The ugly and hateful side of this country is once again being revealed with the government’s latest wholly invented ‘crisis’ over migrants. An ambitious politician confects a crisis in order to boost his chances of succeeding Theresa May as prime minister and, as is the way in broken and divided Britain, he extracts the maximum possible advantage by preying on the fears of working people.
Sajid Javid has had a similar affect with his ugly campaign to stop a couple of hundred desperate refugees coming to our country as Nigel Farage had with his ‘breaking point’ poster during the EU referendum of 2016. It became legitimate to blame foreign people, particularly those with dark skin, for all our problems. They were to blame for everything that was wrong: an underfunded NHS, schools in crisis, a catastrophic increase in homelessness and rough sleeping, low wages – you name it, the only people to blame were people who want to come to our formerly green and pleasant land to work. Never mind the government, of which Javid is a member, which deliberately introduced crippling austerity which affected disproportionately the poorest and weakest people in the land.
Apparently, we cannot take in any more people because our country is “overcrowded” as it is. “Overcrowded” by whom, exactly? In certain parts of the country within a few years some 35% of the population will be of pension age and older. Who will pay for them? It seems the answer for many is people of working age, by way of higher taxes and by them retiring much later and by older people themselves by way of lower pensions and by paying for all of their social care. Just when people are arguing that we need a lower pension age and that there should be a new contract between the state and the people as to how the costs of social care should be met.
It’s the old arguments of the far right. When you get Javid complaining about these wretched foreigners coming over here and asking why they didn’t seek citizenship or asylum in the first ‘safe’ country they came to, why doesn’t he mention his father who came here to live from Pakistan? There must have been a few safe places along the way, but no, Mr Javid senior passed them all by because he wanted a new life in the UK. Just like those brown people trying to get from Calais to the UK. What a stinking hypocrite. If I had been around at the time his father arrived, I would probably have welcomed him to this country and later thanked him for his contribution. But then, I don’t care about the colour of anyone’s skin. And anyway, Javid has a gallery to play to.
The truth is that this is all rather sinister. The result of the referendum, whether you like it or not, has legitimised to a large extent racism and xenophobia. It became mainstream to blame foreigners for all our ills. Whilst before it was a few fascists and cranks, it now appears to be okay to be openly racist. Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the like ushered in a new era of hatred and I fear that genie will take many years to put back in the bottle.
Go back a century and imagine there were social networks in existence when my grandfather and his family came to Portishead from Norway to set up the Mustad Nail Factory. They’d probably be blamed for the practice of sending children up chimneys, polio and rickets. “Send them back in their boats, let them drown” would be the cry from the quayside. “Look after our own, first.”
This country is on fire now and sadly politicians only wish to pour fuel on the flames. This can’t end well.
