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Dodgy
Capitalism throws up all sorts of dodgy characters and some of them make a good living advising dodgy governments.
Enter Shanker Singham, former adviser on Brexit to Her Majesty’s government.
Whichever side of the Brexit argument you’re on, Shanker is bad news. His credentials are crap. He claimed in a Facebook profile, says The Guardian, that “he studied law at Oxford. However, his degree there was in chemistry.” Then there is a “biography”, “distributed by a former employer” (Sorry?) that says he assisted “governments in the early privatisations during the Thatcher administration”, yet his career began post-Thatcher (in 1992). Singham denies “that this could be misinterpreted”.
He’s right. It’s clear as day: in the words of Sir Robert Armstrong, Thatcher’s cabinet secretary about her, he was being “economical with the truth”.[1]
May didn’t take his advice. Instead her deal, he says, is “a damage limitation exercise”. That’s why he’s pissed off and touring the studios and editors’ offices. But in or out or somewhere in between, we should be worried. Because we need to find ways of holding governments to account for everything they do and for the way they do everything they do. We have had cause to lose trust in governments of all parties and in the machinery of government (the civil service). Labour governments had plenty of dodgy advisers and spin doctors (remember them?) It had a dodgy dossier that told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (remember that?). What we need is an end to dodgy characters and dossiers that capitalism produces from the depths of its bowels like there’s no tomorrow. And for a start, we need some integrity.
Enter Jeremy.
[1]https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/two-moments-of-legal-genius-which-tell-you-more-about-malcolm-turnbull-than-anything-hes-ever-done-in-politics/news-story/99b294dda251d4c3b7de3a5240c1b42b
Hypocrisy, two kidnappings and a wedding
Let me just say: this wedding of a royal personage to a “woman of colour” has taken place against the background of Theresa May’s continuing “hostile environment” for the Caribbean Windrush generation as well as for recent migrants. However much Theresa May pretends to be sorry, she hasn’t ended the hostile environment. Another man was jailed this week after responding to a government invitation, to people whose status has been questioned, to contact the authorities with a promise that they would be safe. He turned up at his MP’s surgery last week for advice, was given an appointment at the Home Office, and when he got there the police were there to arrest him, charge him with an offence of “handling stolen goods” allegedly committed (he says not) 20 years ago, and throw him into Pentonville prison before he’s even been tried.[1] That’s the British state for you, the state whose head is Her Majesty the Queen, whose grandson today got married to a “woman of colour”, an occasion described by the press as marking a sea change in British society.
There’s something else. Before the wedding took place, the streets of Windsor were cleared of homeless people. They sleep on the streets of Windsor, the town where the big castle is, because they have nowhere else to go. They were pushed off the streets by the police. That was an act of the British state too, whose head is, etc., etc.
Why do I emphasise that it was the British state doing all this stuff? Because the “hostile environment” has existed no matter what government has been in power. In the 2000s, when the Labour government was in power, it operated an “agenda of disbelief” and set targets for the deportation of refugees, who were assumed to be guilty of lying unless they could prove they were innocent. Where possible, the state made sure that they were deported before they got the chance to prove their innocence. It’s now happening today under the Conservatives.
