Heroes: The Uncultured Wars 

 

‘We’re soldiers now in the culture war. 

We’re soldiers now, but we don’t know what it’s for‘ 

 
We start with possibly the most unsettling comment from a British politician in recent years. 

Ben Habib, the deputy leader of Reform, told TalkTV that the navy or Border Force should not rescue people who threw themselves into the sea if they had refused alternative vessels; the UK should ‘use force‘ to repel migrants in boats and could provide them with another dinghy if they jumped into the water. 

‘If they choose to scupper that dinghy, then yes, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions‘. 

Asked by the interviewer, Julia Hartley-Brewer, whether that meant he would leave them to drown, he said: ‘Absolutely. They cannot be infantilised to the point that we become a hostage to fortune.’ 

Habib questioned why that was ‘uncivilised‘, after the interviewer and said it was not a policy that a civilised country should endorse, saying there was no one in the ‘Border Force or the Royal Navy would do that’. 

Habid responded saying; ‘I’m afraid Border Force means using force at the border. If we are not prepared to use force at the border then we will have open borders … Border control is a physical process, it’s not a legal one. 
 

‘If they choose to scupper that dinghy, then yes, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions‘

 
‘We’ve been hijacked … You could have five dinghies or give them a boat which they can’t slash again, or you give them lifesavers and tell them to swim back. You could have any number of options to deal with the problem. 

‘What you don’t do is give in to the blackmail effectively of: we are here and we’re going to self-harm ourselves unless you take us to British shores. You don’t give in to that.’ 

Habib was born on the 7th June 1965 in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. His father is a Pakistani Punjabi and his mother is English, born in Isleworth. He emigrated to the UK in 1979. 

So far as my understanding goes, that makes him an immigrant, too. Perhaps people in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing bricks.   

In fairness to Reform UK, when asked if they shared Habib’s views as expressed on TalkTV about not rescuing migrants in some circumstances, a spokesperson for the party said: ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Our policy is clear and simple: pick up and safely take back to France’. 

Habib, I am afraid is typical of the level to which this country is sinking. We are being led there by a morally and politically bankrupt Tory party with a leader, who, in desperation, is moving further to the right. Sunak needs to be very careful, this only serves to legitimise people like Habib. 

One of the key tenets of Sunak’s government in recent months has been offshoring ‘illegal’ immigrants to Rwanda. A policy that was found illegal by UK’s Supreme Court, and which falls foul of both European and UN human rights policies. 

The Supreme Court found that Rwanda was ‘unsafe‘, however, after this week’s success, UK law now states that Rwanda is a ‘safe country‘.  
 

‘a morally and politically bankrupt Tory party with a leader, who, in desperation, is moving further to the right’

 
The focus now will be on the courts, where lawyers will try to have individuals removed from flight lists. The law allows for this if they face ‘real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious irreversible harm’ from being sent to Rwanda.  

Sunak has osmosed from spreadsheet techie to gambler, betting that the policy makes political sense despite potential opposition from the courts and the £1.8m estimated initial cost per deportee. Its appeal is two-fold; it plays on voters xenophobia by keeping ‘irregular migration’ in the news, and papers over cracks in the Tory party between hard-right populists and what remains of the One Nation centre-right. 

Whilst the bill goes some way to fulfilling Suella Braverman, ‘dream‘, the small numbers and the logistical challenges – not only in the courts but also on arrival, where the arrangements for processing and resettlement have yet to be tested – the scheme little more than political grandstanding, which will not resolve the issue of irregular migration. 

The reality is that there is no known means of preventing people from travelling to the UK either because they are desperate to escape persecution, or determined to improve on dismal prospects elsewhere. Ministers can denounce ‘evil people-smuggling gangs’ all they like, and it is true that unscrupulous and dangerous people are making money out of irregular migration. The sheer nature of the smugglers will mean that neither tough enforcement by the French, or deportations to Rwanda will make any difference. Whilst there is demand for their services they will keep supplying them.  
 

