Suella Braverman, who quite extraordinarily is our Home Secretary, spoke at the Conservative Party conference yesterday. She said that it was her dream to see a plane with refugees on board leave the UK for Rwanda.
She said that she wanted this to happen by Christmas, although she doubted that it would.
She made these comments with a big smile on her face: the gloating of a bully was very obviously on display.
But bullying is an insufficient description of this behaviour. She wants to deliberately use the power of the state to victimise and than physically punish a group - those who arrive without prior permission in the UK- to advance her political goals.
This is illegal. Anyone has the legal right to arrive in the UK without permission and apply for asylum. We lost the legal right to return them to an EU country from which they might have come with Brexit. They always have the right to apply for asylum now.
This is racist. The policy is specifically targeted on these grounds.
And it is through its identification of the ‘unrewarding other' quite specifically fascist.
The UK media will describe politicians, like Le Pen in France, as ‘far-right'. But Braverman is at least as far-right. She is openly fascist.
The Tories loved her comments, of course. Which says all that needs to be known about them.
It is time that we recognised that we have fascists in government, and Braverman is one of them. Then we can address and talk about the issue. The media can no longer pretend this is not the case and be credible. Reality, integrity and honesty demands that they describe these Tories as what they are. And that is not just far-right, although they are that. They should be described as the fascists they really are.
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Although I agree, the media is a practitioner of fascism itself too as we have been as society sometimes even unconsciously from the mid-50’s when the U.S. decided on behalf the world that the Russian communists were the big threat and not fascism. Big mistake.
I think that the media in this country calls fascism ‘identity politics’ – and let’s face it, identity is a tool for fascists – always has been. How are you going to learn who to hate, otherwise?
The Braverman’s of this world however would not be able to exist if it was not for the latent fascists in society as highlighted by Hannah Adrendt.
And, if that were not bad enough, fascists can be manufactured into a brutalised society that is more likely to lean towards extreme policies as a result – whether on the Gaza Strip or Dover – the effect of hardening people is the same.
It is the way we do politics that creates the monsters in our midst.
It’s shameful.
How long before they start to talk about a “final solution” to deal with immigrants ?
The leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Douglas Ross two weeks ago demanded that Nicola Sturgeon pass on the abolition of the 45% tax rate to Scottish taxpayers. On BBC Radio Scotland GMS this morning he now says the Government’s U-turn on the high tax rate was the right policy, but dismisses the obvious criticism of his own support for the policy, by claiming the 45% rate applies to only a small number of Scots. Somehow his hapless blunder doesn’t count. Truss and Kwarteng might be wrong, but Douglas Ross is right, and was right, whatever he said then, or says now.
This beautifully illustrates the political fantasy world Scottish Conservative Unioniist politicians are able to inhabit, in spite of their latent, comic absurdity. This fantasy can only survive at all because the predominant media, including the BBC provides them with underlying, heavy pro-Union ballast. The BBC, however is now obliged to adopt a more critical approach to the Scottish Conservatives, so turbulent and volatile the politics has become. After all, everyone has to find a survival route out of current, complacent conventions as the crisis they find themselves in deepens, and the future is uncertain.
At the same time, throughout the chaos of this twelve year Conservative Government, four Prime Ministers, contradictory policies, incompetence and political and moral failure; the Scottish Conservatives have not led any of the policy U-turns, or done anything to protect Scotland from bad policies, amateurishly executed. The Scottish Conservatives simply follow whatever lead the Westminster Conservative Government hand them; however catastrophic for Scots, however often it changes, whatever the contradictions, no matter the consequences.
The Scottish Conservatives are Unionists. Nothing else. The Union is first and last; whatever the Union offers, whatever the consequences, the desolation, no matter how bad outcomes for the Scottish people, their hopes, aspirations or expectations. Scottish Conservative politics has no other content, and no interest in the effects of Unionist policy: beyond the empty idea of The Union itself.
John, your last paragraph sums up the Scottish Tories and their vacillating leader perfectly. In this respect they are the near-identical twins of the DUP in N Ireland: the same blind, unquestioning allegiance to the Union and a willingness to support almost all of the policies of the Westminster Tories regardless of the political, economic and social damage these polices cause across their devolved electorates. Membership of both the Scottish Tories and the DUP is also on the decline, reducing their electoral prospects, then throw in some old-fashioned, blind religious prejudice and you have a near perfect match.
