Heroes: Civil War

 

 

‘What we’ve got here is failure to communicate 

Some men, you just can’t reach’ 

 

It’s finally happened, the government, or rather what passes for one, has slipped back into the blame-game, finger pointing, and disorganised chaos. 

 
At the heart of this is the spirit engendered by Brexit. The current chaos might be based around immigration, but the two are interlinked. With the ideological solution of palming illegal immigrants off to anyone who will take them, irrespective of the cost now in tatters. To date the government has wasted £290m, after a leading civil servant revealed in a letter that they had paid Rwanda a further £100m to send asylum seekers there, and not one has yet left the country.   

The chair of the public accounts committee, Meg Hillier, who received the letter, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘This is all something cloak and dagger behind the scenes.’ The committee had been pushing to discover what the real cost of the scheme would be. 

However, this time Rishi is getting his retaliation in first. Downing Street has signalled that Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, was responsible for the decision to approve an extra £100m payment to Rwanda this year. 

At the lobby briefing, a No 10 spokesperson told journalists: ‘The home secretary. It is an operational decision to release funding under the MoU’ [memorandum of understanding]. 

As I wrote in both ‘The Right Marches to the Tune of Anti-Immigration‘ and ‘Europe and the New Right‘, immigration is becoming a decisive and divisive issue for many political parties. Mainstream parties seem helpless as far-right politicians stir venomous xenophobia and race resentments.  

In the UK, Brexit was the catalyst for extremist politicians to exploit voters anxieties. Polls shows that whilst there is 47% public support for the Rwanda policy, voters have no wish to turn the UK into an international pariah. Only 22% support leaving the European convention on human rights, with 57% against. Opinion on immigration has softened. 

For the Tories, especially the PM, Rwanda has become an obsession that has totally split the party. As a result Sunak is having to defend his new Rwanda asylum law, and is struggling to hold things together, amid speculation that he could face a leadership challenge. 
 

‘Rwanda has become an obsession that has totally split the party’

 
On the left of the party there is opposition to the Rwanda policy, whilst, for the right, it doesn’t go far enough. The latter wants simply to put the asylum seekers on a plane to anywhere they wish, without interference from courts or treaty obligations. 

Before continuing I thought it would be helpful to explain all the factions with the Tory Parliamentary Party. The right of the party can’t seem to agree and are split into several groups labelled ‘the five families’; New Conservatives, the European Research Group, the Common Sense Group, No Turning Back and the Northern Research Group.  

The New Conservatives: created in May, C.25 members, predominantly from the 2019 intake including the party’s deputy chair Lee Anderson, and Miriam Cates, and total about 25. Many members are in marginal ‘red wall’ seats. The group’s co-chair Danny Kruger has pressed the PM to deliver the Rwanda deportation plan by ‘unpicking‘ Britain from a range of international obligations. 

European Research Group (ERG): Infamous for insisting on a hard-Brexit and ousting Theresa May, they have become active once again in terms of putting pressure on Sunak to take a hardline approach on Rwanda. 

Northern Research Group (NRG): founded by Tory MPs elected in red wall constituencies of England as well as Wales and Scotland in 2019, they prioritise investment in the north. The NRG chair, John Stevenson, said, it also sees immigration as a significant issue for many of the voters who elected the party.  

Common Sense Group: launched in the summer of 2020 with C. 40 members, who have been at the forefront of leveraging ‘culture war’ issues, they have been pushing for tougher action on both legal and illegal immigration. 

No Turning Back: established in the 1980 as an ultra-Thatcherite force; includes MPs who were cheerleaders for Liz Truss. John Redwood, is the group’s chair and has been consistently pushing a UK withdrawal from the European convention on human rights (ECHR) as a means of ensuring that the Rwanda deportation plan can be realised. 

Opposing the ‘Five Families’ are the ‘One Nation Conservatives‘ with C.106 MPs, they are regarded as the umbrella for moderate Tories. Some of its members had previously described overriding the ECHR as a ‘red line‘ and, as the bill has implications for Britain’s commitments under the convention, its MPs remain nervous about it.  

The subject of everybody’s ire is Sunak’s proposed emergency bill that will give ministers the power to ignore some judgments from the European court relating to asylum, while stopping short of leaving or ‘disapplying‘ the ECHR in its entirety. It is the last part that has vexed the Five Families, in its defence Sunak insisted there was only an ‘inch‘ between what they were demanding and what the Rwandan government would accept without the scheme ‘collapsing’ entirely. 

The Five Families fear that the legislation raises the possibility that the Rwanda plan would still be open to individual legal challenges under domestic law. This concern centres around clause 4 of the bill, which permits challenges in the domestic courts. As a result some maybe willing to vote against the bill if it did not incorporate any of the amendments they put forward. One was quotes, saying ‘I can’t see how we would support a bill that doesn’t achieve its purpose’. 
 

‘One MP described their colleagues as ‘batshit crazy”

 
Supporters of the PM are furious at the Tory right’s response. One MP described their colleagues as ‘batshit crazy‘ and added: ‘Not a single one of them is a true Conservative.’ 

