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Progressively taking soundings
The Guardian this morning says:
“Keir Starmer to launch progressive fightback against ‘decline and division’ fuelled by far right”
I can see the OED having to reassess its definition of the word “progressive” soon. More work for them — they’re already busy modifying “change”.
Anyway,
“Senior sources said Starmer had begun to spend significantly more time taking soundings from MPs … As well as spending time last week in the voting lobbies and tea rooms with MPs, Starmer hosted a delegation for breakfast in No 10 on Monday morning.”
I get why he would go to the tea rooms — taking soundings is thirsty work. And there’s no substitute for a traditional (English) breakfast to get you off on the right foot. But the lobbies? I thought you just went there to vote. Unless this is a bullying operation: “No, Richard, you’re in the wrong lobby. You want the progressive lobby.” It’ll get Keir nowhere though. Richard Burgon, the honourable member for Leeds East, knows the meaning of “honourable ”.
More work for the OED, though. On the definition of “taking soundings”!
No change
So I woke up this morning, noting a slight chill in the air. But nothing spectacular, either weatherwise or any other wise. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any change in the political scene at all.
Yet there is a flurry of headlines that think the opposite, and the BBC spells it out clearly: “Sir Keir Starmer is expected to announce the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state in a statement on Sunday afternoon.”
There are two main problems with this. One is that there is no Palestinian state waiting to be recognised. The other is that UK policy has long been to support a two-state solution. This would necessarily involve recognition. So, as of this slightly chilly “Sunday afternoon”, nothing will have changed. Yet we are to believe that brave Keir has looked at the situation over the last few weeks and, calling into play the courage for which he is justly famed, has “shifted” his policy in defiance of Trump. Bravo! But it’s all bullshit.
In any case, Netanyahu, backed by Trump, won’t be making way for a Palestinian state. There will be no Palestinians left in the West Bank or Gaza, when Bibi and Trump have done their worst; and let’s not forget that Gaza itself is set to be the new Riviera, set up for rich people who have become bored with Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo, with their nice clean beaches. The new, Trump-owned beaches of Gaza won’t just be clean: they’ll have been cleansed.
What more could you want?
No change from Labour, whatever the Observer says
The Observer article below welcomes Labour leader Keir Starmer’s statement on Labour’s approach to small boats, people smugglers, deportations and refugee policy generally. In contrast to the left’s view that there is little to “differentiate a possible future Labour government from the present Conservative one”, it claims to detect “a sharp dividing line between the government and Labour on asylum policy.” It says Labour is offering a humane, pragmatic and commonsense approach in contrast to the Tories’ populism and its “cruel, unworkable policy”.
The paper is right to say that the government has removed the right of all migrants who have arrived in small boats to claim asylum, when most of them would qualify for refugee status if they did; it is right to deplore the measures the government have introduced “to detain them until they can be deported to another country for their claim to be processed”; in the light of the government’s keenness to deport asylum seekers it deems to be “illegal”, the article is right to point out that no deportation deals have been achieved with any country except Rwanda (and the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the legality of that deal); it is also right to criticise the backlog the government has allowed to develop in the processing of asylum claims, so that “83% of claims made in 2018 had not been processed five years later”. The article is right to condemn the Tory policy package.
But the Observer is wrong to say that the “real difference” between Labour and the Tories is that Labour “would scrap the government’s unworkable and cruel detention and deportation policies, restoring the right of people to claim asylum in the UK.” It will do this, the Observer seems to believe, by investing in “1,000 extra case workers and a returns unit of 1,000 staff to process claims much more quickly and deport those whose claims are rejected.” This would work because Labour would come to a deal with the European Union (EU) “in which the UK would accept a quota of refugees in exchange for being able to return those who cross the Channel in small boats.” But even if such a deal could be reached, we would still be left, under Labour, with the same old “detention and deportation” policy. None of the refugees in small boats will have their claims considered here. If the Observer thinks that shunting vulnerable and desperate people around Europe as they wait for decisions on their future is what it calls “a far better approach”, so be it. The refugees may not agree. Moreover, in the same article, the Observer admits that “pan-European cooperation has never worked well in the bloc and has broken down further in recent years.” The Observer must know it’s clutching at straws.
But there is one thing Starmer has to do before we can believe in this tale of “differentiation” between Labour and the Tories on asylum. He has to commit the Labour Party to repealing the Illegal Migration Act 2022. While the Act remains, Tory policy remains unchanged. Unless it is repealed, there can be no “differentiation” between the parties. In its guidance to the Act, the government makes clear that
anyone arriving illegally in the United Kingdom will not have their asylum claim, human rights claim or modern slavery referral considered while they are in the UK, but they will instead be promptly removed either to their home country or to a safe third country to have their protection claims processed there. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/37/notes/division/3/index.htm)
Obviously the Act must be repealed. But both Starmer and shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock have refused to commit to repealing it. While it stands, so does the policy.