I heard on the radio she had a standing ovation.
Truss’s government was put there by the Conservative party members.
Sadly it’s not even limited to the Tories. Lisa Nandy’s view that Spain’s behaviour in regard to Catalonia is the way to ‘beat Scottish independence’ and her idea that the SNP should be banned from UK TV programmes is a horrifying, but drew little comment – if any at all – in the media.
I suspect my support for an independent Scotland (but not the SNP) is why Labour will not talk to me
There are two ways I wish to respond to the Home Secretary.
First, I do not believe for one moment the purpose of life is ‘work’ (defined by a commercial entrepreurial society), or that it is appropriate for Government to determine the rules. Baldly stated, it is manifestly absurd. If Suella Braverman actually knew anything about the real business and employment world (rather than political theory and prejudice), she would understand that effective. efficient, profitable business depends above all on the level of positive commitment of the people working in the enterprise. Show me a business driven by compulsion, and I will show you a failing business. The real problem of Britain is not compulsion, but adverse demographics. The biggest problem? Brexit.
Second. total benefits paid in the UK are £212Bn. (2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/283954/benefit-expenditure-in-the-uk/)
Netting off overpayments of benefits and underpayments, net overpayments are circa £6Bn (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2021-to-2022-estimates/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-ending-fye-2022#total-estimates-of-fraud-and-error-across-all-benefit-expenditure).
This amounts to just under 3% of total cost. In the application of very large operations, a 3% failure rate would not be considered unsatisfactory (think of total population vaccine uptake through the lethal Covid outbreak, where almost 200,000 people died; for the UK, 75.5% of population fully vaccinated). The issue then becomes the trade off between the cost of scrutiny, versus the cost of error; at some point the cost of scrutiny will become greater than the cost of error. I do not claim that point has been reached, but I will say Conservative Governments rarely resource its audit arms adequately, or do the job in both a humane and effective manner.
These matters require to be approached by careful, detailed understanding of the complexities (I do not claim to have done more than scratch the surface here), and the marshalling of resources.
Beware political soundbites peddled by glib snakeoil salesmen, or saleswomen.
Thanks
In the last edition of Prof. Paul Spicker’s book ‘How Social Security Works’ that I have (2011), Chapter 24 pp.241-247, Spicker’s opinion is that real fraud is over-exaggerated and even influences how the system is designed. Both official error and claimant error result in over payments and under payments which when balanced out look more reasonable – in fact using 2008/09 figures Spicker suggests that more is UNDERPAID due to error than over claimed.
Spicker also details how benefit fraud is used politically. It sounds typically fascist to me – at one time it was claimed that up to 8% of benefits were being fraudulently claimed (1998) but this was revised down to 2% which was still seen as dubious.
But Spicker’s verdict was that it was the complexity of the system that was/is the problem – means testing, arcane rules, individualisation, job-seeking ‘nudging’ etc., and felt that the best answer was just to make the system simpler and more generic and less conditional than it is now – to go back to its aim and priority of improving personal security at times of need, rather than as a control mechanism for expenditure and managerialism. His postscript (pp. 273-275) is well worth a read and is relevant even now in my opinion (in a chat with him, he said one should always buy the most up to date book on these subject matters as they ‘rust very quickly’ (go out of date).
Writing in 2011 he was very sceptical about universal credit – and he was not wrong!!
It is clear that Braverman, holding an already high pisition as Home secretary want to outd do Pritis Patels’s “legacy” of intensifying anti migrant sentiment. Playing the racist card to furthr her own career.
It’s a tried and tested route to the top. Most successfully used by Theresa May.
Remember back to her time as Home Secretary under Cameron and the pressure she came under to curb immigration but as her government’s austerity measures depleted UK border control she had the task of visiting UK airports and other points of entry in a beleaguered attempt to ‘see what’s going on and get to the bottom of things’.
It lead to the most extraordinary transformation I have ever seen in a politician. Between her advancement to PM after the Brexit vote and the Tory party conference that Autumn (six years ago) gone was the sit-on-the fence Europhile and born was the immigrant hating politician of the ‘go home vans’. That party conference speech in which she essentially declared war on the EU ( and would within 6 months would unnecessarily trigger Article 50)
was a complete turn around and was one of the most hate filled events ever broadcast on UK public tv.