The home secretary has cancelled his Christmas break to the charge of the ‘major incident’ that has seen 200 or so migrants attempt to cross the English Channel in rickety boats and dinghies. These desperate people will have in all likelihood paid traffickers to take them to the promised land, or at least the land they have been told will enable their dreams to come true. Sending desperate people across one of the busiest shipping lanes on the planet in vessels that are wholly unstable for a channel crossing, eh? What utter scumbags. But don’t worry, Sajid Javid, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, is on his way home to sort it out. Or will he?
The reality is that no matter how clever he is, Javid is no more an expert on such matters than your average passenger on the Clapham omnibus, which may or may not be driven by Javid’s father. He relies, as all politicians do, on experts. The politician who discards experts – I give you the name Michael Gove as an illustration – causes mayhem in his department. And Gove turned schools into little more than exam factories. But you know exactly what will happen with the migrants. The navy will be sent in, with the border agency, who will apply a little sticking plaster.
Meanwhile, Theresa May’s government is not so concerned about any other kinds of ‘major incidents’. Certainly not the 170k of children who are being put up in all manner of temporary accommodation because their families have nowhere to live. No need to get the minister to come home to sort it out. In any event, enough homeless children to fill Wembley Stadium twice is not as big a news story as a couple of hundred desperate foreign people, who may well have dark skin, trying to find somewhere safe to live. Double standards doesn’t go close.
Decades of blaming foreigners, whether they are refugees, asylum seekers or just ordinary folk looking for work, has made many of us look at the very idea of migration as A Bad Thing. Politicians of all colours have played the migration card, including the Magic Grandpa himself, Jeremy Corbyn, who enthusiastically supports Nigel Farage-type dog-whistle racism when demanding the end of free movement in Europe. No one is innocent.
By all means, deal with the migration issue that’s currently happening in the English Channel but a ‘major incident’ it ain’t. 170k children with nowhere to call there own is definitely a major incident but does anyone really care?