My point is this: a couple of weeks ago Theresa May apologised on behalf of the state for being party to the “rendition” and torture of two British citizens, dissidents from Libya, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife Fatima Boudchar. They were handed over to Gaddafi in 2004 as a reward for the Libyan state’s cooperation with the British state on a number of issues. May wasn’t apologising for the Conservatives, because these events took place during Tony Blair’s Labour government, when Jack Straw was Foreign Secretary. She was apologising for the state. If Jeremy becomes prime minister, he and his government will be put under the same pressure to do the bidding of the state, especially the security services (MI5, MI6), and powerful civil service bureaucrats, in all sorts of different areas of policymaking. It’s unlikely, to say the least, that Blair and Straw put up any resistance at all to the Belhaj “rendition”. Labour Home Secretaries like David Blunkett didn’t resist when it came to the agenda of disbelief. Jack Straw, when he was Home Secretary in 1998, seemed keen for a while to have former Chilean dictator Pinochet extradited to Spain to be tried for crimes against humanity. But his resolve failed after 16 months of argument (while Pinochet was held under luxurious house arrest in a large country mansion). A secret medical report was produced, allegedly stating that the General’s deteriorating health made him unfit to stand trial. He was allowed to go home to Chile. Duncan Campbell later wrote:
When Pinochet arrived in Chile, he magically abandoned his wheel-chair in a gesture that was widely seen as an indication that he had fooled the English doctors who had examined him and proclaimed him unfit.[2]
Jeremy will resist. Successfully? Who can tell? But he could put down a marker now, so that they know. During the Belhaj apology, he and his front bench sat there looking grim and embarrassed and then thanked the government for the apology! But he could do more. Soon after he became Labour leader, he apologised on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq war. He had never supported it. He was at the head of the anti-war movement. But he apologised for the war because it happened under a Labour government.[3] Perhaps he should apologise now, on behalf of the Labour Party, for the treatment of Mr Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar. And perhaps that will make it easier when he comes to resist future demands from his officials to commit high crimes and misdemeanours.
[1] His MP, David Lammy, tweeted to Home Secretary Sajid Javid: “Your officials asked to come to my constituency surgery. Your officials asked for my advice on an outreach strategy because people are too scared to come forward. My constituent followed your advice and went to his interview. The police were waiting with handcuffs to arrest him.” https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/997576317913780226
[2] The Guardian, 11 December 2006: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/11/post783
[3] The Guardian, 6 July 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2016/jul/06/jeremy-corbyn-apologises-for-iraq-war-on-behalf-of-the-labour-party-video
The Tory hostile environment continues – but Labour must face up to its past
No sympathy should be wasted on Amber Rudd. Her role in the Windrush scandal can be dealt with swiftly. According to the Home Office memo sent to Rudd and other ministers:
- The Home Office set a “target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18 … we have extended our target of assisted returns[1]
- This target set the government on a “path towards a 10% increased performance on enforced returns, which we promised the Home Secretary earlier this year.”[2]
- Rudd set the target “personally”.[3]
So her responsibility for what happened is established and her claim to know nothing about targets is rubbish.
However, this isn’t just about the Windrush generation or even their descendants. The injustice done to them is manifest and for many of them a tragedy. But this story of targets goes wider than this particular scandal. It is about a very real and ongoing hostility at the Home Office towards migrants in general and asylum seekers in particular.
The memo cited above speaks of “assisted returns”, a category which certainly does include asylum seekers. “Typically”, says the memo, “these will be our most vulnerable returnees.”[4] The use of the word “vulnerable” does not indicate sympathy any more than talk of “assisted returns” indicates a helpful approach. When Home Office officials use the word “assisted” it means the same as when they use the word “enforced”.[5] It means you’ve got to go, we don’t believe you, we don’t want you, didn’t you understand the message on Theresa’s big van? – GO HOME.
I described what happens when you are in the hands of the Home Office in earlier blogs.[6] As I said in these blogs, during my research as long ago as 2007 I found that what was called an “agenda of disbelief” had permeated the asylum process. This was encouraged by section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004, which obliged “a deciding authority” to “take account, as damaging the claimant’s credibility, of any behaviour” specified as such. I gave several examples of how, in the frantic rush to find “credibility issues”, Home Office officials forgot the UN Guidelines urging them to give, wherever possible, “the benefit of the doubt” to asylum seekers’ accounts of persecution or torture and instead set up what asylum support and human rights groups called an “agenda of disbelief” which enabled them to cast doubt on the stories told by large numbers of applicants who had indeed been persecuted or tortured.[7]
The focus today is not on section 8 of that Act but on paragraph 322(5) of the Immigration Rules. Caseworkers are using this paragraph to justify refusing indefinite leave to remain (ILR) to 1,000 highly skilled migrants by claiming they are guilty of lying in their applications, typically about their incomes or their tax records. Growing numbers are taking their cases to court – and winning. According to The Guardian, among the cases waiting to be resolved are
a former Ministry of Defence mechanical engineer who is now destitute, a former NHS manager currently £30,000 in debt, thanks to Home Office costs and legal fees, who spends her nights fully dressed, sitting in her front room with a suitcase in case enforcement teams arrive to deport her, and a scientist working on the development of anti-cancer drugs who is now unable to work, rent or access the NHS.[8]
Saleem Dadabhoy is unlikely to become destitute or fall into debt, since he is
a scion of one of the wealthiest families in Pakistan, [facing] deportation under [para.] 322(5) despite three different appeal courts having scrutinised his accounts and finding no evidence of any irregularities, and a court of appeal judge having ruled that he is trustworthy and credible.[9]
Others connected to him, however, might well face debt or destitution: if he were to be deported, 20 people employed by him would lose their jobs and the company (worth £1.5m) would close.
