoring programme.  https://ein.org.uk/news/academic-report-finds-australian-model-offshore-processing-asylum-seekers-which-uk-proposes
What the fuck happens if they're seeking asylum from Rwanda?! This is so sick.
My hope here is that the deal is largely a stunt and a combo of the civil service and the courts render it moot. But that this is the Govt's idea of a good stunt just shows what a bunch of moral degenerates they are.

Edit: And David Davis has also pointed out that the funding of this is a fraction of what would be necessary - based on the Australian precedent - for it to cover the number of people waiting for their claims to be processed. It is, apparently, enough to process 20 applications. So probably just a distraction from other difficulties (won't work) and, as ever, no funding behind it.

[Josquius]

Setting up a processing centre in Rwanda (a semi free country with a fair bit of political repression) could be a good idea to save lives. Let sub saharan Africans head there rather than all the way to the UK.
But to send people who have reached the UK there to be processed is just idiotic.

I recall seeing the numbers from australia and it costs many millions per claimant.

As to Johnson... It'll be OK to call him a serial law breaker in the commons now right.

[The Larch]

Jesus Christ - I'm willing to bet this doesn't happen because of the courts and in public opinion ends up in what Duncan Robinson's called "unpopulism" where the government keeps launching policies that the British public do not like, but they think they do because of a vocal Twitter bubble/commentariat - but what a fucking abyss our asylum policies are.

Priti Patel is in Uganda at the moment, so I think it can be taken for granted that it's going ahead. Official announcement is tomorrow apparently.

Now we know what Brexiteers truly meant by an Australian immigration system, having darkies stockpiled somewhere really far away.

[Sheilbh]

Priti Patel is in Uganda at the moment, so I think it can be taken for granted that it's going ahead. Official announcement is tomorrow apparently.

There's a vast difference - especially with this government - between something being announced the week the Prime Minister gets fined by the police and something going ahead. The government does not have a great record on delivery on things that it announces.

For a start the law that enables this hasn't been passed yet - I think it's still in the House of Lords. I'm not sure it would survive challenge in the courts who have blocked deportations of people to Rwanda because of human rights concerns. And cost estimates based on the Australian experience is that it would cost billions, so far £120 million has been allocated for it which is, based on Australian figures, enough for under 100 people.

Now we know what Brexiteers truly meant by an Australian immigration system, having darkies stockpiled somewhere really far away.

Yeah the two parts of the Australian system the right love is the points model (which we've had for a long time, but has been simplified recently - and is broadly popular/seen as a fair model) and off-shore processing of "boat people". All of the issues from Nauru should be warnings for us. Plus it's practically difficult to do from Europe - other European countries have discussed this, including with Rwanda, and it doesn't work.

My read on this is that a lot of is to distract from Johnson, but I also think Johnson wants to make immigration more of an issue before the local elections (possibly ideally by having lefties like me moaning). The government are also ducking the point about how many asylum seekers who cross the Channel it plans to send to Rwanda - it looks like the overall is about 500 (which is very expensive for not very much gain). I think it's all something that happens when you're basically a cynical void which is, I think, what Johnson is.

Their bet I think is that it polarises opinion - there's overall sympathy with migrants crossing the Channel, but now basically 1/3 of people want a really tough approach (and 1/3 who are angered by that) and my suspicion is Johnson is trying to shore up that 1/3 of people ahead of the local elections:


The issue with that is that Priti Patel is one of the most unpopular ministers since polls began. She has a lower rating than Gavin Williamson did as Education Secretary which is almost an achievement. I think this chart, sadly, is the key - Johnson thinks (probably rightly) he needs more people talking about immigration to do well in the local (and future elections). So he's announcing a policy a few weeks away from an election and just after he's been fined that doesn't have any legal basis yet, is unlikely to survive contact with reality, doesn't have sufficient funding, is practically likely to impact at most about 500 people because he wants the optics of being "tough" and a fight with wet lefties:


My suspicion is that it won't work on the cynical political side and may never actually happen on the policy side - if it does it also won't work. But it would almost certainly have the same sort of abuse scandals that have happened in Australia and ruin the lives of a number of individuals who get sent. As Freedman puts it, moral degenerates

[Sheilbh]

This is more media criticism than anything else - but Mail Online and the Daily Mail have separate editors, separate newsrooms, a very fractious relationship and often take different editorial lines (because they have different readerships). But the difference this morning is vast.

