Meanwhile, Sunday Times so could be nonsense, but this would be awkward;
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics is due to publish data for last month and is expected to confirm a sharp drop in inflation as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI). Estimates suggest the rate of inflation for July will fall from 7.9 per cent to 7 per cent.
However, The Sunday Times has seen internal government analysis suggesting that Treasury officials are braced for it to increase again this month.
There are sharp increases in fuel from last July that will drop out of the index and should put strong downward pressure on the number but there is no doubt that wage increases in particular are now driving inflation at pretty much 7% and that will offset things, as will persistent food price increases. Locally, diesel has also gone up 4-5p a litre in the last month. My guess is that inflation will fall but once again prove stickier than the government would hope.
Yes the July inflation figure - due to be published Wed - should fall, probably to around 7%.
I think the article is referring to concerns over the AUGUST figure which will be published 20 Sept. I can well see an increase there, fuel is going up again and we are still seeing food price increases etc. There is a MPC meeting the following day so maybe another, slightly larger than expected, base rate increase, to 5.75%?
Meanwhile, Sunday Times so could be nonsense, but this would be awkward;
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics is due to publish data for last month and is expected to confirm a sharp drop in inflation as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI). Estimates suggest the rate of inflation for July will fall from 7.9 per cent to 7 per cent.
However, The Sunday Times has seen internal government analysis suggesting that Treasury officials are braced for it to increase again this month.
The key to successful politics is choosing battles that you can win. This is not one. As African and middle eastern refugees pour into Europe, despite the best efforts of the EU to sell them to Libyan slavers, many are going to feel deeply unwelcome and dream of making it to a more tolerant country like the UK. Only a naïve fool would believe that the French in particular are going to be serious about stopping them going somewhere, anywhere else.
In short, we cannot control the supply and we have a legal structure which makes it impossible to reduce the draw despite the government's absurd efforts. We have as much chance of stopping refugees as we do illegal drugs, a war that we lost a long, long time ago.
However mental Braverman comes across to normal people there is obviously a purpose to her being in office. And I think there are two prongs: 1. The right have weaponised genuine ignorance and congenital stupidity and tried to make people nasty because they hope there are votes to be won. That we now have a chunk of people who desperately want to drown as many people as possible is as much of a tragedy as the sinking boats are 2. The new Tories like Lee Anderson who have been schooled that being Tory is to be ignorant stupid and cold.
Braverman can't stop the boats - no little Englander brexiteer can. Because we either cooperative with other countries or we get swamped. So whilst firing her and replacing her with someone who isn't a sociopath would be good for politics, it won't save the coming electoral demolition.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
We should allow/encourage refugees to work. We need them in the NHS, care homes, hospitality, building infrastructure. They are mainly healthy and educated. To keep them unemployed at great public expense with penalties on employers is frankly ridiculous.
We need to totally reverse current Home Office policy, clear out HO seniors, and face down the inevitable backlash from the extreme right wingers.
Allowing Nigel Farage to dictate Tory policy is never a smart idea. Allowing him to do it in an area as complex and difficult to solve as illegal immigration and asylum is political madness. But there is no off ramp now. Billions will be spent by the hopelessly incompetent and performatively cruel Braverman/Jenrick axis to no avail and the Tories are going to have a huge internal argument about pulling out of the ECHR, which the Yes camp is almost certain to win and then be unable to do. What a total mess.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
We should allow/encourage refugees to work. We need them in the NHS, care homes, hospitality, building infrastructure. They are mainly healthy and educated. To keep them unemployed at great public expense with penalties on employers is frankly ridiculous.
We need to totally reverse current Home Office policy, clear out HO seniors, and face down the inevitable backlash from the extreme right wingers.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out (not so much to Barnesian but to those obsessed with them) stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
When I rather naughtily refer to this Government as 'your people' to my lifelong tory voting friend she immediately retorts that, 'these are not my people.'
I mention this because I do believe the current Conservative Government have lost the hearts of a significant portion of their natural supporters.
Until they rediscover that heart they will fail to win a majority.
I have a huge amount of sympathy for genuine conservatives. They have a political philosophy different to mine but act in a way they see as best for the country and people.
That isn't the case for this government. No policies other than ones that deliberately damage the economy, services and communities.
Surely it's only tribalism that sustains support? It can't be for policy. Or delivery. Or morality. It basic human decency. This government is immoral, and the people who can't see that are part of the problem.
I think it was the 2017 General Election when my mother surprised me a bit. She votes for various parties, and she was pissed off that the Scots (because it's devolved) were having something the English were not (I forget what, maybe free prescriptions or something like that).
Spending English taxpayers' money on Scotland, on a devolved matter, could be a much more serious mistake than it appears. It won't win the Conservatives Scottish support, certainly not much. It will aggravate a lot of people in England.
And if we had an English Parliament, this couldn't/wouldn't happen.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
Why would you vote for the current Tory party that Sunak leads, just because you like Sunak? That's insane. He's in charge of the whole shitshow.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
Why would you vote for the current Tory party that Sunak leads, just because you like Sunak? That's insane. He's in charge of the whole shitshow.
Objectively, Sunak is a dud. He got the job because he doesn’t carry the glaring downsides of either the discredited Johnson or the discredited Truss. Both of which are considerably to his credit, but they don’t make any more able to do the job, sadly.
The upside he ought to be offering is of being the sensible, reasonable guy in contrast to the dangerous ideologies who went before. But he’s blowing that by being forced to back all this nutty, dog whistle stuff, just as Hague was, and for the similar reason of inexperience coupled with desperation.
Meanwhile, Sunday Times so could be nonsense, but this would be awkward;
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics is due to publish data for last month and is expected to confirm a sharp drop in inflation as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI). Estimates suggest the rate of inflation for July will fall from 7.9 per cent to 7 per cent.
However, The Sunday Times has seen internal government analysis suggesting that Treasury officials are braced for it to increase again this month.
There are sharp increases in fuel from last July that will drop out of the index and should put strong downward pressure on the number but there is no doubt that wage increases in particular are now driving inflation at pretty much 7% and that will offset things, as will persistent food price increases. Locally, diesel has also gone up 4-5p a litre in the last month. My guess is that inflation will fall but once again prove stickier than the government would hope.
Yes the July inflation figure - due to be published Wed - should fall, probably to around 7%.
I think the article is referring to concerns over the AUGUST figure which will be published 20 Sept. I can well see an increase there, fuel is going up again and we are still seeing food price increases etc. There is a MPC meeting the following day so maybe another, slightly larger than expected, base rate increase, to 5.75%?
Inflation is not under control.
It will be lower than 7, possibly by some margin, but I am not convinced it won't start heading slightly North again by year end. Managing inflation through sharp interest rate rises alone is a blunt instrument that needs to be stopped. Creating a real-time, if not technical recession by curbing consumer demand is bonkers!
Patients facing long waits for treatment in Scotland will be offered NHS or private care in England under provocative plans being put forward by the UK government.
Steve Barclay, the Conservative health minister at Westminster, has written to his counterparts in Scotland and Wales to highlight the longer waiting times in the devolved administrations than in England.
While NHS England has “virtually eliminated” waits of more than 18 months, Barclay says almost 100,000 patients in Scotland and Wales — controlled by the SNP and Labour respectively — are still waiting more than 77 weeks for outpatient, day-case or inpatient appointments.
The offer to treat long-waiting patients in England is part of a summer campaign by the Conservative UK government to highlight a difference in approach to NHS waiting times by the devolved governments.
With a general election expected within 18 months, it follows similar moves to focus attention on the divides between the SNP in Scotland and Labour in England and Wales over issues such as dealing with the “small boats” migrant crisis and attempts to tackle climate change while preserving North Sea oil industry jobs.
If there's capacity for that in England why the hell aren't they using it to bring down waiting lists here? Why are these Tories always playing political games?
It’s a fair question, although ALL political parties play political games. See the SNP over Covid, see Starmer over Covid, see Drakeford over Covid etc etc
If you can’t beat em join em. How about the home office launches it’s own nationalised people smuggling service: small boats but regularly serviced, reasonable price (perhaps a small discount on the current smuggling firms), guaranteed smooth delivery to a centre where claims can be made.
A worthwhile money spinner at a time the government is desperately short of cash. Could help make the asylum system self funding.
Meanwhile, Sunday Times so could be nonsense, but this would be awkward;
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics is due to publish data for last month and is expected to confirm a sharp drop in inflation as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI). Estimates suggest the rate of inflation for July will fall from 7.9 per cent to 7 per cent.
However, The Sunday Times has seen internal government analysis suggesting that Treasury officials are braced for it to increase again this month.
There are sharp increases in fuel from last July that will drop out of the index and should put strong downward pressure on the number but there is no doubt that wage increases in particular are now driving inflation at pretty much 7% and that will offset things, as will persistent food price increases. Locally, diesel has also gone up 4-5p a litre in the last month. My guess is that inflation will fall but once again prove stickier than the government would hope.
Yes the July inflation figure - due to be published Wed - should fall, probably to around 7%.
I think the article is referring to concerns over the AUGUST figure which will be published 20 Sept. I can well see an increase there, fuel is going up again and we are still seeing food price increases etc. There is a MPC meeting the following day so maybe another, slightly larger than expected, base rate increase, to 5.75%?
Inflation is not under control.
You mean consumer price inflation is not under control.
House price inflation is finally under control - if 'under control' is defined as being below 2%.
In reality neither is 'under control' as there are two many external factors influencing them but they are sometimes under an arbitrary limit set by someone or other.
Oops, sorry, that’s the future PM, so great stuff, nice to see a human side…
Arsenal, poverty, horses, burgers, grass. Sensible policies for a happier Britain. And then the random tagline generator pops up with Build A Better Britain apparently out of nowhere.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
Why would you vote for the current Tory party that Sunak leads, just because you like Sunak? That's insane. He's in charge of the whole shitshow.
