I watched news reports on the insanity that has gripped the Tories last night.
Two vice chairs have resigned as has the odd junior government appointee.
Scores of Tory rebels poured into lobbies to vote against their own government, all to no avail, as Labour abstained.
And why did they do this? Their goal is to send 200 people they claim to be illegal migrants (when there is no such thing) to Rwanda, which will make precisely no difference at all to the actual migration problem the UK faces or to the odds of successfully making it to the UK amongst those who are sufficiently desperate to seek to do so.
I wonder whether so much political insanity has ever been expended on an idea so stupid, and am sure that someone will come up with something equivalent. I cannot, however, think what it might be in my lifetime. This event has the capacity to make Brexit look relatively sensible.
It is as if the Tiry party has lost all touch with reality.
Or, they have given up on governing and want to play silly games instead.
Then, maybe, it's just that they all know that they will be looking for jobs with then extreme right-wing think tanks quite soon as the electorate expels them from the Commons, and so they are lining up their credentials as purveyors of political madness.
Suppose, for a moment, that this government had put one per cent of the effort it has put into Rwanda into tackling child poverty, pensioner poverty, poverty amongst those with disabilities, and poverty created by DWP sanctions. Think how much good that might do.
Or suppose they actually cared about the NHS or social care. Or, to be very middle-class, dentistry.
Perhaps they could also have got worried about education or the threat to universities from falling numbers of overseas students that also threatens the UK's balance of payments.
But no, they decided that sending people to Rwanda was what mattered most of all.
That is the insanity of the modern Tory party. There is no other appropriate word to describe it.
I have no love for Labour's Tory Continuity Party (TCP), but it is better than this.
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Phil Burton-Cartledge in his excellent blog (do check it out and also check out his book: ‘The Party’s Over’) explains that stoking anti immigration prejudices have always been a central hallmark of the Tory party. It is a party always looking to glue segments of the electorate together to vote for them who would not normally vote for them (as a party for the privileged rich, that wouldn’t have enough mass appeal and traction on its own to win elections), and so being anti immigration – and scapegoating them – has been a ‘winner’ for them in the past and is their number one tune in their playbook now.
Check Phil’s piece here:
https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-tory-politics-of-immigration.html
Thanks
I will take a look
The irony is, the Conservative Party is an anti-immigration Party, that connives at undermining its stated policy. It has no intention of reducing immigration. The ‘Money’, the ‘City’ would never allow that. Keep the white vans going. The Conservative do the opposite of what they claim; they increase immigration, and do not deliberately decrease it, whether “illegal” (whatever that is supposed to mean – substantively absolutely nothing), or not. You would have to look at the actual immigration figures to see that the Conservatives have created a fake story; the ‘boats’ are small change, a deliberate political distraction; they make little difference to the real issue.
The Conservatives need immigration from wherever they can find any. Forget the PhD nonsense. The Conservatives need to ensure there are sufficient low-paid workers for cleaning, hospitality and a host of jobs so-called ‘British’ people do not intend to do etc., (and have never done, since the canals, railways and mines came to rely on the Irish ‘navigators’ or ‘colliers’ two hundred years ago). The British economy has always used immigration. Before immigration, in an age of expanding Empire slavery was a motor of the imperial economy.
London would collapse without the cheap labour resource it relies on. Britain has a demographic problem with the birth rate, and in Scotland it is a post-Brexit crisis (fertility rate 1.31 per woman, with a replacement rate of 2.1; you do the maths). The old Conservative, anti-immigration voter did not meet the replacement rate in their own day, and the position has deteriorated with their own children; the fertility rate is falling and below replacement. The downward trajectory is long established (notably for advanced economies, including China). The Conservative Party position is incoherent, and purely and cynically exploitative of a lie; but its crackpot policy peddling has been so successful, it is now wrecking both the Party and British politics.
The Conservative Party and its anti-immigration voters are completely mad; technically – crackers. The elderly voters single excuse is that they will not be around to pay the price for their utter stupidity; that will be paid by their grandchildren and great grandchildren.
And inflation is up 0.1% to 4.0%. Jeremy Hunt MP, the Chancellor is still taking credit for being in office because it has fallen from its peak (which was inevitable, because it was driven by exceptional international price increases/events, and supply consequences). He is taking credit for just being in office, while the events happened around them. They are taking credit for issuing press releases full of guff. Si idiotic, he takes credit for the fact that it is lower than the OBR forecast. The OBR forecast! OBR forecasts are almost invariably wrong. Hunt is just reminding us that he keeps selling us the wisdom of an organisation with a poor forecasting record (like all economic forecasting, unreliable, unscientific).
Meanwhile, as per two headlines in the Guardian’s ‘From the UK’ section:
1) Environment Agency: deteriorating flood defences blamed on budget shortfalls.
2) Sewage pollution: UK water industry’s ‘urgent’ plan delayed by four months.
1) More than 200,000 existing homes at risk of flooding, and no checks on flood defence provisions for new houses being built on floodplains by the Environment Agency.
2) Sewage plans from water companies were expected by August 2023 – but some companies haven’t submitted their full plans yet, and there’s no intention of publishing those plans until the government is ready to do so (which may take more than the 4 months mentioned in the headline).