It has become clear that all this is the result not just of Amber Rudd’s time at the Home Office but of Theresa May’s creation of a “hostile environment” when she was in the same job. However, it goes back further than that. The examples I have given of the “agenda of disbelief” relate to Labour’s time in office. The hostile environment, in fact, goes back to Tony Blair, who set targets for asylum seeker deportations, and to Home Secretary David Blunkett, who had kids separated from their parents and put into local authority care in order to persuade their parents to go home when they were afraid to do so. Rod McLean, Head of Asylum Policy at the Home Office in 2006, told me this was because Blunkett was making policy “with an eye to the media”, who wanted tougher measures on removals. He then told me the policy would be abandoned “because it hasn’t worked”. I asked him, “When you say it hasn’t worked do you mean that, instead of waiting for you to take their children away, they just disappear?” “Yes,” he said. Unfortunately the policy wasn’t abandoned – it remained on the statute book.[10]
I believe that Labour not only has to blame the Tories for the “hostile environment” but own up to its own past, when it presided over an “agenda of disbelief”, in which asylum seekers were considered guilty until proved innocent. Because if Labour doesn’t recognise its past it will be in danger of repeating it. This is not to cast doubt on Corbyn’s best intentions – but the tabloids are still there, and so are the successors of Rod McLean.
Immigration Rules, para. 322: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-part-9-grounds-for-refusal
[1] “Amber Rudd was sent targets for migrant removal, leak reveals”, The Guardian¸ 28 April 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/27/amber-rudd-was-told-about-migrant-removal-targets-leak-reveals
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., see the “Q & A” box, “What are enforced departures?”
[6] https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/the-secretary-of-state-still-doesnt-believe-you-2/
https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/inappropriate-behaviour/
[7] See Dealt with on their Merits, pp.151-162: https://hydra.hull.ac.uk/assets/hull:2678a/content
[8] “At least 1,000 highly skilled migrants wrongly face deportation, experts reveal”, The Observer, 6 May 2018:
[9] Ibid.
[10] See Dealt with on their Merits, pp.220-221: https://hydra.hull.ac.uk/assets/hull:2678a/content
Kensington, Finsbury Park, and a history of disrespect
They warned about fire, several times: they were ignored;
the block went up in flames: an uncounted number of them died (survivors have been warned the dead may never be properly counted);
the council that owned the block went invisible and residents were left to support each other: they did so;
the community went to look for the council: the council officers locked the front doors and slunk out the back;
a prime minister turned up and talked to the fire chief: she went away again without talking to anybody else;
she came back the next day after protests, but it was too late: they shouted at her and called her names;
the survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire and local residents said they wanted a wide-ranging inquiry into the fire (its causes and the culprits as well as the details of what happened): they haven’t got it;
they wanted a say in who should chair the inquiry: they haven’t got it;
the prime minister appointed a retired judge whose record on standing up for residents against the arbitrary decisions of their local council is non-existent: he decided in favour of Westminster council when they rehoused tenants 50 miles from Westminster. The tenants appealed against the decision and won. When Kensington tenants tried to explain to him yesterday why they had no confidence in his judgment he seemed incapable of grasping the point.
The thing is: the days have gone (if they ever really existed) when grey-haired and grave-faced judges automatically inspired trust. They don’t. They inspire suspicion and contempt. Sir Martin Moore-Bick is, of course, incapable of recognising why that is. He just thinks people are being difficult (they’re tower-block people after all). He just thinks they’re ignorant. But they know they’re not. They’ve had years of experience of being treated like shit by people like him. They want him out. They want a proper inquiry, where they choose who they trust and ask all the questions they want to ask until they’re satisfied with the answers.
