In Brexit Britain, Rishi Sunak still feels the urge to pursue his bizarre plan to address asylum and immigration via his flagship “Stop the Boats” programme. This, in spite of Sunak’s admission in 2022 that he thought the Rwanda plan would be ineffective.
Peter Cook*
He continues because his hard Brexit backers need to appeal to geriatric racists who feel that the decline in Britain’s fortunes is due to people fleeing from war zones. The Stop the Boats project is illegal, immoral, indecent and impractical, and one way to disrupt Rishi Sunak is through the ballot box in the UK General Elections via tactical voting and Swap my Vote to maximise the impact in an unfair voting system.
Legality
International law requires that people seeking asylum be offered a safe haven. Sunak has already indicated that he plans to break international law in order to deliver his plan for immigration. The Rwanda plan has already been tested in the courts twice in Britain and found to be unlawful based on concerns that the plan was unsafe.
Instead of respecting the rule of law, Sunak passed a new law declaring that Rwanda was a safe place for refugees. This is a bit like saying that you want your cat to be a dog, when it patently is a cat. So, you pass a law saying that cats are dogs. But they are still cats in reality. Is anyone fooled by this 1984 styled reality distortion?
Morality and decency
Britain used to be a place where one could expect high standards to be applied in matters of human dignity. The Rwanda scheme and the Stop the Boats initiative require that people be either incarcerated on prison ships or sent to Rwanda.
Once departed, it would be almost impossible for them to mount an appeal. Given that the vast majority of migrants are legal, this is an immoral act that defies all senses of fair play and decency.
Impracticality
It was recently revealed that all the hullabaloo about Rwanda is just that. Rwanda has suggested a capacity of 500 asylum seekers when the backlog is currently 99 000. This would mean it would take 198 years to eradicate the backlog! And it turns out that each asylum seeker will cost £3 million to send to Rwanda.
If that’s the cost, why not give each person that Rishi does not want £3 million, on condition that they relocate to another country? They would be literally made for life. I cannot think of a country that would not accept a multi-millionaire!
This gross waste of taxpayers’ money must be set against some other inconvenient truths: The vast majority of immigrants are legally entitled to be in Britain.
We have massive skill shortages and employment needs in farming, hospitality, health care, social care and other sectors including high tech. Many of the people displaced are highly skilled; and there is no need for these people to be locked in hotels and on prison ships.
The very small percentage of illegal migrants who present a real danger to society should of course be treated accordingly and either returned to their country of origin or imprisoned.
The Rwanda and Stop the Boats policies are ‘solutions looking for a problem’.
Sunak recently lied about the reductions of migrants coming to Britain in 2023. He presumably feels he has to do that in order to pray at the altar of Brexit for his right-wing factions in the Tory / UKIP / Brexit party and especially the voices of Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Lee Anderson, Steve Baker, Esther McVey, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel et al., who have poisoned the Tory party with 1930 Nazi Germany styled strategies of racism and xenophobia.
Sleepwalking into fascism
This film contains challenging images about Brexit Britain’s slide into a fascist state. We make no apology about this. Art and satire must reflect reality. How many more must die before decency is restored to our politics?
The 1950’s Sci Fi film “Village of the damned” provided a form of sad inspiration for this piece, in so far as the idea that the Tory party now sees itself as a master race who must survive at all costs.
History repeats itself too often if we let it… don’t. So those who agree that Stop the Boats is immoral, indecent and impractical should say ‘No’ to Rishi Sunak by voting in the General Election.
*Peter Cook leads Reboot Britain / Rage against the Brexit Machine. Author of three books on Brexit, six albums of protest songs, inspirational anthems and 400 films. He organises collaborative events online and grassroots activism “to educate people that Brexit has failed and that we can and must rejoin the EU as a priority”.
(Photos: Pixabay)
.jpg)