Objectively, Sunak is a dud. He got the job because he doesn’t carry the glaring downsides of either the discredited Johnson or the discredited Truss. Both of which are considerably to his credit, but they don’t make any more able to do the job, sadly.
The upside he ought to be offering is of being the sensible, reasonable guy in contrast to the dangerous ideologies who went before. But he’s blowing that by being forced to back all this nutty, dog whistle stuff, just as Hague was, and for the similar reason of inexperience coupled with desperation.
Because he doesn’t pull off the marvel villain thing as convincingly as some, when they lose the election the membership will decide it’s because they weren’t nasty and mendacious enough and will elect a new more fulsomely villainous leader, ideally with a cackling laugh and gothic cape.
Just hope Starmer does a good job because this will help guarantee him a second term.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
We should allow/encourage refugees to work. We need them in the NHS, care homes, hospitality, building infrastructure. They are mainly healthy and educated. To keep them unemployed at great public expense with penalties on employers is frankly ridiculous.
We need to totally reverse current Home Office policy, clear out HO seniors, and face down the inevitable backlash from the extreme right wingers.
And what happens if instead of 100k trying to come to this country per year more than a million actually do ?
There's an effectively unlimited number of people living in economically backward / politically authoritarian / religiously oppressive / climate threatened / violently failed states around the world.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
Why would you vote for the current Tory party that Sunak leads, just because you like Sunak? That's insane. He's in charge of the whole shitshow.
Objectively, Sunak is a dud. He got the job because he doesn’t carry the glaring downsides of either the discredited Johnson or the discredited Truss. Both of which are considerably to his credit, but they don’t make any more able to do the job, sadly.
The upside he ought to be offering is of being the sensible, reasonable guy in contrast to the dangerous ideologies who went before. But he’s blowing that by being forced to back all this nutty, dog whistle stuff, just as Hague was, and for the similar reason of inexperience coupled with desperation.
What's the evidence that Sunak is sensible and reasonable, as opposed to neatly dressed and nicely spoken?
He's the first PM we've had who believed in you know what before it was cool.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
That's a small minority of everyone in Africa, which is 1.5 billion people, almost all of whom would be better off here. You lose part of your market, you start selling to a slightly different one, you increase your marketing spend, you drop your prices. Your plan will not reduce illegal crossing one bit
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
Why would you vote for the current Tory party that Sunak leads, just because you like Sunak? That's insane. He's in charge of the whole shitshow.
Objectively, Sunak is a dud. He got the job because he doesn’t carry the glaring downsides of either the discredited Johnson or the discredited Truss. Both of which are considerably to his credit, but they don’t make any more able to do the job, sadly.
The upside he ought to be offering is of being the sensible, reasonable guy in contrast to the dangerous ideologies who went before. But he’s blowing that by being forced to back all this nutty, dog whistle stuff, just as Hague was, and for the similar reason of inexperience coupled with desperation.
What's the evidence that Sunak is sensible and reasonable, as opposed to neatly dressed and nicely spoken?
He's the first PM we've had who believed in you know what before it was cool.
That's not quite true. Theresa May had a long history of Euroscepticism before plumping for Remain.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out (not so much to Barnesian but to those obsessed with them) stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
The thing about offering accessible and well-publicised asylum routes that involve processing before arrival in the UK is that it then makes all small boat arrivals unequivocally illegal under international law. There is absolutely no ambiguity. The small boats will still arrive, for sure, but there will be no way to claim asylum from them. That solves a lot of the legal problems and, politically, makes it much harder for opposition parties to object to things like the Rwanda policy.
Oops, sorry, that’s the future PM, so great stuff, nice to see a human side…
Arsenal, poverty, horses, burgers, grass. Sensible policies for a happier Britain. And then the random tagline generator pops up with Build A Better Britain apparently out of nowhere.
There has to be an irony that Arsenal promote Rwanda on their sleeves
The north London club has had a partnership with the African country's tourism board (Visit Rwanda) since 2018 and last year signed a £10 million-per-year sleeve sponsorship contract lasting four years.
There are three things the government can do with asylum seekers:
1. Accept them into British society 2. Send them somewhere else including the country they originally came from 3. Incarcerate them indefinitely
The government doesn't want to do the first; can't do the second; the third doesn't solve anything.
It won't process asylum claims because the vast majority of claims are valid. It can't send people back in part because it hasn't identified who the invalid claims are. No third country including France thinks this is their problem rather than the UK's. So it falls back on incarcerating migrants as they come in, including possibly in Rwanda. This just means the numbers and the problem accumulate in a particularly expensive and toxic way. Eventually those migrants will need to be accepted or some way found to return them home.
Meanwhile, Sunday Times so could be nonsense, but this would be awkward;
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics is due to publish data for last month and is expected to confirm a sharp drop in inflation as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI). Estimates suggest the rate of inflation for July will fall from 7.9 per cent to 7 per cent.
However, The Sunday Times has seen internal government analysis suggesting that Treasury officials are braced for it to increase again this month.
There are sharp increases in fuel from last July that will drop out of the index and should put strong downward pressure on the number but there is no doubt that wage increases in particular are now driving inflation at pretty much 7% and that will offset things, as will persistent food price increases. Locally, diesel has also gone up 4-5p a litre in the last month. My guess is that inflation will fall but once again prove stickier than the government would hope.
Yes the July inflation figure - due to be published Wed - should fall, probably to around 7%.
I think the article is referring to concerns over the AUGUST figure which will be published 20 Sept. I can well see an increase there, fuel is going up again and we are still seeing food price increases etc. There is a MPC meeting the following day so maybe another, slightly larger than expected, base rate increase, to 5.75%?
Inflation is not under control.
Agreed. I was discussing this with my daughter's partner in Aberdeen recently. He sold his house on which he had a fixed mortgage taken out in happier times and he is looking to get into the Edinburgh market but is dismayed by the affordability of property there given both the higher prices and the higher rates. Interest rates may start to fall towards the end of next year but it is really hard to see them falling before then. This inflation is going to be persistent. It always is in the UK.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
The problem with your idea is that I think an announcement to introduce ID cards would split the Tory Party just as much, if not more, than it would Labour.
If you can’t beat em join em. How about the home office launches it’s own nationalised people smuggling service: small boats but regularly serviced, reasonable price (perhaps a small discount on the current smuggling firms), guaranteed smooth delivery to a centre where claims can be made.
A worthwhile money spinner at a time the government is desperately short of cash. Could help make the asylum system self funding.
Perhaps the West African countries could return to their traditional strategy for the profitable disposal of excess people and reintroduce slavery.
By turning the migrants into an asset for the buyer they would have a financial interest in seeing they were properly fed, housed and employed.
Call it Lifetime Contract Labour.
I'm sure it would be much in demand from care homes, farmers and anyone who doesn't like working class full employment.
Migration is a complex issue; and especially in an already overcrowded country which cannot provide decent housing or healthcare for the present population.
Set against that, Britain's success as a country has been fuelled over the centuries by successive waves of migration from the Huguenots onwards, each bringing their different contributions to the country.
One particular cruelty of the asylum situation, is that asylum seekers cannot legally work, while they wait years for their fate to be determined. They are supposed to subsist on £30 per week. They either have to work illegally, to get involved in crime, or to starve to death.
We knew someone about ten years ago who was in this situation. He had a masters degree in engineering from a top UK university (he had been legally in the UK to study) and spoke perfect English. He returned home, but then had to flee for his life following a regime change. Back in the UK he was unable to work and had to rely on the help of friends and charities for three years.
People need to be dealt with safely, humanely and speedily and while they are waiting for their case to be resolved they need the opportunity to do purposeful activity (language classes, work, voluntary work, etc, as appropriate)
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out (not so much to Barnesian but to those obsessed with them) stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
The thing about offering accessible and well-publicised asylum routes that involve processing before arrival in the UK is that it then makes all small boat arrivals unequivocally illegal under international law. There is absolutely no ambiguity. The small boats will still arrive, for sure, but there will be no way to claim asylum from them. That solves a lot of the legal problems and, politically, makes it much harder for opposition parties to object to things like the Rwanda policy.
What on earth makes you think that? Anyone coming off a boat will still have the right to claim asylum under the Convention. The only exceptions would be people who had applied for asylum, been assessed, refused and then came anyway. Those that have not been assessed would be unaffected.
That Braverman line from TSE, one of his best, reminds me of the rather cutting one about Morrissey: that he's the sort of person who would wake you up to tell you he's going to bed.
Have a nice day everyone xx
And another day starts in Libya. I wonder if the “detainees” get breakfast in bed? Or is room service extra?
OT : the boats will only stop when we cut off demand. Which can be done in a days work by Parliament. And doesn’t involve sinking boats, selling Africans on an auction block etc.
It would even fuck the business of those who use ultra low pay instead of investing in productivity.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Oops, sorry, that’s the future PM, so great stuff, nice to see a human side…
Arsenal, poverty, horses, burgers, grass. Sensible policies for a happier Britain. And then the random tagline generator pops up with Build A Better Britain apparently out of nowhere.
There has to be an irony that Arsenal promote Rwanda on their sleeves
The north London club has had a partnership with the African country's tourism board (Visit Rwanda) since 2018 and last year signed a £10 million-per-year sleeve sponsorship contract lasting four years.
You've nailed it. Starmer supports a team that is sponsored by Visit Rwanda. Therefore Starmer must support the government's Rwanda policy. Therefore he's a hypocrite.
It's not too late for you to get a job at CCHQ, you know.
Meanwhile, Sunday Times so could be nonsense, but this would be awkward;
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics is due to publish data for last month and is expected to confirm a sharp drop in inflation as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI). Estimates suggest the rate of inflation for July will fall from 7.9 per cent to 7 per cent.