One the other side, Sunak also faces a challenge from the One Nation group of MPs, who sources said were ‘very nervous‘ about the draft legislation. It is likely that the legislation will run into trouble in the House of Lords. 

Edward Garnier, who is advising the centrist One Nation group on the bill, said on Thursday he would vote against the bill. The legislation is ‘nonsense’, Lord Garnier said, adding that passing a bill to declare Rwanda is a safe country was like passing one saying ‘all dogs are cats’. 

There is one overriding principle that does unite Tories, tax cuts. Although, even then, they can’t agree on the severity or generousness of them. What most of us can agree on is, that their tax cuts always have a cost, typically a human one. 

Only last month, Jeremy Hunt pledged a wave of tax cuts which we clearly cannot afford, funded by an austerity drive of tens of billions of pounds. 

 

The last time they did this in 2010, spending by local authorities fell from 7.4% of GDP to 5%. The OBR estimates this will now drop to 4.6% by 2028. This, at a time, when demand for services such as social care to special educational needs, continues to grow.  

The reality now is that ‘there is nothing left to cut‘. Councils in England have already sold off 75,000 public assets since 2010 – from youth clubs to playing fields – to survive previous funding raids. ‘Discretionary’ services, such as children’s centres and museums, have closed or been left threadbare in many areas. Typically, the wealthiest were cushioned; the poorest councils have suffered cuts nearly three times higher than the richest over the last decade. 
 

‘Councils in England have already sold off 75,000 public assets since 2010 – from youth clubs to playing fields’

 
Even ‘core’ services, those that councils must legally provide, are also suffering as ongoing austerity has made the population sicker and poorer. The Chinese say that ‘a fish rots from the head‘, when central government shrinks benefits, local councils are forced to pay for more temporary accommodation because more people are homeless. When family support services are gutted, councils’ child protection bills soar and more children needlessly go into care. 

Perhaps the Tories have decided to practise what they have always left unsaid, being poor is your own fault, it your choice. Today, the only strategy for living in Britain, is simply to have the good luck to never need anything. 

Talking to people, there is a sense that its now down to the individual, you cannot rely on the state to protect you. Everyone seems resigned to the fact; NHS waiting lists are accepted in the same way as queuing for the bus. The same can be said for the fact that nothing seems to work anymore. 

A decade of austerity, Brexit and the pandemic has led to chaos throughout our political institutions, social fabric and economy, the Covid inquiry is proof of this. The last 13-years of Tory government has been reckless: with public money, public trust and public services. 

To reckless we can add cynical; Hunt’s tax cuts are simply a cynical means to hamstring a future Labour government. Green, sustainable policies have become a tool in their culture wars, rather than a necessity to save the planet. 

Councils on both sides of the political divide are struggling with effective bankruptcy. Last month, Nottingham city council became the latest to effectively declare itself bankrupt.  

By 2024/25, soaring inflation and demand mean local authorities will have to find an extra £15bn just to stay afloat, even before any further cuts kick in. Light blue Keir, meanwhile, assures voters that Labour won’t ‘turn on the spending taps‘. 

Small wonder that voters are disillusioned with mainstream parties, and look to alternatives. Both parties need to look over their shoulders, populism might be sleeping after Johnson’s demise, but ReformUK looks to many in the electorate to be that ‘alternative’.  

Come the new year expect to see more and more of Farage. 
 

‘Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future, 

Serve with justice 

And enjoy.’ 

 
Philip’s preamble is self-explanatory, but the situation it describes is so very far from pretty, and made all the more gloomy by his belief that Labour’s ‘answers’ would be depressingly similar to the Tories’.

Ahead of this week’s immigration bills passage through the house, I thought it worth examining the proposed legislation and why it has proved so divisive.

On one side of the Tory party there is the One Nation faction, who generally display a modicum of common sense and human decency. On the other are the so-called “Five Families” who display neither, amongst a slew of other failings.

The whole offshoring idea is based on cynicism. Other than the truly deranged, I suspect others are paying lip-service to it, in the realisation that it is neither practical, legal, or likely to be implemented before an election. It is nothing more than a tool to provoke Labour and to show them as being soft on immigration.

Whilst exploring cynicism, I thought it worth revisiting austerity. The latest dose is being implemented to fund otherwise unfunded tax cuts a la Truss. This time they are funded at the expense of those least able to protect themselves.

Unfortunately, I fear a Labour government offers little more. Austerity, tough decisions, etc., seem to be the order of the day.

Perhaps we do need to consider an alternative? Only I don’t see one!

Lyrically, I dedicate “Civil War” by Guns n Roses to the Tories. A better, and more apt tune than the nationalistic dirge that is Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, etc.. although the latter could be rerecorded as Land of No Hope and Former Glories!

Given that the Tories are so racially tolerant I know they will love “The British Poem” by Benjamin Zephaniah, the British poet whose work often addressed political injustice, who sadly died last week. Enjoy!

 
@coldwarsteve
 

 
 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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