A real video nasty
This Green and Strangely Pleasant Land asks how low the government plans to go in clinging onto power by demonising immigrants
The supermarket-style canned music burbles in the background as uniformed immigration officers are seen bursting their way into a down-at-heel terraced house. They then bundle their captives out of the door into a waiting prison van. In the final image, the door is closed and firmly secured.
This is not a scene from a low budget movie but, incredibly, a video produced for the UK Home Office* ‘celebrating’ the first removal of allegedly illegal migrants in preparation for deportation to Rwanda. They will have no right to appeal and are banned for life from returning to Britain.
When I first heard about this short video I naively believed that it was probably put together by one of the rabid anti-immigrant groups who are busy stirring up hate. But no, this sordid little piece of propaganda has been issued by the UK government.
Have we really come to this? Has Britain, with its long standing reputation for fairness and tolerance, sunk so low that it’s government spends its time showing off its toughness credentials on people who suffered terrible hardship to reach these shores?
The video, hits all the spots that takes dog whistle politics to a new low. Asylum seekers are portrayed as criminals, bursting into their homes implies resolve in standing up to crime and the final image of a prison van door being slammed shut shows that the crackdown is working and that the guilty have been firmly put away.
The video was released just ahead of local elections, which, judging from the outcome, had zero impact on the fortunes of the fast sinking Conservative Party. A day before the poll the government also announced another triumph in the war against immigrants which consisted of bribing a single person to voluntarily leave for Rwanda. He was offered a cash payment of £3,000. But this is a fraction of the cost as the Rwanda authorities have to be paid off for accepting him, then there are transportation and settlement costs that dwarf the cash bribe.
This government, which bleats about how little money swirls around in the public coffers, appears to have no shortage of cash to pay for being tough on immigration.
The crazy scheme for mass deportation of migrants to Rwanda will probably cost some £500million. It is supposed to deter migrants from coming to the UK but given that, at most, there is only capacity for 200 deportations at initial stage out of the more than 52,000 potential deportees, it is hard to see how this scheme can have any deterrent effect.
But maybe this is to miss the point because what this is really about is nothing less than a proxy war within the ruling Conservative Party among a clutch of unedifying characters vying to take command of the sinking ship.
Suella Braverman, one of the motley crew hoping to lead the Tories once they have deposed the Small Rich Fella, appears to have pinned her bid on the scapegoating of immigrants. In an infamous speech to the party faithful in 2022 she spoke of her ‘dream and obsession’ being to pick up the front page of the Daily Telegraph with a picture of a plane full of asylum seekers jetting off to Rwanda. Oh my, how they clapped and cheered.
She may well eventually secure the Tory’s leadership. This prospect comes closer because the Conservatives appear to have abandoned their credentials as the guardian of conservative values in favour of painting a lurid picture of national decline. They convey a sense of blood lust requiring revenge as they retreat to the trenches of cultural warfare and xenophobia.
For all its talk of patriotism and British values, the Tory Party is increasingly moving itself away from the mainstream British traditions of toleration and fairness. The nation is not characterised by a blood thirsty mob braying for the blood of foreigners, nor is it sunk into a morass of violence on the streets. Most British people are proud of the basic values of a tolerant society, they are not gagging to abandon them.
Britain must, of course, have migration rules and control over its borders but this is best achieved by maximum cooperation with neighbouring countries and a sane policy of increasing resources for migration processing. There also needs to be a clear understanding of the tremendous contribution immigrants have made to our society.
The Tories deserve to lose the coming election, not least because the British people will not embrace a party that is drifting towards bitterness and will even stoop so slow as to employ public funds for petty little videos whose sole purpose is to appease their most extremist supporters.
To paraphrase Michelle Obama, the time has come to go high when they go low.