However, The Sunday Times has seen internal government analysis suggesting that Treasury officials are braced for it to increase again this month.
There are sharp increases in fuel from last July that will drop out of the index and should put strong downward pressure on the number but there is no doubt that wage increases in particular are now driving inflation at pretty much 7% and that will offset things, as will persistent food price increases. Locally, diesel has also gone up 4-5p a litre in the last month. My guess is that inflation will fall but once again prove stickier than the government would hope.
Yes the July inflation figure - due to be published Wed - should fall, probably to around 7%.
I think the article is referring to concerns over the AUGUST figure which will be published 20 Sept. I can well see an increase there, fuel is going up again and we are still seeing food price increases etc. There is a MPC meeting the following day so maybe another, slightly larger than expected, base rate increase, to 5.75%?
Inflation is not under control.
Agreed. I was discussing this with my daughter's partner in Aberdeen recently. He sold his house on which he had a fixed mortgage taken out in happier times and he is looking to get into the Edinburgh market but is dismayed by the affordability of property there given both the higher prices and the higher rates. Interest rates may start to fall towards the end of next year but it is really hard to see them falling before then. This inflation is going to be persistent. It always is in the UK.
Consumer price rises and pay rises but no house price rises.
or
House price rises but no consumer price rises or pay rises.
Each one affects different people in different ways.
But we've been led to believe that the first is disastrous while the second is beneficial.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out (not so much to Barnesian but to those obsessed with them) stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
The thing about offering accessible and well-publicised asylum routes that involve processing before arrival in the UK is that it then makes all small boat arrivals unequivocally illegal under international law. There is absolutely no ambiguity. The small boats will still arrive, for sure, but there will be no way to claim asylum from them. That solves a lot of the legal problems and, politically, makes it much harder for opposition parties to object to things like the Rwanda policy.
What on earth makes you think that? Anyone coming off a boat will still have the right to claim asylum under the Convention. The only exceptions would be people who had applied for asylum, been assessed, refused and then came anyway. Those that have not been assessed would be unaffected.
I start from the basis that most people coming on small boats are genuine asylum seekers and so would make use of processing facilities if they were available. I also believe the UK would have an arguable case for automatically rejecting any applications that were not made via well-publicised, accessible processing centres. Politically, I believe their existence would make life much, much harder for the opposition.
Patients facing long waits for treatment in Scotland will be offered NHS or private care in England under provocative plans being put forward by the UK government.
Steve Barclay, the Conservative health minister at Westminster, has written to his counterparts in Scotland and Wales to highlight the longer waiting times in the devolved administrations than in England.
While NHS England has “virtually eliminated” waits of more than 18 months, Barclay says almost 100,000 patients in Scotland and Wales — controlled by the SNP and Labour respectively — are still waiting more than 77 weeks for outpatient, day-case or inpatient appointments.
The offer to treat long-waiting patients in England is part of a summer campaign by the Conservative UK government to highlight a difference in approach to NHS waiting times by the devolved governments.
With a general election expected within 18 months, it follows similar moves to focus attention on the divides between the SNP in Scotland and Labour in England and Wales over issues such as dealing with the “small boats” migrant crisis and attempts to tackle climate change while preserving North Sea oil industry jobs.
If there's capacity for that in England why the hell aren't they using it to bring down waiting lists here? Why are these Tories always playing political games?
Isn’t “levelling up” across the nations what the Scots and Welsh want?
Migration is a complex issue; and especially in an already overcrowded country which cannot provide decent housing or healthcare for the present population.
Set against that, Britain's success as a country has been fuelled over the centuries by successive waves of migration from the Huguenots onwards, each bringing their different contributions to the country.
One particular cruelty of the asylum situation, is that asylum seekers cannot legally work, while they wait years for their fate to be determined. They are supposed to subsist on £30 per week. They either have to work illegally, to get involved in crime, or to starve to death.
We knew someone about ten years ago who was in this situation. He had a masters degree in engineering from a top UK university (he had been legally in the UK to study) and spoke perfect English. He returned home, but then had to flee for his life following a regime change. Back in the UK he was unable to work and had to rely on the help of friends and charities for three years.
People need to be dealt with safely, humanely and speedily and while they are waiting for their case to be resolved they need the opportunity to do purposeful activity (language classes, work, voluntary work, etc, as appropriate)
Thank you for stating the factual reality of what it is to be an asylum seeker. Why is it then that some Tory MPs insist that asylum seekers get such a good deal? They're here to steal our benefits! What benefits - they get a zero cash near starvation existence.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
No doubt you don't see it but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
No doubt you don't see it but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
It's only there if you think the people in question would make an exception for let's say English heritage Zimbabwean refugees. Why would they if ex hypothesi their objection is to competition for services and Lebensraum?
Patients facing long waits for treatment in Scotland will be offered NHS or private care in England under provocative plans being put forward by the UK government.
Steve Barclay, the Conservative health minister at Westminster, has written to his counterparts in Scotland and Wales to highlight the longer waiting times in the devolved administrations than in England.
While NHS England has “virtually eliminated” waits of more than 18 months, Barclay says almost 100,000 patients in Scotland and Wales — controlled by the SNP and Labour respectively — are still waiting more than 77 weeks for outpatient, day-case or inpatient appointments.
The offer to treat long-waiting patients in England is part of a summer campaign by the Conservative UK government to highlight a difference in approach to NHS waiting times by the devolved governments.
With a general election expected within 18 months, it follows similar moves to focus attention on the divides between the SNP in Scotland and Labour in England and Wales over issues such as dealing with the “small boats” migrant crisis and attempts to tackle climate change while preserving North Sea oil industry jobs.
If there's capacity for that in England why the hell aren't they using it to bring down waiting lists here? Why are these Tories always playing political games?
The English NHS has prioritised eliminating very long waits over getting general waiting times down, compared with the Scottish NHS. No-one has spare capacity.
If you are the typical Tory [edit] target voter, the availability of public loos is a real worry. Age, remember.
Never mind that the underlying issue is the hollowing out of local authority funding. Make it sound like council lavatory attendants still working from home.
Edit: but shortage of public loos is a very real problem. Ity was happening for years before covid.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Migration is a complex issue; and especially in an already overcrowded country which cannot provide decent housing or healthcare for the present population.
Set against that, Britain's success as a country has been fuelled over the centuries by successive waves of migration from the Huguenots onwards, each bringing their different contributions to the country.
One particular cruelty of the asylum situation, is that asylum seekers cannot legally work, while they wait years for their fate to be determined. They are supposed to subsist on £30 per week. They either have to work illegally, to get involved in crime, or to starve to death.
We knew someone about ten years ago who was in this situation. He had a masters degree in engineering from a top UK university (he had been legally in the UK to study) and spoke perfect English. He returned home, but then had to flee for his life following a regime change. Back in the UK he was unable to work and had to rely on the help of friends and charities for three years.
People need to be dealt with safely, humanely and speedily and while they are waiting for their case to be resolved they need the opportunity to do purposeful activity (language classes, work, voluntary work, etc, as appropriate)
Thank you for stating the factual reality of what it is to be an asylum seeker. Why is it then that some Tory MPs insist that asylum seekers get such a good deal? They're here to steal our benefits! What benefits - they get a zero cash near starvation existence.
That, plus nearly all migrants to the U.K. *don’t want to claim refuge*.
They want to work.
Which is why immigration is high, but asylum claims are lower than other parts of Europe. When you talk to the people working here illegally, many could claim asylum. But it is the last, worst option for them.
Oops, sorry, that’s the future PM, so great stuff, nice to see a human side…
Arsenal, poverty, horses, burgers, grass. Sensible policies for a happier Britain. And then the random tagline generator pops up with Build A Better Britain apparently out of nowhere.
There has to be an irony that Arsenal promote Rwanda on their sleeves
The north London club has had a partnership with the African country's tourism board (Visit Rwanda) since 2018 and last year signed a £10 million-per-year sleeve sponsorship contract lasting four years.
You've nailed it. Starmer supports a team that is sponsored by Visit Rwanda. Therefore Starmer must support the government's Rwanda policy. Therefore he's a hypocrite.
It's not too late for you to get a job at CCHQ, you know.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Allowing Nigel Farage to dictate Tory policy is never a smart idea. Allowing him to do it in an area as complex and difficult to solve as illegal immigration and asylum is political madness. But there is no off ramp now. Billions will be spent by the hopelessly incompetent and performatively cruel Braverman/Jenrick axis to no avail and the Tories are going to have a huge internal argument about pulling out of the ECHR, which the Yes camp is almost certain to win and then be unable to do. What a total mess.
Labour are close to power now. It’s about time they told us how THEY would stop the boats
I predict they will waffle about clamping down on illegal workers (will do nothing: lots of them want to work in the black economy); co-operating more with France (lol = paying France more money to allow the boats to keep crossing); setting up more legal routes to asylum (= pointless gesture as those refused will try coming by boat)
That’s it. Labour will be as ineffectual as the Tories with one difference. They won’t even try anything like Rwanda, which at least will save us embarrassment and cash as the Tories are too frit to push this through
What the F happens then I do not know. When a government literally cannot control its borders where will voters go?
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
No doubt you don't see it but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
It's only there if you think the people in question would make an exception for let's say English heritage Zimbabwean refugees. Why would they if ex hypothesi their objection is to competition for services and Lebensraum?
When the Zimbabwean farmer thing kicked off, it was under Brown.
So a Labour government had a problem. They had a bunch of white Zimbabweans being kicked off their land at gun point. And they were trying to head here.
So the word went out to the Zimbabwean embassy and consulate - deny applications.
Because of the large numbers of medical staff (and others) who come to the U.K. from Zimbabwe, there is a large section dealing with visa applications, passports etc. In Zimbabwe. This is largely staffed with locals. The pay is good, conditions are very good by locals standards - so they get a well trained, keen, efficient workforce.