But of course, the flood waters have receded and are no longer providing ‘screamer’ headlines in the press, while the sewage has been cleaned out of most affected houses by the owners, so no point in worrying about any further spills. Especially when you can concentrate on immigration and plans to send desperate people to Rwanda, to please the small proportion of the population who fear, rather than welcome, those desperate people.
‘Lower than vermin,’ my father’s old friend Aneurin Bevan, used to call the Tory party – and still as true today as when Nye said it!
I always gloss Nye Bevan’s “lower than vermin” comment with the observation that vermin play a vital role in an ecosystem, by disposing of carrion that might otherwise lead to disease, as well, of course, as keeping a control on population growth – vital for maintaining the load-bearing capacity of a territory.
(You only have to consider the dramatic transformation of Yellowstone Park effected by the reintroduction of wolves, classed as vermin by e.g. farmers.
See a short version here https://youtube.com/watch?v=fTPt70vA39k&si=4ZNucDSMu7I4pzV2.
Here’s a longer version, if yoy have time https://youtube.com/watch?v=aZsteDMUsU4&si=uB-IsdwMn6wjmOtq)
By contrast, the Tories have at best been a major societal irritant, at worst deeply destructive, even corrosive (that’s why I now call the Conservatives “the Destructive Party” = the Destructives), with almost zero claim to societal utility and justification.
Their time should be well and truly over. Their only chance of survival is for the to reach back behind the Thatcher assault on society, and relearn the values of One Nation Conservatism, which DID play a useful role in the post-WW2 years, all because they took on board Bevan’s criticism and analysis.
It could be a morality tale – yes migration and keeping foreigners and undesireables out – has worked for the Tories over the decades .
They always seemed to admit the Rwanda deportation scheme was only a warning signal – they said to would-be immigrants, but really to their dog- whistle base . It’s almost funny that even the dog-whistle-susceptible have lost patience and can’t be bothered with it anymore.
It is very telling that they are prepared to self destruct in order to keep their immigration fetish alive – and as Richard says far more than trying to be seen to tackle cost of living NHS poverty etc etc.
Given that YouGov poll, who commissioned it, the resignations and the farce of the Rwanda policy, I think what we are seeing is the Tory Party at war with itself. It is probably about who leads the party next, post election, after the defeat of Sunak. The right wing are gathering. While the result of the election may well lead to heavy losses and defeat for many leading names in the party, it looks like some on the right, Braverman, Truss, Cleverly, Bedenoch, could survive it all. One of them will most likely be the next leader and take the party further to the right. They then mold the party in their image going forward.
Are there any moderate Conservatives left? Is that a contradiction in terms?
The NatC’s on the march. Surprised they haven’t called themselves The Blue Shirts yet.
Totally agree with the post – like all extremists they have literally undermined themselves to such a degree that now – perhaps once and for all – we can see that all that obviously matters for them is being in power, not what they can do with it for the British people.
We must never forget moments like this – the Tory party having a private spat on the public purse. That’s all this. Disgraceful.
Apologies for going totally off topic, but with UK’s MSM preoccupied with the Rwanda Bill shenanigans, few of them could find the space or interest to cover Neale Hanvey’s Scotland (Self-Determination) Bill which was given a reading late on the evening of 15th January. As far as I can see, outside of Scotland, only the independent (their lower case not mine) gave it any space. See here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mps-scottish-parliament-scotland-commons-house-of-commons-b2479490.html
Basically it sought to transfer the power to hold a referendum on Scotland’s Independence from Westminster to Holyrood with the caveat that such a referendum can only be held 7 years minimum after any previous referendum on the matter and only if a majority of voters are in favour of independence. In other words a similar power to that in N Ireland where the right to hold referenda is enshrined in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. Predictably the Bill was defeated by 228 to 48 votes, the majority being provided by Tories, Labour and Lib Dem, so yet another curt dismissal of Scotland’s aspirations by London-based parties. Alarm bells are ringing even louder now for Scotland’s Parliament and its democracy. The Tories are already reversing democratically-sound legislation passed by Holyrood and Starmer’s Labour, despite being the architects of devolution in the Blair era, will have no truck with the notion of Scottish Independence or co-operation with the pro-independence parties at Holyrood. Alarm bells are also sounding for UK democracy on multiple topics, but the arrogant belief that England, through its London-based parties, can arrogate to itself the right to deny the wishes of another nation with its own unique history (longer than that of England), laws, languages and cultures, while exploiting its natural resources is naked colonisation and therefore in breach of United Nations principles.
Agreed Ken
I read the Scottish media
You are right: this was ignored in England
On one of the rare occasions that BBC Scotland Radio News, GMS turns to the Scottish Conservatives to explain the mess the Conservative Government is making; this time Rwanda; and the whole Scottish Conservative Party, including the Secretary of State, Alister Jack (remember him?) have gone into hiding. Disappeared. Vanished. No aggression. No whining. No finger-pointing. No humbug. No nothing. BBC Scotland have had to turn to Dominic Grieve; former Conservative MP, former Attorney General, former Conservative for a comment; but he has a conscience. The Scottish Conservatives are now showing their true colours; political cowardice in the face of government. You really would not wish to leave that lot in charge of anything.