The article begins by setting the “Observer view” in the context of Starmer’s political approach as a whole. Keir Starmer, it says,
has made clear that under his leadership a first-term Labour government would stick to tough fiscal rules, and has ruled out making any unfunded spending commitments in the run-up to the next election. That has fuelled criticism from some on the left of his party, who argue that this has limited the extent to which he has been able to differentiate a possible future Labour government from the present Conservative one.
It says Starmer’s asylum policy makes Labour different. It doesn’t.
What that means for our voting intentions next year is up to us all. But it puts a very big strain on mine.
Urgent Question
It looks as if the government will legislate early next year for a complete overhaul of the immigration system so that more people can be deported more quickly and so that appeals against refused claims will be reduced to pretty much nil. This was made clear today during an urgent question by former Tory immigration minister Caroline Noakes. She became notorious when she was immigration minister for blocking asylum seekers from her Twitter page when they desperately tried to find out why she hadn’t replied to their letters. But today she was trying to sound horrified when she pointed out that asylum seekers were being put into camps in the UK without running water. But her real point seemed to be that they should be deported straightaway and not be accommodated at all. The reference to the absence of running water was slightly awkward for the immigration minister (a slightly jittery creature whose name, I think, was Phipp), who’d turned up with a line insisting that all accommodation provided was impeccable and in line with legally required standards. He kept repeating this mantra, or rather reading it out carefully, whenever anybody referred to the obvious dilapidation of many parts of what is called the “asylum estate”. But Caroline was no doubt pleased to hear that “in the next six months” a comprehensive overhaul would be given to “our failed immigration and asylum system”. The reforms would ensure that asylum seekers would be required to apply for asylum in other countries like France or Italy, “which are safe countries, civilised countries like ours”, “or indeed”, as one member put it, “like Greece”. If they turn up on our shores, they will be speedily dispatched back to the first European country they allegedly passed through (over, or even under) so that they can apply there. The reforms would likewise ensure that smuggling gangs would no longer be able to benefit from exploiting vulnerable people (nobody explained why this would be so, and the thought occurred to me that the reforms might make such exploitation more likely). Moreover (and this must have been important because lots of honourable members spoke about this), “greedy lawyers”, described by Sir Edward Leigh as “so-called human rights lawyers”, would no longer be able to “waste taxpayers’ money” on “spurious” appeals against refused asylum applications. Nobody gave an example of this practice.
So it does look as if Labour leader Keir Starmer will be presented next year with this test of his mettle. What will he do? I predict he will whip MPs to abstain in the early stages, put amendments later and, when they’re lost, he will whip MPs to vote for the legislation. That way, he will have “sent messages” to everybody, but at the end of the day he will have sent the message he most wants to send: that “Labour understands the electorate’s concerns about immigration.”
It’s a wicked world.
You’re fired! But why?
Here are some of the words of Maxine Peake in her interview with Alexandra Pollard in The Independent. Sharing the article and praising Peake cost Rebecca Long-Bailey her job as Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary:
“We’ve got to save humanity. We’re being ruled by capitalist, fascist dictators. It’s entrenched, isn’t it? We’ve got to the point where protecting capital is much more important than anybody’s life. How do we dig out of that? How do we change?”
Sounds like a good aim. Sounds like a couple of good questions. Nothing here that shouldn’t be shared.
“Sin is but a word,” says Thomas [a character in the film Fanny Lye Deliver’d, in which Peake starred], an imposter of the rich to get poor men in order.” “Well,” says Peake, “if you talk about the formation of religion, it’s about control isn’t it? And with what’s happening in America at the moment, it’s about financial control. It’s about keeping the poor in their place.”
If you “Like” this, and share it, and make a positive comment about it (“Maxine Peake is a gem” I think it was), there’s no reason why you should get the sack. Peake’s view on religion is quite common and has a lot going for it. She went on:
“I don’t know how we escape that cycle that’s indoctrinated into us all. Well, we get rid of it when we get rid of capitalism as far as I’m concerned. That’s what it’s all about. The establishment has got to go. We’ve got to change it.”
Nobody should get the sack for approving of this, surely. But actually, as we all now know, Long-Bailey got the sack because the article contained the following:
“Systemic racism is a global issue. The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”
Was it really these words that got Long-Bailey the sack? Well, yes, it was. Because Keir Starmer said they were antisemitic, and she had to go. But they weren’t antisemitic, were they? Criticising the Israeli state, or one element of the Israeli state in this case, isn’t antisemitic. There are many Jews who don’t always support Israel, and many who don’t support Israel at all, some for political reasons, some for religious reasons. When I worked for a Jewish organisation in London, we had, on either side of us as neighbours, two ultra-orthodox Jewish groups. On our right, an organisation that supported Israel; on our left, an organisation that was opposed to Israel (as it happens because they believed that Israel should not be brought into existence until the Messiah has come). The two organisations used to demonstrate against each other in the street outside and along the road. On one of these occasions, one of the managers in our office (she was Jewish) watched the anti-Israel group forming outside with their banners and slogans. “Look at them,” she said. “They’re so antisemitic.”