So they stopped and delayed the applications. All the applications. Suddenly, uproar in London as the supply of nurses got cut off…
You see, no one had actually the balls to say “block the applications for the white people only”.
So the Home Office drafted some custom rules to try and exclude as many Zimbabwean farmers as they could, without having to actually say this.
The Trek Of The Nurses resumed.
One of these new rules way to claim that service in the British Army didn’t have any relevance for claiming the right to be in the U.K.
Some little time later, the Gurkha gent, who won the VC, wanted to come to the U.K. for medical treatment. Under the new rules he was barred.
There’s something about this story that makes me smile. It sums up the country, in a way.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
Which is why I actually don't sneer at Garden Walker's original idea of focusing on public lavs. There is an issue there (you often can't find one in an emergency) and ok it's not sexy, it won't ignite either the red wall or the blue wall, but the solution (build more toilets and make sure they always have paper) is easy to get your head round and implement, ie it's exactly the sort of issue we need Rishi Sunak to concentrate on in his final year as PM.
It'll be good for him too since it will generate a legacy. Like David Cameron with his Gay Marriage he'll have something to point to when people ask him what of real lasting benefit there is to show for his time in office.
Patients facing long waits for treatment in Scotland will be offered NHS or private care in England under provocative plans being put forward by the UK government.
Steve Barclay, the Conservative health minister at Westminster, has written to his counterparts in Scotland and Wales to highlight the longer waiting times in the devolved administrations than in England.
While NHS England has “virtually eliminated” waits of more than 18 months, Barclay says almost 100,000 patients in Scotland and Wales — controlled by the SNP and Labour respectively — are still waiting more than 77 weeks for outpatient, day-case or inpatient appointments.
The offer to treat long-waiting patients in England is part of a summer campaign by the Conservative UK government to highlight a difference in approach to NHS waiting times by the devolved governments.
With a general election expected within 18 months, it follows similar moves to focus attention on the divides between the SNP in Scotland and Labour in England and Wales over issues such as dealing with the “small boats” migrant crisis and attempts to tackle climate change while preserving North Sea oil industry jobs.
Very clever politics by the impressive Barclay. Over 18 month waiting lists down. 1/5 Rishi pledges achieved.
Sunak’s pledge was: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly”
NHS waiting lists have increased. That one category, over 18 month waits, is down is a good thing, but it’s a limited success and not what Sunak pledged.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
It’s such a small sample it’s near-meaningless, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the SNP on “2”
Probably before the 2014 indyref?
Interesting that you’re constantly monitoring SNP numbers in UK wide polls.
It’s interesting that I’m interested in polls on a site dedicated to people interested in, er, polls?
Besides, the SNP on “2” - lol - is the only interesting thing in this poll. UK politics is in some ghastly stasis. The Tories are destined to lose badly. Just hurry up and get it over with
Patients facing long waits for treatment in Scotland will be offered NHS or private care in England under provocative plans being put forward by the UK government.
Steve Barclay, the Conservative health minister at Westminster, has written to his counterparts in Scotland and Wales to highlight the longer waiting times in the devolved administrations than in England.
While NHS England has “virtually eliminated” waits of more than 18 months, Barclay says almost 100,000 patients in Scotland and Wales — controlled by the SNP and Labour respectively — are still waiting more than 77 weeks for outpatient, day-case or inpatient appointments.
The offer to treat long-waiting patients in England is part of a summer campaign by the Conservative UK government to highlight a difference in approach to NHS waiting times by the devolved governments.
With a general election expected within 18 months, it follows similar moves to focus attention on the divides between the SNP in Scotland and Labour in England and Wales over issues such as dealing with the “small boats” migrant crisis and attempts to tackle climate change while preserving North Sea oil industry jobs.
Very clever politics by the impressive Barclay. Over 18 month waiting lists down. 1/5 Rishi pledges achieved.
Sunak’s pledge was: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly”
NHS waiting lists have increased. That one category, over 18 month waits, is down is a good thing, but it’s a limited success and not what Sunak pledged.
Maybe we shouldn't have shut the country down for 18 months, eh?
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
With the data leaks so prominent in the news of late, I think launching ID cards now would be a bit of an own goal.
I see the government is to appoint a “lavatories tsar” to encourage councils to re-open the 10% of public lavatories that remain shut after the pandemic.
Oh great. Cones Hotline, 2023 Edition.
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
That's actually a good idea, but the competent execution of such a scheme is so far beyond the capacities of this government that it's laughable. Every card issued would have a photo of Alistair Jack's ringpiece on it instead of the card holder. Or somesuch tragi-comic balls up.
Yep, ID Cards are the impossible dream. Similar applied to Vaxports in the pandemic. You just can't see us pulling this sort of thing off.
Which is why I actually don't sneer at Garden Walker's original idea of focusing on public lavs. There is an issue there (you often can't find one in an emergency) and ok it's not sexy, it won't ignite either the red wall or the blue wall, but the solution (build more toilets and make sure they always have paper) is easy to get your head round and implement, ie it's exactly the sort of issue we need Rishi Sunak to concentrate on in his final year as PM.
It'll be good for him too since it will generate a legacy. Like David Cameron with his Gay Marriage he'll have something to point to when people ask him what of real lasting benefit there is to show for his time in office.
Problem with public lavs is that they cost money to run and are not an essential service - so most councils have cut them back.*
I really should try and work out how best to ask the question but I suspect if you went to any council and asked them what percentage of their budget went on legally required essential services in 2010 and what percentage it was now the figures would scare everyone...
* Radar keys cost about £3-5 and are an essential item if you have children. It's literally the first thing we buy a new parent..
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
Legal immigration is at a record high under the Conservative government. The Tories both portray themselves as opposing immigration, yet they deliberately run the system to have high immigration. I am at a loss as to whether this is an incoherence representing a battle between a neo-liberalism wanting low labour costs and a nativist strand in the party, a cynical attempt to stir up fear of migration, or a more straightforward collapse of any rationality.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Then we need plumbing for 600,000 people
Joseph Bazalgette was exactly right. I recall someone sneering at the decoration on that pump house. A cathedral of shit, he called it. Then I pointed out that it was a part of saving of countless thousand lives. Many of them the poorest and lowest in society. That deserves a stain glass window or two.
It’s such a small sample it’s near-meaningless, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the SNP on “2”
Probably before the 2014 indyref?
Interesting that you’re constantly monitoring SNP numbers in UK wide polls.
It’s interesting that I’m interested in polls on a site dedicated to people interested in, er, polls?
Besides, the SNP on “2” - lol - is the only interesting thing in this poll. UK politics is in some ghastly stasis. The Tories are destined to lose badly. Just hurry up and get it over with
I don’t remember much interest in last week’s actual Scottish poll, or the MRP poll for Scotland. Must have slipped under the radar I guess.
Patients facing long waits for treatment in Scotland will be offered NHS or private care in England under provocative plans being put forward by the UK government.
Steve Barclay, the Conservative health minister at Westminster, has written to his counterparts in Scotland and Wales to highlight the longer waiting times in the devolved administrations than in England.
While NHS England has “virtually eliminated” waits of more than 18 months, Barclay says almost 100,000 patients in Scotland and Wales — controlled by the SNP and Labour respectively — are still waiting more than 77 weeks for outpatient, day-case or inpatient appointments.
The offer to treat long-waiting patients in England is part of a summer campaign by the Conservative UK government to highlight a difference in approach to NHS waiting times by the devolved governments.
With a general election expected within 18 months, it follows similar moves to focus attention on the divides between the SNP in Scotland and Labour in England and Wales over issues such as dealing with the “small boats” migrant crisis and attempts to tackle climate change while preserving North Sea oil industry jobs.
Very clever politics by the impressive Barclay. Over 18 month waiting lists down. 1/5 Rishi pledges achieved.
Sunak’s pledge was: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly”
NHS waiting lists have increased. That one category, over 18 month waits, is down is a good thing, but it’s a limited success and not what Sunak pledged.
Maybe we shouldn't have shut the country down for 18 months, eh?
With the benefit of hindsight perhaps we could have attacked COVID differently. At the time Government didn't have a clue what was going on. Perhaps Johnson should have attended the Cobra meetings and Hunt should not have mothballed the pandemic planning. However under the circumstances, and on the whole, with caveats, Johnson and Sunak got this call right
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
That's a small minority of everyone in Africa, which is 1.5 billion people, almost all of whom would be better off here. You lose part of your market, you start selling to a slightly different one, you increase your marketing spend, you drop your prices. Your plan will not reduce illegal crossing one bit
This defeatist nonsense is tiresome. The number of people coming over on boats has gone up and down considerably. The number of people seeking asylum in the UK through all routes has gone up and down considerably. These are complex, multi-factorial issue, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to any action. That the numbers go up and down demonstrates that they can be changed.
Maybe we can’t get the number down to zero, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. There have been successful programmes and actions. It makes me wonder whether a narrative of learned helplessness is somehow more attractive to some who comment on politics. Someone I know who works with a Conservative minister suggests that there is a deliberate strategy to not resolve the situation for people seeking asylum in the UK such that you can have a scary number that keeps people voting Tory. I don’t know if I believe that, but the government does seem more interested in rhetoric than in doing anything.
It’s such a small sample it’s near-meaningless, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the SNP on “2”
Probably before the 2014 indyref?
Interesting that you’re constantly monitoring SNP numbers in UK wide polls.
It’s interesting that I’m interested in polls on a site dedicated to people interested in, er, polls?
Besides, the SNP on “2” - lol - is the only interesting thing in this poll. UK politics is in some ghastly stasis. The Tories are destined to lose badly. Just hurry up and get it over with
I don’t remember much interest in last week’s actual Scottish poll, or the MRP poll for Scotland. Must have slipped under the radar I guess.
