The Guardian has a report on last night's debate on the Rwanda Bill 8n the House of Lords.
Amongst the many excellent contributions made they note this:
In a highly praised speech, the crossbench constitutional expert Lord Hennessy said the bill would diminish the UK's standing in the world. “By rushing this emergency legislation through parliament with the intention of getting the deportation flights to Kigali under way by late spring, the government has already secured for itself a special place in British political history,” he said.
“The day may not be far off when the Rwanda bill, having cleared all of its parliamentary stages, will be forwarded from the Cabinet Office to Buckingham Palace to receive Royal Assent.
“In the few minutes it takes to pass down the Mall and across the tip of St James's Park and its return journey to Whitehall, our country will change, for the government will have removed us from the list of rule-of-law nations.”
So, there was not much at stake then.
But as they then note:
A Liberal Democrat-sponsored motion designed to block the bill was rejected in the Lords on Monday night, by 206 votes to 84, a majority of 122.
So why wasn't this travesty of a Bill that guts our constitution blocked? Because our human-rights lawyer led Labour Party is so small minded it could not vote for a Liberal Democrat motion.
I despair.
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Apologies for an ‘off thread’ comment. Michael Gove appeared at the Covid Enquiry in Edinburgh. The most skilful of political manipulators, Gove cleverly praised the professionalism of the Scottish Government Ministers for endeavouring to protect the public during the pandemic; but suggested nevertheless they were tempted by political opportunism, without offering specific evidence; it was innuendo. He presented himself as an impartial observer (this is Gove we are listening to), and the British government as the final arbiter on what is or is not political in Britain.
It all fell apart, however when the Enquiry advocate brought forward the the smoking gun; Gove’s own Cabinet paper presented just before a Johnson visit to a Scotland sceptical of the British government’s professionalism during the pndemic (from the evidence in Gove’s own paper); in which he blatantly recommends that the British government politicise its response in Scotland.
David Henderson’s report for BBC Scotland News yestrday evening (BBC One, Reporting Scotland) presented nothing more than a summary of Gove’s innuendo. The smoking gun? It is somewhere on an editing room floor in Pacific Quay. I would normally at least contemplate a complaint, after such an incident in a public body; but this is BBC Scotland. It is a complete waste of time.
I do wonder if the BBC really does think we are all completely stupid ……
John, I agree entirely with your analysis of the Gove appearance (‘performance’ might be more accurate) at the Covid Enquiry in Scotland. It was a masterclass in diversion, innuendo, omission and unsupported assertions and only to be expected from such an oleaginous politician.
However, what really appalled me, but again was no surprise, was the reaction of the MSM, whose reports were built round Gove’s statements with virtually no coverage of the Advocate’s questioning. Headlines focused on the supposed matter of the Scottish Gov’t and First Minister deliberately setting out to undermine the decisions and policies of the UK Gov’t in the early days of Covid. The extent of the distortion by both Gove and his faithful acolytes in the MSM was forensically exposed in a lengthy, but well-argued article at:
The Covid Inquiry evidence unreported by BBC Scotland – can ‘bias by omission’ get any worse? – Talking-up Scotland (talkingupscotlandtwo.com)
John asked: “I do wonder if the BBC really does think we are all completely stupid ……” I think we all know the answer to that, but suspect they don’t care in the slightest; they’re more concerned about their future and the extent to which they must align with UK Gov’t policy at all costs to survive.
Here is the Vote.
The individuals are named. Among the few Labour peers who voted with the Lib Dems, was Lord Sikka.
https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/lords/division/3079
Indeed
I wonder how long it will be before he loses the Whip? Not that it will matter much.
Yesterday we handed over a number of new houses to the Council landlord. I was told that a family of Albanians had been to look at the scheme and might probably accept one of them.
One of the proposed Tory party policies for the next election I’ve seen is the one about Council housing being prioritised to ‘English’ people.
It is a sad fact of life that such ideas would not come into being if politicians did not think that they could exploit them or sentiment around them. Are these sentiments created by politicians or do they occur naturally? Hannah Arendt felt that such sentiment or attitudes exist in any society and I agree.
I think it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.
What Labour has done to me is obvious – they are listening to what I call euphemistically the ‘will(y) of the people’ – literally the dickheads in our society who think like this and are happy to be exploited by it.
Labour are so scared of losing that they see their job as accepting us as we are. Nor do they seem to have any ideas or even intent to make us or our country any better so they will rule us as we are – or try to. The ‘Blue Labour’ project of Glasman has won.
It seems to be that there will little or no relief from the paucity of ideas that helps the ‘will(y) of the people’ to dominate our politics, and therefore our society.
It is all rather sad. Even in defeat, the Tories seem to have won – as I’ve said before.
And then you look over the sea to Gaza, and see Israeli Jews as I did last night on C4 news talking about exporting Palestinians out of Palestine for their benefit, just like the Nazi’s who wanted to move all Jews out of Europe to Madagascar in the 30s and 40s before deciding to exterminate them at Wannsee (and they did – you can visit Wannsee and see for yourself).
And the backdrop is a Gaza that I think it fair to say which looks rather like the Warsaw Ghetto after Nazi reprisals to the Jewish uprising recorded in history. The Nazis used to try to claim the moral high ground on this. They talked crap about race and blood and other rubbish most anthropologists would rightly dismiss but they also talked about security and living space. Some Israeli Jews have learnt some bad things or they just don’t know their history that well. Or maybe they do?
I mean you have to do a double take and ask yourself WTF is going on? We seem to have lost all leave of our senses
The art to managing a society to keep our more dogmatic tendencies at bay seems to have been lost. That art includes controlling inequality and economic uncertainty for all social groups. It was after all economic chaos that gave birth to Nazism and it s horrors. This is because we have accepted the false credo of Neo-liberalism. We have normalised some of us having not just more and too much, but also a lot less – whether it is the neauveau riche of the Thatcher era or the grinding poverty of Gaza in comparison to Israel and the smash and grab of Palestinian land that can only be compared to what the U.S did to the native Indians. We’ve seen it all before – Nazis included.
The passing of the Rwanda bill through the Lords in this country is a signifier of a fundamental change whether Lord Hennessy likes it or not.
The Dickheads are in charge it seems everywhere, and the ‘will(y) of the people’ is rampant. This blog has frequently mentioned humanity being in a dark place. Well it’s darker than dark I can tell you.
We seem to be living in period of Babel-ism where we just seem unable to talk to each other anymore as we grab what we can or revert to the worst possible solution to everything. I mean – look Northern Ireland? Is this how the world ends? It’s like being in a political centrifuge.
Thanks
Hennesey always has a good turn of phrase – a journalist really – but called a historian.
He has always depended on keeping in favour with the establishment to get priviledged access to documents etc – and has generally lauded our ‘good chaps’ elected dicatorship system of government.
The fact that he is now prepared to put his head over the parapet is probably because every legal authority has damned this bill as so obviously against international law, agreements, and even our own so called constitution.
The passing of the Ruanda Bills is certainly a day of shame for this country. Completely contrary to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. We have become in the eyes of the civilized world a pariah state heading quickly toward current Hungarian-style fascism.
It has not passed as yet