In October 2022, then home secretary Suella Braverman disclosed to us her deepest yearning, her aching desire: “I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.”
Priti Patel, the previous incumbent, had negotiated the deal to transport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Rishi Sunak aggressively pushed the policy in his election campaign. Thus far, that dream has cost us taxpayers £700m. The plan was to waste a further £9.3bn on the wretched scheme. Digest the figures slowly, to avoid choking.
Mercifully, Labour has binned the policy and just announced that Bibby Stockholm, the barge where hundreds of asylum seekers are held, allegedly in poor conditions, will be closed in January.
The costly Rwanda commitment was made to placate fanatically anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-woke, anti-EU, “patriotic” voters. In the lead up to Brexit, they commandeered disproportionate political and media attention. They still do, apparently, because they are “the people”. So who are the rest of us then? Why are crude and cruel, reactionary and regressive voices prioritised over those who are liberal and open minded?
I have had viewers calling into the Jeremy Vine or Storm Huntley shows to abuse me because I don’t tolerate their odium of people on boats and migrants, or applaud their Boris Johnson fixation or condemn wokery. Most are from the working or workless classes whom I have defended all my life. One woman was so vicious, I cried on air.
Britain has long been a mosaic nation, diverse, in terms of class, colour, values, histories, life experiences, opinions and politics, but held together by fragile common bonds created mostly through personal relationships or shared geographies. Brexit impaired many of those attachments; as its negative impact is felt by those who voted out, they turn on various “enemies of the people”.
Millions of these perpetually angry citizens voted for Reform UK and that is putting pressure on the Tories to move further to the right. Braverman is their drum majorette.
In public discourse now, these right-wingers keep on claiming that millionaires like Nigel Farage and Richard Tice care about the dispossessed, disappointed sons and daughters of Britannia who have too long been neglected by the main parties. Rarely does anyone dare to question such assertions.
These “saviours” and their allies have sought to privilege these denizens and coerce the rest of us into accepting their terms of reference. We have to respect populism or be damned. I have never submitted to that unholy demand. You shouldn’t either. For populism is a curse. It has spread division and hatred, bloodline patriotism and menacing muscularity across the Western world.
Donald Trump in the US, Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France are persuading suggestible, emotive men and women that their very real anxieties and problems are caused by liberalism and multiculturalism.
In 2018, perceptive Irish writer Fintan O’Toole said this thinking is “pre-Fascism… Millions of Europeans and Americans are leaning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their heads, crossed the boundaries of morality.”
The Prime Minister vowed in the King’s Speech to thwart the “snake oil charm of populism”, unusually powerful words from a leader who has spent years courting populists. I trust he means it, and has the courage to do what he promises. The populism virus will only recede if people, who have lost so much since Thatcherism, have their life chances uplifted. This Government’s early words indicate they do get the urgency of that.
Pledges to increase the stock of affordable housing, restore rights for workers and for renters, and provide the best chances for children who have been kept down, out and hungry for so long, will, I think, draw people back to the centre-left.
Some years ago, I wrote Who Do We Think We Are? – a book about an imagined new Britain. Andrew Marr, in his review, wrote this: “She sways from optimism of the will to pessimism of the facts.” I feel those same opposing forces within me today.
Populism grows by feeding on anti-migrant hatred. Starmer’s government will have to repudiate that, set up fair and effective systems, and defend migration on ethical, pragmatic and cultural grounds.