We need a thread on Scottish sub-samples. Perhaps someone could suggest this to the Site managers.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Then we need plumbing for 600,000 people
Joseph Bazalgette was exactly right. I recall someone sneering at the decoration on that pump house. A cathedral of shit, he called it. Then I pointed out that it was a part of saving of countless thousand lives. Many of them the poorest and lowest in society. That deserves a stain glass window or two.
Fully agreed. See the Leicester one, also (preserved and open - one reason for a trip to Leicester, as well as the Space Museums and other museums, and the New Walk Victorian pedestrian precinct).
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
That's a small minority of everyone in Africa, which is 1.5 billion people, almost all of whom would be better off here. You lose part of your market, you start selling to a slightly different one, you increase your marketing spend, you drop your prices. Your plan will not reduce illegal crossing one bit
This defeatist nonsense is tiresome. The number of people coming over on boats has gone up and down considerably. The number of people seeking asylum in the UK through all routes has gone up and down considerably. These are complex, multi-factorial issue, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to any action. That the numbers go up and down demonstrates that they can be changed.
Maybe we can’t get the number down to zero, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. There have been successful programmes and actions. It makes me wonder whether a narrative of learned helplessness is somehow more attractive to some who comment on politics. Someone I know who works with a Conservative minister suggests that there is a deliberate strategy to not resolve the situation for people seeking asylum in the UK such that you can have a scary number that keeps people voting Tory. I don’t know if I believe that, but the government does seem more interested in rhetoric than in doing anything.
Also the numbers arriving by small boat are a fraction of the net migration figures.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
That's a small minority of everyone in Africa, which is 1.5 billion people, almost all of whom would be better off here. You lose part of your market, you start selling to a slightly different one, you increase your marketing spend, you drop your prices. Your plan will not reduce illegal crossing one bit
This defeatist nonsense is tiresome. The number of people coming over on boats has gone up and down considerably. The number of people seeking asylum in the UK through all routes has gone up and down considerably. These are complex, multi-factorial issue, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to any action. That the numbers go up and down demonstrates that they can be changed.
Maybe we can’t get the number down to zero, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. There have been successful programmes and actions. It makes me wonder whether a narrative of learned helplessness is somehow more attractive to some who comment on politics. Someone I know who works with a Conservative minister suggests that there is a deliberate strategy to not resolve the situation for people seeking asylum in the UK such that you can have a scary number that keeps people voting Tory. I don’t know if I believe that, but the government does seem more interested in rhetoric than in doing anything.
It’s about demand. Always demand.
You could cut the demand off in a day.
But as with the war on drugs, which could win before lunch, it’s politically unacceptable.
And there are cogent reasons, I suppose. Sections of the economy would stop as the workforce has to be changed to legal workers. Some businesses would die completely. Wage inflation would spike. And there would be the issue of a large number of people, out of a job and no way to claim benefits.
There are three things the government can do with asylum seekers:
1. Accept them into British society 2. Send them somewhere else including the country they originally came from 3. Incarcerate them indefinitely
The government doesn't want to do the first; can't do the second; the third doesn't solve anything.
It won't process asylum claims because the vast majority of claims are valid. It can't send people back in part because it hasn't identified who the invalid claims are. No third country including France thinks this is their problem rather than the UK's. So it falls back on incarcerating migrants as they come in, including possibly in Rwanda. This just means the numbers and the problem accumulate in a particularly expensive and toxic way. Eventually those migrants will need to be accepted or some way found to return them home.
Yes and no. There are plenty with invalid claims. We, the country, used to deport many, many more people than we do now. That may be because the Home Secretary and her predecessors are no good at their jobs and the immigration service is underfunded. But I am wondering, along similar lines to your thinking, whether the problem now is that the government is so fearful of accepting anyone that it would rather process no-one. I think the UK public would be much happier if we accepted those with valid claims and deported those without than this bizarre situation where we just indefinitely incarcerate large numbers, costing lots of money.
Small boats is only a political problem as such because it is visible, big time, from the White Cliffs of Dover. No-one was that much bothered when they were coming in the backs of lorries (invisible to the public).
But we put up, at UK taxpayers expense, lots of fencing around the Channel Tunnel in France and in Calais which shifted the problem to hiding migrants in unaccompanied freight into east coast ports. Then lots of Vietnamese died at Purfleet which led to more searching at source ports (e.g. in Belgium) and you can trace the small boat commencement to a couple of months after the Purfleet deaths. The Albanains used to sneak in on Italian/Greek identity cards (easily forged) so HMG (using those post-Brexit freedoms - Yay!) stopped people using EU ID cards to travel to the UK - so the Albanians moved to small boats. They will be back in October-December when seasonal work in Southern Europe dries up for the winter. They just want to earn some cash to send home.
It's 'whack a mole' basically. If we do crack the small boats problem, which I think is only solveable if you disrupt the OCG supply chain of boats, outboard motors etc which stretches across Europe, the problem will appear somewhere else either invisble to the public, or in another visible way. Small boats is a problem because psychologically it is visible and plays to that British (and daft) 'never been invaded since 1066' nonsense.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
That's a small minority of everyone in Africa, which is 1.5 billion people, almost all of whom would be better off here. You lose part of your market, you start selling to a slightly different one, you increase your marketing spend, you drop your prices. Your plan will not reduce illegal crossing one bit
This defeatist nonsense is tiresome. The number of people coming over on boats has gone up and down considerably. The number of people seeking asylum in the UK through all routes has gone up and down considerably. These are complex, multi-factorial issue, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to any action. That the numbers go up and down demonstrates that they can be changed.
Maybe we can’t get the number down to zero, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. There have been successful programmes and actions. It makes me wonder whether a narrative of learned helplessness is somehow more attractive to some who comment on politics. Someone I know who works with a Conservative minister suggests that there is a deliberate strategy to not resolve the situation for people seeking asylum in the UK such that you can have a scary number that keeps people voting Tory. I don’t know if I believe that, but the government does seem more interested in rhetoric than in doing anything.
Yes, Bond, I think that is right.
The matter is undoubtedly complex but it is not beyond human ingenuity to improve things, and many work tirelessly to do so. On the other hand you have politicians and others trying to make capital out of a sensitive and difficult area. This is not generally helpful, and often it is not intended to be.
It’s such a small sample it’s near-meaningless, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the SNP on “2”
Probably before the 2014 indyref?
Interesting that you’re constantly monitoring SNP numbers in UK wide polls.
It’s interesting that I’m interested in polls on a site dedicated to people interested in, er, polls?
Besides, the SNP on “2” - lol - is the only interesting thing in this poll. UK politics is in some ghastly stasis. The Tories are destined to lose badly. Just hurry up and get it over with
I don’t remember much interest in last week’s actual Scottish poll, or the MRP poll for Scotland. Must have slipped under the radar I guess.
Then you should be happy I have turned my judicious gaze upon matters North British
As it happens I did notice the Scottish poll last week. SNP up 3 or something? But Labour close behind?
I thought it was a decent poll for Yousaf in the circs. However the renewed outbreak of Salmondella in Nationalist circles can’t be good for the Nats
The tragedy for the Nats is that Salmond is likely still the best strategic political thinker in Nat circles - but he is also political poison, so either gets ignored or reviled
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
That's a small minority of everyone in Africa, which is 1.5 billion people, almost all of whom would be better off here. You lose part of your market, you start selling to a slightly different one, you increase your marketing spend, you drop your prices. Your plan will not reduce illegal crossing one bit
This defeatist nonsense is tiresome. The number of people coming over on boats has gone up and down considerably. The number of people seeking asylum in the UK through all routes has gone up and down considerably. These are complex, multi-factorial issue, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to any action. That the numbers go up and down demonstrates that they can be changed.
Maybe we can’t get the number down to zero, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. There have been successful programmes and actions. It makes me wonder whether a narrative of learned helplessness is somehow more attractive to some who comment on politics. Someone I know who works with a Conservative minister suggests that there is a deliberate strategy to not resolve the situation for people seeking asylum in the UK such that you can have a scary number that keeps people voting Tory. I don’t know if I believe that, but the government does seem more interested in rhetoric than in doing anything.
Also the numbers arriving by small boat are a fraction of the net migration figures.
Also a fraction of those going on and rapidly going off the Legionella riddled barge I believe. You’d think performative nastiness is the one thing these clowns would get right.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
We should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
He needs to sack Braverman, and replace her with someone who actually will stop the boats.
Yes but as mentioned below by @El_Capitano it has to be combined with having actual humanity. Otherwise, quite apart from the moral vacuum, you lose both Red and Blue wall.
For example, I have a lifelong Conservative voting friend in Surrey who is utterly appalled by Braverman and has not stopped going on about Robert Jenrick callously painting over the mural in the children's asylum centre.
There are actually a vast swathe of decent people who traditionally vote Conservative. They are being turned off from doing so by the re-emergence of the Nasty Party.
Good morning
I am appalled that Braverman and Jenrick are still in post and Sunak needs to remove them both
He has the opportunity in his reshuffle due in a few weeks and after the barge PR disaster the excuse, but sadly I do not have the confidence he will grasp the nettle and do it
I think the point is that it is not just the swing voters that the Tories are losing, they are also losing their core voters too
As long as Sunak is PM he will not lose my vote, and I expect when an election campaign starts a good number will return but how many will depend on many factors including the cost of living and NHS which will top the list with the boats probably third
But he's responsible for the Home Office, and the boats, too. He selected Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick.
I agree and he needs to sack Braverman and Jenrick
But he's not looking likely to, is he?
Whether that's out of fear of Suella and her fans, or because he approves of what they're doing, hardly matters.
Trouble is that The Boats may be fundamentally Unstoppable.