What’s going to happen? Who knows? I wish I was in London. I may go down there next week and take up Ben Okri’s challenge to “Go see the tower”. There’s somewhere else I want to go too: Finsbury Park, where the Islamophobic attack took place last week. I’ve known Finsbury Park all my life. It’s been called rubbish all that time, but its people have survived. And it isn’t just fascists who target the population there. The Blair government requisitioned one of the hotels there (the Pembury) and turned it into a detention centre for refugees they were preparing to deport. Outside, it still looked like a hotel. Inside, asylum seekers were treated like shit, their life stories disbelieved, their warnings of further persecution if they were sent back ignored, like the warnings of fire in Kensington. But my friends who were in the Pembury (Arben and Mira from Kosovo and their two children) survived. The Imam and his congregation at the mosque will survive too. So will the despised people of Kensington. I hope they get their proper inquiry. I don’t think they’ll settle for less.
The Trump-May axis
No charm, no mercy
Theresa May is, apparently, on a “charm offensive” towards Donald Trump. What that means can only be guessed at. But President-elect Trump won’t be displeased with the decision of Theresa’s Home Secretary in the case of Lauri Love.
As The Guardian reports today, Lauri is accused of “stealing large amounts of data from US government agencies such as the Federal Reserve, the army, the Department of Defense, Nasa and the FBI in a spate of online attacks in 2012 and 2013.” He hacked, so it is said, into all those websites. And the US government wants him extradited to stand trial in America.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that America prosecutes people who penetrate their secret parts, although I have to confess I wish I was clever enough to do it myself. And Lauri “is accused of causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage”. I’m not sure how that could be true, but if it is you can see how it would make them cross.
The problem, though, is that Lauri is not only a clever man, he’s also a very unwell man. He suffers from Asberger’s syndrome, and he suffers from depression and eczema. If he is extradited, his lawyers say, he could face up to 99 years in prison. It is argued that the process of extradition, trial in a foreign country and the prospect of a long prison sentence would have a detrimental effect on his mental health and could lead to suicide. The danger of this is undoubtedly increased by the fact that he could face proceedings, not just once, but in three different US jurisdictions.
What’s the alternative? He could be tried here, be allowed bail, and have the support of his close family and support network.
On 16 September Lauri lost his legal challenge against extradition. District judge Nina Tempia said that, while she agreed that he had mental health problems and physical problems, he could be cared for by the “medical facilities in the United States prison estate”, and that they were adequate for the task. One possible problem with that, of course, is that he might be dead before he got to the medical facilities or they got to him.
However, Home Secretary Amber Rudd had the humanitarian solution to this problem in her own hands. She could block the extradition. She even had an example to follow. In 2012, Theresa May, who was then Home Secretary, blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon, who was also charged with hacking into American secrets, and who also suffered from Asberger’s syndrome. At that time, Joshua Rozenberg explained in The Guardian that Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention “says that no one shall be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” He argued that she had little choice but to block the extradition. Today, Theresa May’s own Home Secretary did the opposite: Amber Rudd signed an order for the extradition of Lauri Love. There was no sign of Article 3. She did this in spite of the following appeal to her from Lauri’s solicitor, Karen Todner:
“We … urge you to recognise that this is a case where the risk to Mr Love’s life arising from extradition is so great that it would be entirely justified for you to make your own representations to your US counterpart to withdraw the extradition request because a domestic prosecution in England would permit justice to be done and remove the severe risk to Mr Love’s life.”
Plea ignored.
Do I think this was part of Theresa’s charm offensive towards Trump? Not really. I do think it’s a sign of the harsher world we live in and the clear move to the Right we are seeing on both sides of the Atlantic. We need to find a way to stop it getting worse.
Lauri has 14 days to lodge an appeal. Let’s hope he wins.
Here’s the Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/nov/14/amber-rudd-approves-lauri-love-extradition-to-us-on-hacking-charges?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=199726&subid=12991040&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
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