Daily Mail:


Mail Online:

[Sheilbh]

Now we know what Brexiteers truly meant by an Australian immigration system, having darkies stockpiled somewhere really far away.

Incidentally just to return to the Brexit point on this. There's a book that's just come out investigating the camps run by Libyan militias who are paid by the EU to stop people getting to the Med - and which currently house tens of thousands of African migrants. If that's what Brexiteers wanted - as is so often the case - they didn't need to leave.

It's the crueltly of our system that it is replicating the controls and abuses that already exist on the Med and means it happens twice to migrants.

I was speaking about this with a friend who works in immigration policy (in Europe) and it struck me as weirdly and counter-intuitively an argument for Brexit. Because in Europe right now there are camps in Libya and Turkey where migrants are kept to avoid them getting to Europe, there are repeated, credible allegations of pushback, there's an investment in drones to "monitor" migrant crossings which practically means there's no ship to save people in trouble. Those policies exist in one form or another in the UK or are talked about by Patel as her plans. They're monstrous. But I know how they change in the UK - there's an election, the Tories lose, Patel's a backbencher. I don't know how those policies would change in the EU because it's not purely the Commission, it's the Council it's all governments and it feels a little like one of those policy areas where shared responsibility basically means no-one is responsible or accountable. It's an area where I think the European Parliament needs more power - and I think generally they are on the right side on these issues.

[ulmont]

This is more media criticism than anything else - but Mail Online and the Daily Mail have separate editors, separate newsrooms, a very fractious relationship and often take different editorial lines (because they have different readerships). But the difference this morning is vast.

Daily Mail:

No fish on the first date?  So meat or vegetarian only, wtf?

[HVC]

Guess fish breath is a no go on the first make out session

[ulmont]

"FUCK, REFUGEES, WHAT DO WE DO?"

"Could we, just, like, ship them all to Africa?"

Britain announced a deal with Rwanda on Thursday to send some asylum-seekers thousands of miles to the East African country — a plan it said would stop people-smugglers sending desperate migrants on treacherous journeys across the English Channel.
...
The plan would see some people who arrive in Britain as stowaways on trucks or in small boats picked up by the U.K. government and flown 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to Rwanda, apparently for good.

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/15/1093006759/uk-plan-to-fly-asylum-seekers-to-rwanda-draws-outrage

[Tamas]

When we judge this it should be remembered that the real agenda behind this is to replace, in public discourse, the socially unacceptable despicableness of Johnson and the government (parting doing lockdown) with socially acceptable/encouraged despicableness of Johnson and the government (picking on foreign vulnerable people)

[Sheilbh]

Just read some elite level NIMBYism in the FT. Community groups in Suffolk are going for judicial review against off-shore wind projects that have been approved. Their objection is in particular to the on-shore infrastructure (like the substation) that's required to link the off-shore wind farm to the grid.

Apparently there's already been successful judicial reviews of similar decisions in Norfolk and no doubt it'll now spread up and down the North Sea coast.

Energy is one of those areas where the British public want to keep the lights on and they want to meet net zero targets - and they will relentlessly vote and litigate against every policy option that would make achieving those goals possible Same dynamic is at play with, say, social care and elsewhere

I know Kwarteng did an interview where he said it's one of the good things about the British system that you can't just impose infrastructure on people - but I think he's wrong. It's a very bad thing and we should start imposiing infrastructure

[The Larch]

Is the coastline in the affected areas that crowded that you can't build a simple electrical substation without triggering a NIMBY battle?

[Sheilbh]

This campaign and judicial review is being run by a campaign in a village of about 350 people

So maybe - but there'll always be a village on the coast or near enough (they're actually about 5-10 miles inland). And I think it only takes one person with standing to do it.

[The Larch]

This campaign and judicial review is being run by a campaign in a village of about 350 people

So maybe - but there'll always be a village on the coast or near enough (they're actually about 5-10 miles inland). And I think it only takes one person with standing to do it.

If you can't rein in that kind of things then you're truly stuffed. Is there no British equivalent to eminent domain?