And that last bit is what makes the issue unsolvable
We are left with the same question of what are the factors that ensure people spend £1000s to get in a small boat to try and cross the channel.
Is it push lead (being in France is so bad you prefer to go to the UK) or is it equally pull lead (our black market allowing people to disappear, years of delays in assessments making things equally pointless),
We need to identify what the crucial factors are and fix them because the French coastline makes stopping the boats at the starting point is an impossible task..
To fix them we should make it easier for refugees to come here by establishing review and entry points in French ports so they can come by ferry or plane. That will stop the illegal boats.
No it won't, as any that are rejected will still come across by dinghy. Unless you are saying we should just take them all, which I doubt if even Labour would agree to.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
I agree we need to progress arrivals MUCH faster. I suspect that a large majority would pass the refugee test including most of the people arriving in small boats.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
That's a small minority of everyone in Africa, which is 1.5 billion people, almost all of whom would be better off here. You lose part of your market, you start selling to a slightly different one, you increase your marketing spend, you drop your prices. Your plan will not reduce illegal crossing one bit
This defeatist nonsense is tiresome. The number of people coming over on boats has gone up and down considerably. The number of people seeking asylum in the UK through all routes has gone up and down considerably. These are complex, multi-factorial issue, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to any action. That the numbers go up and down demonstrates that they can be changed.
Maybe we can’t get the number down to zero, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. There have been successful programmes and actions. It makes me wonder whether a narrative of learned helplessness is somehow more attractive to some who comment on politics. Someone I know who works with a Conservative minister suggests that there is a deliberate strategy to not resolve the situation for people seeking asylum in the UK such that you can have a scary number that keeps people voting Tory. I don’t know if I believe that, but the government does seem more interested in rhetoric than in doing anything.
Yes, Bond, I think that is right.
The matter is undoubtedly complex but it is not beyond human ingenuity to improve things, and many work tirelessly to do so. On the other hand you have politicians and others trying to make capital out of a sensitive and difficult area. This is not generally helpful, and often it is not intended to be.
Defeatist is sometimes the way to go. Like illegal drugs: if you can't even keep them out of prisons you have to accept a "war" on them is unwinnable, time to think of something else. Something else in this case is, unwind the black economy by rewards to whistle blowers.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
Then we need plumbing for 600,000 people
Paid for by whom?
It's like everything else in this country. Half the population can't afford to pay any more in tax and the other half thinks it shouldn't have to pay anything at all.
Patients facing long waits for treatment in Scotland will be offered NHS or private care in England under provocative plans being put forward by the UK government.
Steve Barclay, the Conservative health minister at Westminster, has written to his counterparts in Scotland and Wales to highlight the longer waiting times in the devolved administrations than in England.
While NHS England has “virtually eliminated” waits of more than 18 months, Barclay says almost 100,000 patients in Scotland and Wales — controlled by the SNP and Labour respectively — are still waiting more than 77 weeks for outpatient, day-case or inpatient appointments.
The offer to treat long-waiting patients in England is part of a summer campaign by the Conservative UK government to highlight a difference in approach to NHS waiting times by the devolved governments.
With a general election expected within 18 months, it follows similar moves to focus attention on the divides between the SNP in Scotland and Labour in England and Wales over issues such as dealing with the “small boats” migrant crisis and attempts to tackle climate change while preserving North Sea oil industry jobs.
Very clever politics by the impressive Barclay. Over 18 month waiting lists down. 1/5 Rishi pledges achieved.
Sunak’s pledge was: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly”
NHS waiting lists have increased. That one category, over 18 month waits, is down is a good thing, but it’s a limited success and not what Sunak pledged.
Maybe we shouldn't have shut the country down for 18 months, eh?
NHS waiting lists had been steadily increasing before the pandemic, but that’s by the by. Sunak knew the situation when he made his pledges. He is failing to deliver on his pledges.
There are three things the government can do with asylum seekers:
1. Accept them into British society 2. Send them somewhere else including the country they originally came from 3. Incarcerate them indefinitely
The government doesn't want to do the first; can't do the second; the third doesn't solve anything.
It won't process asylum claims because the vast majority of claims are valid. It can't send people back in part because it hasn't identified who the invalid claims are. No third country including France thinks this is their problem rather than the UK's. So it falls back on incarcerating migrants as they come in, including possibly in Rwanda. This just means the numbers and the problem accumulate in a particularly expensive and toxic way. Eventually those migrants will need to be accepted or some way found to return them home.
Yes and no. There are plenty with invalid claims. We, the country, used to deport many, many more people than we do now. That may be because the Home Secretary and her predecessors are no good at their jobs and the immigration service is underfunded. But I am wondering, along similar lines to your thinking, whether the problem now is that the government is so fearful of accepting anyone that it would rather process no-one. I think the UK public would be much happier if we accepted those with valid claims and deported those without than this bizarre situation where we just indefinitely incarcerate large numbers, costing lots of money.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
I remember staring in disbelief at two facebook posts on the same day from the same person - one in support of letting immigrants in, the second opposing new build housing. Baffling.
There are three things the government can do with asylum seekers:
1. Accept them into British society 2. Send them somewhere else including the country they originally came from 3. Incarcerate them indefinitely
The government doesn't want to do the first; can't do the second; the third doesn't solve anything.
It won't process asylum claims because the vast majority of claims are valid. It can't send people back in part because it hasn't identified who the invalid claims are. No third country including France thinks this is their problem rather than the UK's. So it falls back on incarcerating migrants as they come in, including possibly in Rwanda. This just means the numbers and the problem accumulate in a particularly expensive and toxic way. Eventually those migrants will need to be accepted or some way found to return them home.
Yes and no. There are plenty with invalid claims. We, the country, used to deport many, many more people than we do now. That may be because the Home Secretary and her predecessors are no good at their jobs and the immigration service is underfunded. But I am wondering, along similar lines to your thinking, whether the problem now is that the government is so fearful of accepting anyone that it would rather process no-one. I think the UK public would be much happier if we accepted those with valid claims and deported those without than this bizarre situation where we just indefinitely incarcerate large numbers, costing lots of money.
And where, pray, are you going to deport them?
Bloke on radio the other day was saying as members of the EU we had access to an agreement to deport failed asylum seekers back to 24 (non EU) countries.
On leaving the EU it was decided not to roll that EU benefit forwards, so we started back at zero, with recently having agreed with Albania to take their failed immigrants back we are a long way behind where we were in 2019.
“In 2021, enforced returns from the UK decreased to 2,761, 18% fewer than the previous year and 62% fewer than in 2019. The vast majority of enforced returns in the latest year were of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) and a majority were EU nationals.
“Enforced returns have been declining since the peak in 2012”
And:
“Asylum related returns accounted for only 3% of total returns in 2021.
“In 2021, there were 806 returns of people who had previously claimed asylum in the UK (see section 3.2 below for the definition of an asylum-related return). This is 49% fewer than in the previous year (1,587) and 76% fewer than prior to the pandemic in 2019 (3,332). This continues a downward trend since 2010, when there were 10,663 asylum-related returns. This sharp fall over the decade differs from non-asylum related returns, which were relatively stable until 2016, declined until 2020 and have risen in 2021.”
We’ve gone from 10663 asylum-related returns in a year to 806.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
I remember staring in disbelief at two facebook posts on the same day from the same person - one in support of letting immigrants in, the second opposing new build housing. Baffling.
It is baffling. And you see it everywhere. A wilful stupidity. Is it because we are getting more stupid (which we are) or is it just a different kind of stupid that was always there? Humans have always been determinedly irrational, it’s probably an evolved mechanism to cope with death
There are three things the government can do with asylum seekers:
1. Accept them into British society 2. Send them somewhere else including the country they originally came from 3. Incarcerate them indefinitely
The government doesn't want to do the first; can't do the second; the third doesn't solve anything.
It won't process asylum claims because the vast majority of claims are valid. It can't send people back in part because it hasn't identified who the invalid claims are. No third country including France thinks this is their problem rather than the UK's. So it falls back on incarcerating migrants as they come in, including possibly in Rwanda. This just means the numbers and the problem accumulate in a particularly expensive and toxic way. Eventually those migrants will need to be accepted or some way found to return them home.
Yes and no. There are plenty with invalid claims. We, the country, used to deport many, many more people than we do now. That may be because the Home Secretary and her predecessors are no good at their jobs and the immigration service is underfunded. But I am wondering, along similar lines to your thinking, whether the problem now is that the government is so fearful of accepting anyone that it would rather process no-one. I think the UK public would be much happier if we accepted those with valid claims and deported those without than this bizarre situation where we just indefinitely incarcerate large numbers, costing lots of money.
And where, pray, are you going to deport them?
Bloke on radio the other day was saying as members of the EU we had access to an agreement to deport failed asylum seekers back to 24 (non EU) countries.
On leaving the EU it was decided not to roll that EU benefit forwards, so we started back at zero, with recently having agreed with Albania to take their failed immigrants back we are a long way behind where we were in 2019.
If this was remotely true or interestingly valid then the EU wouid be rapidly deporting millions of people across the world. It is not. Instead they drown in their thousands in the Med or the EU pays Libya and Tunisia to keep them in slave pens
There doesn't seem to be any good reason for not finding out what's actually there.
Some moderately senior civil servants stayed behind in the Channel Islands, to keep things running. This meant they ended up working for the Nazis, in effect.
After the war, officialdom kept it all under wraps.
On the small boats, we could Stop The Boats. Allow the dead afghans to come legally. You know Afghans? We broke their country, abandoned them to the Taliban whilst the Foreign Secretary couldn't be arsed to get off his sun lounger.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
I'm not seeing that the attitude in your second paragraph is racist. It may be ungenerous but that is a different criticism.
Racist? No. Although all the actual racists bang on about Muslims and non-whites. As we have seen in the past, there is as much anger aimed at white christian Europeans - Romanians as an example - as there is aimed at people with a "funny tinge".