This is a recurring theme, that criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It isn’t. Starmer should understand this. He should realise that if he wants the support of a broad range of Jewish voters he will have to listen to more voices than the Board of Deputies of British Jews or the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. He should recognise his mistake in sacking Long-Bailey, reinstate her, and apologise.
He won’t, of course. Repeated accusations of “antisemitism”, however ill-founded, will help him destroy the left in the Labour Party, as will other convenient accusations as time goes on. We shouldn’t allow him to do any of it.
I was wrong. But my doubts remain
When Labour leader Keir Starmer asked the prime minister merely to lift the NHS surcharge on migrant NHS workers and carers but didn’t call for the abolition of the surcharge on all migrant workers, he was criticised, particularly by Labour Party members (including myself). When Sienna Rodgers, writing in Labour List, suggested that “The party hasn’t retreated policy-wise, it’s just that the new Labour leader reckons he should only pick fights that he has a chance of winning”, I posted: “Sorry, but he’s not going to win it anyway (remember that 80-seat majority).”
I was wrong. He won, not in a vote against an 80-seat majority, but because the resistance to Johnson’s plan encompassed not just the opposition parties in parliament but also a number of Tory MPs, as well as hosts of people outside parliament, including health-care workers, many of whom took to the airwaves and social media in protest. None of them could stomach the cynicism and callousness of Johnson’s response to Starmer’s question. Even Johnson, who has survived many embarrassments and many a scandal in his career, might not have survived the shame of this one. So within hours the U-turn began. There will now be no surcharge on NHS workers, including health workers, porters and cleaners, as well as independent health workers and social care workers.
So – well done Keir.
But Starmer also said later that he was in favour of abolishing the surcharge altogether (or his spokesperson did). So why didn’t his amendment to the Immigration and Social Security Bill say that? And why didn’t he say that at PMQs? Johnson would surely still have performed his U-turn on the health workers’ surcharge, given the widespread opposition to it that emerged everywhere, much of which he provoked by his statement (which turned out not to be true) that abolishing the surcharge for health workers would cost £900m.[1] So I still have to ask the question I asked in my original post: Why not go the whole hog, if he believes in it, and say “scrap the charge altogether”? And I go back to my original post: “Possible answer: he’s scared of the headlines that will say ‘Labour wants to flood Britain with migrants’.” But if that’s the reason, he has simply put off the evil day. If at the next general election the scrapping of the whole surcharge system goes into the Labour manifesto, he will have to face those headlines then and fight furiously against them. If it isn’t in the manifesto, he will have capitulated.
[1] “Figures from the House of Commons Library showed that £917m was raised over four years from all migrants paying the surcharge. The library estimated it would cost about £35m a year to exempt all NHS staff, and more for care workers.” (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/johnson-forced-to-drop-nhs-surcharge-for-migrant-health-workers)
“No, Mr Speaker, it wasn’t true.” Oh yes it was.
Did Boris Johnson, at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on 13 April 2020, lie and duck and dive about government advice on covid-19 in care homes?
In light of the high number of deaths in care homes, the allegation by Keir Starmer at PMQs was that
Until 12 March, the Government’s own official advice was [that] “It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected.”
Johnson replied:
No, Mr Speaker, it wasn’t true that the advice said that …
Oh yes it was. It did say that. In fact it said it twice, with slightly different wording each time. In a subsequent letter to Starmer, Johnson himself quoted from the official advice, but from a different bit of it, and included the preceding sentence, which Johnson put in bold type although it wasn’t in bold type in the guidance:
This guidance is intended for the current position in the UK where there is currently no transmission of COVID-19 in the community. It is therefore very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or in the community will become infected.
Starmer’s quote comes from para. 7 of the guidance: “Face masks”. Johnson’s comes from para. 1. But they say the same thing.
But Johnson’s point seems to be that, because the guidance was “intended for the current position in the UK” (i.e. the date when the guidance was issued, 25 February), there was nothing wrong with the advice. That’s a different answer to the one given at PMQs, obviously, but there’s worse. The guidance was issued on 25 February. On 28 February, the UK confirmed the first covid-19 transmission inside the country.[1] On 4 March, UK officials announced “the biggest one-day increase so far as 34 cases bring the total to 87.”[2] By 10 March, six people had died in the UK and 373 people had tested positive for the virus, including the UK’s junior health minister Nadine Dorries.[3] On 11 March, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak “announced a £12bn package of emergency support to help the UK cope with the expected onslaught from coronavirus.”[4] The guidance was only withdrawn two days later, on 13 March. Till then, the advice that it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or in the community will become infected” was current, operational, and deadly.
So yes, there was a lie in a Commons answer this week, ducking and diving in a letter, and a mounting infection-rate and death-rate among care-home patients and staff.
For the guidance see Guidance for social or community care and residential settings on COVID-19, http://www.gov.uk
[1] British Foreign Policy Group (BFPG), Covid-19 Timeline, http://www.bfpg.co.uk.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
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