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
At the low end, wage suppression from migration was, quite definitely used by a range of businesses. Which is why they supported it.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Idiots say "Britain is full". It really isn't. And flying over the southern English midlands on my way down to Luton last week it was visible just how much open and empty land there is .
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
Watching the conflict between “immigration is good” and “all the works of humans are evil” - the modern progressive default - is of interest.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable in the sewage debate. Our seas and rivers are full of shit (and they are, and it is bad). But some of the people who get most worked up about this are those most pro-immigration and “let them all in”
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
I remember staring in disbelief at two facebook posts on the same day from the same person - one in support of letting immigrants in, the second opposing new build housing. Baffling.
It is baffling. And you see it everywhere. A wilful stupidity. Is it because we are getting more stupid (which we are) or is it just a different kind of stupid that was always there? Humans have always been determinedly irrational, it’s probably an evolved mechanism to cope with death
I hear you about wilful stupidity. But have you seen the front page of The Mail on Sunday today? Stupid, ignorant and also malevolent.
Whilst I harp on about how the right are weaponising stupidity and ignorance (cf today's MoS...), it isn't just them. The quality of our politicians has taken a marked downward slide in the last decade or so. But who would want to be an MP in today's 24 hour spotlight environment?
“In 2021, enforced returns from the UK decreased to 2,761, 18% fewer than the previous year and 62% fewer than in 2019. The vast majority of enforced returns in the latest year were of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) and a majority were EU nationals.
“Enforced returns have been declining since the peak in 2012”
And:
“Asylum related returns accounted for only 3% of total returns in 2021.
“In 2021, there were 806 returns of people who had previously claimed asylum in the UK (see section 3.2 below for the definition of an asylum-related return). This is 49% fewer than in the previous year (1,587) and 76% fewer than prior to the pandemic in 2019 (3,332). This continues a downward trend since 2010, when there were 10,663 asylum-related returns. This sharp fall over the decade differs from non-asylum related returns, which were relatively stable until 2016, declined until 2020 and have risen in 2021.”
We’ve gone from 10663 asylum-related returns in a year to 806.
I rather suspect that if the UK did massively increase deportations to say the equivalent of the Obama era USA there would be an even larger increase in people denouncing those deportations as brutal oppression of vulnerable people.
Comments
I think the article is referring to concerns over the AUGUST figure which will be published 20 Sept. I can well see an increase there, fuel is going up again and we are still seeing food price increases etc. There is a MPC meeting the following day so maybe another, slightly larger than expected, base rate increase, to 5.75%?
Inflation is not under control.
But yep fuel prices have definitely gone up 3-5% over the past week or so..
The Brexiteers have set the expectations.
1. The right have weaponised genuine ignorance and congenital stupidity and tried to make people nasty because they hope there are votes to be won. That we now have a chunk of people who desperately want to drown as many people as possible is as much of a tragedy as the sinking boats are
2. The new Tories like Lee Anderson who have been schooled that being Tory is to be ignorant stupid and cold.
Braverman can't stop the boats - no little Englander brexiteer can. Because we either cooperative with other countries or we get swamped. So whilst firing her and replacing her with someone who isn't a sociopath would be good for politics, it won't save the coming electoral demolition.
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1690322292197179393
Oops, sorry, that’s the future PM, so great stuff, nice to see a human side…
On topic, the one wildcard I could potentially see working for Sunak is to announce ID cards. Compulsory for claiming benefit or entering employment. Do it under the guise of a “national emergency” of a wave of boats etc. etc. If you’re being really cynical, throw in a dog-whistle unattributed rumour about recording birth gender on the card.
Labour couldn’t follow without splitting the party. Which is a problem in itself for Starmer, whose approach has basically been to shadow the Tories on most domestic issues and just fight on competence instead. It would be the clear blue water the Tories need.
To be clear I don’t know if it would work, and I don’t support ID cards myself, but as a last-throw-of-the-dice political strategy it has some gruesome merit.
Osama bin Laden was an Arsenal fan but worst of all so is Piers Morgan.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/689241-osama-bin-laden-the-death-of-a-die-hard-arsenal-fan#
We should allow/encourage refugees to work. We need them in the NHS, care homes, hospitality, building infrastructure. They are mainly healthy and educated. To keep them unemployed at great public expense with penalties on employers is frankly ridiculous.
We need to totally reverse current Home Office policy, clear out HO seniors, and face down the inevitable backlash from the extreme right wingers.
Realistically we need to understand that our efforts in this are completely pointless and instead work better on processing the arrivals. We couldn't stop crossings by small boats even in WW2 when we had a huge navy patrolling the channel, aircraft to strafe any boats we were suspicious of and minefields everywhere. What chance would we have now?
(And before somebody says 'ID cards' we had those in WW2 as well.)
Edit - it's also worth pointing out (not so much to Barnesian but to those obsessed with them) stopping 'small boats' wouldn't stop migrants who are determined enough, as this truly extraordinary story makes clear:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-latin-america-66384514
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-66450500
That isn't the case for this government. No policies other than ones that deliberately damage the economy, services and communities.
Surely it's only tribalism that sustains support? It can't be for policy. Or delivery. Or morality. It basic human decency. This government is immoral, and the people who can't see that are part of the problem.
I think it was the 2017 General Election when my mother surprised me a bit. She votes for various parties, and she was pissed off that the Scots (because it's devolved) were having something the English were not (I forget what, maybe free prescriptions or something like that).
Spending English taxpayers' money on Scotland, on a devolved matter, could be a much more serious mistake than it appears. It won't win the Conservatives Scottish support, certainly not much. It will aggravate a lot of people in England.
And if we had an English Parliament, this couldn't/wouldn't happen.
I also agree that there will be a determined minority, would wouldn't pass the test, who will find their way here somehow. A small minority who are de minimis and not worth us all stressing about.
The upside he ought to be offering is of being the sensible, reasonable guy in contrast to the dangerous ideologies who went before. But he’s blowing that by being forced to back all this nutty, dog whistle stuff, just as Hague was, and for the similar reason of inexperience coupled with desperation.
A worthwhile money spinner at a time the government is desperately short of cash. Could help make the asylum system self funding.
House price inflation is finally under control - if 'under control' is defined as being below 2%.
In reality neither is 'under control' as there are two many external factors influencing them but they are sometimes under an arbitrary limit set by someone or other.
Just hope Starmer does a good job because this will help guarantee him a second term.
There's an effectively unlimited number of people living in economically backward / politically authoritarian / religiously oppressive / climate threatened / violently failed states around the world.
He's the first PM we've had who believed in you know what before it was cool.
When Tories say Stop The Boats what they really mean is stop the migrants. The desired number of asylum seekers and refugees is zero. None. We're full. We're fed up with paying for them when we have so many of our own we don't want to pay for either.
It seems likely that the Tories and RefUKformKIP will be battling to win the ignorant racist vote. I genuinely can see the government saying "no migrants" as a policy. Then when Labour point out that is impossible, illegal, immortal they will scream SEE LABOUR WANT TO LET 14bn IN TO TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY.
What is even more depressing is that some otherwise sensible people - a few of this parish - will still find an excuse what they are voting for *that*.
The north London club has had a partnership with the African country's tourism board (Visit Rwanda) since 2018 and last year signed a £10 million-per-year sleeve sponsorship contract lasting four years.
1. Accept them into British society
2. Send them somewhere else including the country they originally came from
3. Incarcerate them indefinitely
The government doesn't want to do the first; can't do the second; the third doesn't solve anything.
It won't process asylum claims because the vast majority of claims are valid. It can't send people back in part because it hasn't identified who the invalid claims are. No third country including France thinks this is their problem rather than the UK's. So it falls back on incarcerating migrants as they come in, including possibly in Rwanda. This just means the numbers and the problem accumulate in a particularly expensive and toxic way. Eventually those migrants will need to be accepted or some way found to return them home.
By turning the migrants into an asset for the buyer they would have a financial interest in seeing they were properly fed, housed and employed.
Call it Lifetime Contract Labour.
I'm sure it would be much in demand from care homes, farmers and anyone who doesn't like working class full employment.
Set against that, Britain's success as a country has been fuelled over the centuries by successive waves of migration from the Huguenots onwards, each bringing their different contributions to the country.
One particular cruelty of the asylum situation, is that asylum seekers cannot legally work, while they wait years for their fate to be determined. They are supposed to subsist on £30 per week. They either have to work illegally, to get involved in crime, or to starve to death.
We knew someone about ten years ago who was in this situation. He had a masters degree in engineering from a top UK university (he had been legally in the UK to study) and spoke perfect English. He returned home, but then had to flee for his life following a regime change. Back in the UK he was unable to work and had to rely on the help of friends and charities for three years.
People need to be dealt with safely, humanely and speedily and while they are waiting for their case to be resolved they need the opportunity to do purposeful activity (language classes, work, voluntary work, etc, as appropriate)
OT : the boats will only stop when we cut off demand. Which can be done in a days work by Parliament. And doesn’t involve sinking boats, selling Africans on an auction block etc.
It would even fuck the business of those who use ultra low pay instead of investing in productivity.
It's not too late for you to get a job at CCHQ, you know.
or
House price rises but no consumer price rises or pay rises.
Each one affects different people in different ways.
But we've been led to believe that the first is disastrous while the second is beneficial.
So it's not racism. It's exceptionalism. Jingoism. Basic "we don't want anyone who isn't us" bigotry.
https://twitter.com/dpmcbride/status/1690475296288374784?s=46&t=rw5lNVUgmRPVyKpxfV_pPQ
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23607689.scotland-england-behind-nhs-waiting-list-divide/
The English NHS has prioritised eliminating very long waits over getting general waiting times down, compared with the Scottish NHS. No-one has spare capacity.
Never mind that the underlying issue is the hollowing out of local authority funding. Make it sound like council lavatory attendants still working from home.
Edit: but shortage of public loos is a very real problem. Ity was happening for years before covid.
So inflation was low (house prices don’t count, you see), Deliveroo was cheap. All good. For middle class people like me. Awesome that I’ve got the cuisine of 109 countries within a 30 min of my doorstep.
For those whose hobs went down to minimum wage, not so much. When you add in the steady, sustained refusal to build infrastructure to match the increase in population… well, something has got to give.
I advocate high skilled migration and high infrastructure build as well. For those, the other day, whining about barn conversions on the Yorkshire Moors - times have changed. Already.
We need 8 million more properties in the U.K. for the people who are here, right now. And you have two choices - one, go with it, build some nice towns. Or fight until the bulldozers will be coming for the bits of the countryside you like.
Personally, I’m quite taken with idea of a town on piles on Coniston Water. Do you want to wait until people start agreeing with me?
Probably before the 2014 indyref?
They want to work.
Which is why immigration is high, but asylum claims are lower than other parts of Europe. When you talk to the people working here illegally, many could claim asylum. But it is the last, worst option for them.
https://www.surveypractice.org/article/11736-sample-size-and-uncertainty-when-predicting-with-polls-the-shortcomings-of-confidence-intervals
Milton Keynes was outside my window. Build another three of them. One in Lincolnshire, one in East Yorkshire. One in the south west. Maybe more.
But actually plan the things. Where will people live. Shop. Eat. Go to school. How will they get about. MK works and that's quite old. Improve that and it'll be good.
An amazing opportunity. Not just another 300k homes but all those new businesses. All of the buildings need to be constructed plus utilities and transport links. Don't contract it out to Australians or offshore consortia. Form BritBuild and do it ourselves.
A vast amount of money tipped into the immediate economy as people have jobs building it all. Then the long term economic benefits.
Or, maintain the "we're full" line to provide succour to racists and morons.
I predict they will waffle about clamping down on illegal workers (will do nothing: lots of them want to work in the black economy); co-operating more with France (lol = paying France more money to allow the boats to keep crossing); setting up more legal routes to asylum (= pointless gesture as those refused will try coming by boat)
That’s it. Labour will be as ineffectual as the Tories with one difference. They won’t even try anything like Rwanda, which at least will save us embarrassment and cash as the Tories are too frit to push this through
What the F happens then I do not know. When a government literally cannot control its borders where will voters go?
So a Labour government had a problem. They had a bunch of white Zimbabweans being kicked off their land at gun point. And they were trying to head here.
So the word went out to the Zimbabwean embassy and consulate - deny applications.
Because of the large numbers of medical staff (and others) who come to the U.K. from Zimbabwe, there is a large section dealing with visa applications, passports etc. In Zimbabwe. This is largely staffed with locals. The pay is good, conditions are very good by locals standards - so they get a well trained, keen, efficient workforce.
So they stopped and delayed the applications. All the applications. Suddenly, uproar in London as the supply of nurses got cut off…
You see, no one had actually the balls to say “block the applications for the white people only”.
So the Home Office drafted some custom rules to try and exclude as many Zimbabwean farmers as they could, without having to actually say this.
The Trek Of The Nurses resumed.
One of these new rules way to claim that service in the British Army didn’t have any relevance for claiming the right to be in the U.K.
Some little time later, the Gurkha gent, who won the VC, wanted to come to the U.K. for medical treatment. Under the new rules he was barred.
There’s something about this story that makes me smile. It sums up the country, in a way.
Which is why I actually don't sneer at Garden Walker's original idea of focusing on public lavs. There is an issue there (you often can't find one in an emergency) and ok it's not sexy, it won't ignite either the red wall or the blue wall, but the solution (build more toilets and make sure they always have paper) is easy to get your head round and implement, ie it's exactly the sort of issue we need Rishi Sunak to concentrate on in his final year as PM.
It'll be good for him too since it will generate a legacy. Like David Cameron with his Gay Marriage he'll have something to point to when people ask him what of real lasting benefit there is to show for his time in office.
https://twitter.com/Parody_PM/status/1690650189554413568/photo/1
NHS waiting lists have increased. That one category, over 18 month waits, is down is a good thing, but it’s a limited success and not what Sunak pledged.
You can sometimes see fear. In the realisation that the contradiction must end. Each year the population grows faster than the increase in infrastructure.
Buy shares in JCB.
Because people like me see an empty horizon. And want to put a town and some villages there. Because I *like* the better works of man.
Besides, the SNP on “2” - lol - is the only interesting thing in this poll. UK politics is in some ghastly stasis. The Tories are destined to lose badly. Just hurry up and get it over with
Maybe we shouldn't have shut the country down for 18 months, eh?
And it is getting harder and harder to ignore the obvious causal connection between “adding millions of people to our population every year” and “oh god all our services are collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers”
600,000 net migrants last year. 600,000. Plus the boat people
I really should try and work out how best to ask the question but I suspect if you went to any council and asked them what percentage of their budget went on legally required essential services in 2010 and what percentage it was now the figures would scare everyone...
* Radar keys cost about £3-5 and are an essential item if you have children. It's literally the first thing we buy a new parent..
Joseph Bazalgette was exactly right. I recall someone sneering at the decoration on that pump house. A cathedral of shit, he called it. Then I pointed out that it was a part of saving of countless thousand lives. Many of them the poorest and lowest in society. That deserves a stain glass window or two.
Maybe we can’t get the number down to zero, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. There have been successful programmes and actions. It makes me wonder whether a narrative of learned helplessness is somehow more attractive to some who comment on politics. Someone I know who works with a Conservative minister suggests that there is a deliberate strategy to not resolve the situation for people seeking asylum in the UK such that you can have a scary number that keeps people voting Tory. I don’t know if I believe that, but the government does seem more interested in rhetoric than in doing anything.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/abbey-pumping-station-leicester-1997986
Also: see the average Victorian public convenience. And its modern equivalent (if there is one at all)>
How can this be? Grifters grift, troughers trough.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-12400033/Wilko-paid-77m-owners-collapse.html
You could cut the demand off in a day.
But as with the war on drugs, which could win before lunch, it’s politically unacceptable.
And there are cogent reasons, I suppose. Sections of the economy would stop as the workforce has to be changed to legal workers. Some businesses would die completely. Wage inflation would spike. And there would be the issue of a large number of people, out of a job and no way to claim benefits.
But we put up, at UK taxpayers expense, lots of fencing around the Channel Tunnel in France and in Calais which shifted the problem to hiding migrants in unaccompanied freight into east coast ports. Then lots of Vietnamese died at Purfleet which led to more searching at source ports (e.g. in Belgium) and you can trace the small boat commencement to a couple of months after the Purfleet deaths. The Albanains used to sneak in on Italian/Greek identity cards (easily forged) so HMG (using those post-Brexit freedoms - Yay!) stopped people using EU ID cards to travel to the UK - so the Albanians moved to small boats. They will be back in October-December when seasonal work in Southern Europe dries up for the winter. They just want to earn some cash to send home.
It's 'whack a mole' basically. If we do crack the small boats problem, which I think is only solveable if you disrupt the OCG supply chain of boats, outboard motors etc which stretches across Europe, the problem will appear somewhere else either invisble to the public, or in another visible way. Small boats is a problem because psychologically it is visible and plays to that British (and daft) 'never been invaded since 1066' nonsense.
The matter is undoubtedly complex but it is not beyond human ingenuity to improve things, and many work tirelessly to do so. On the other hand you have politicians and others trying to make capital out of a sensitive and difficult area. This is not generally helpful, and often it is not intended to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/13/the-holocaust-happened-on-british-soil-inquiry-into-nazi-camps-creates-bitter-divide-on-alderney
There doesn't seem to be any good reason for not finding out what's actually there.
As it happens I did notice the Scottish poll last week. SNP up 3 or something? But Labour close behind?
I thought it was a decent poll for Yousaf in the circs.
However the renewed outbreak of Salmondella in Nationalist circles can’t be good for the Nats
The tragedy for the Nats is that Salmond is likely still the best strategic political thinker in Nat circles - but he is also political poison, so either gets ignored or reviled
It's like everything else in this country. Half the population can't afford to pay any more in tax and the other half thinks it shouldn't have to pay anything at all.
On leaving the EU it was decided not to roll that EU benefit forwards, so we started back at zero, with recently having agreed with Albania to take their failed immigrants back we are a long way behind where we were in 2019.
“In 2021, enforced returns from the UK decreased to 2,761, 18% fewer than the previous year and 62% fewer than in 2019. The vast majority of enforced returns in the latest year were of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) and a majority were EU nationals.
“Enforced returns have been declining since the peak in 2012”
And:
“Asylum related returns accounted for only 3% of total returns in 2021.
“In 2021, there were 806 returns of people who had previously claimed asylum in the UK (see section 3.2 below for the definition of an asylum-related return). This is 49% fewer than in the previous year (1,587) and 76% fewer than prior to the pandemic in 2019 (3,332). This continues a downward trend since 2010, when there were 10,663 asylum-related returns. This sharp fall over the decade differs from non-asylum related returns, which were relatively stable until 2016, declined until 2020 and have risen in 2021.”
We’ve gone from 10663 asylum-related returns in a year to 806.
To understand why, then read https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-uks-asylum-backlog/ Figure 2 is like that famous figure in NHS waiting lists. With a bit of a lag, the numbers waiting to be processed goes up under the Tories and down under Labour.
[PB motto]
After the war, officialdom kept it all under wraps.
Whilst I harp on about how the right are weaponising stupidity and ignorance (cf today's MoS...), it isn't just them. The quality of our politicians has taken a marked downward slide in the last decade or so. But who would want to be an MP in today's 24 hour spotlight environment?