‘neither tough enforcement by the French, or deportations to Rwanda will make any difference’

 
The Council of Europe’s human rights watchdog has condemned the bill. Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, has described a ‘worrying global precedent‘.  

Labour calls it an expensive gimmick, which, whilst accurate misses the gravity of the situation. The UK has turned its back on over 70-years of international norms regarding refugees. Sunak’s rather sad piece of political grandstanding marks the point where we have disregarded hard-won systems of institutional respect for human rights. These rights were what our forefathers fought two wars for. 

Staying with the theme of immigration and racism, there is the former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, another racist of immigrant descent (her parents immigrated here in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius).  

This week it was reported that a decision she made whilst home secretary to drop three recommendations intended to repair some of the ‘monumental harm‘ done to the Windrush generation was unlawful, the high court has been told. 

The Home Office committed itself to a comprehensive improvement programme in response to the Windrush scandal, which had a severely discriminatory impact on a cohort of people who had lived in the UK since childhood, many of whom were arrested, detained, removed from the UK, or sacked from their jobs, made homeless and denied NHS treatment. 
 

‘Sunak’s rather sad piece of political grandstanding marks the point where we have disregarded hard-won systems of institutional respect for human rights’

 
The abandonment of key reform pledges was discriminatory and was one of many examples of broken promises made by the government to the Windrush generation, the court was told. 

As a result of the Windrush row, in which thousands of legal UK residents were misclassified as illegal immigrants, an independent review was commissioned from the solicitor Wendy Williams to establish what had caused the scandal and to ensure that it could never be repeated. All 30 recommendations for Home Office reform were accepted by the former home secretary Priti Patel. 

When Braverman took over she decided not to implement a commitment to organise a programme of reconciliation events, with meetings between members of the Windrush generation and senior Home Office staff and ministers so they could articulate the impact of the scandal on their lives. 

Braverman also decided not to appoint a migrants’ commissioner, who was going to be responsible for identifying systemic concerns and to act as an advocate for migrants, and she declined to change the remit of the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, with a view to giving the role more power. 

Phillippa Kaufmann KC, said Home Office staff became uneasy in the summer of 2022 when it became clear that despite repeated commitments from ministers that all 30 recommendations were being implemented, little progress was being made with some of them. One official warned that continued claims that the department was progressing with all recommendations risked going ‘against the civil service value of ‘honesty’‘ and recommended that staff needed to ‘amend our public lines to reduce the risk of the department being seen as ‘lying’’. 

The hearing before Mrs Justice Heather Williams is due to conclude on Wednesday with a decision expected in writing at a later date. 

Underpinning the Tories cynicism and nastiness, is the fawning media. With the advent of GB News they even have their own television channel, although Reform do also get support from this source. 

So much so, that Nigel Farage, the founder of the Reform will be allowed to present his nightly GB News programme throughout the general election campaign, Ofcom has confirmed. The only proviso being that he does not stand as a parliamentary candidate. 

Cristina Nicolotti Squires, the Ofcom executive responsible for broadcast regulation, said: ‘If [GB News] want to take that risk, that decision, to put a politician like Farage presenting a programme during a general election campaign the bar is going to have to be really hard in terms of due impartiality. Then we’ll have to decide whether the programme has been duly impartial. And we’ll act really swiftly.’ 

She was speaking as Ofcom confirmed GB News and other channels can continue to pay serving MPs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lee Anderson to work as presenters. The regulator concluded that the British public was ‘instinctively uncomfortable’ with politicians hosting current affairs programmes but there was ‘no clear consensus for an outright ban‘. 
 

‘GB News was found to have repeatedly breached impartiality rules by paying Conservative MPs hundreds of thousands of pounds to serve as news presenters and interview the PM’

 
The regulator has faced growing criticism over how it applies its rules to GB News and whether the channel is being treated more leniently than traditional broadcasters. 

Last month, GB News was found to have repeatedly breached impartiality rules by paying Conservative MPs hundreds of thousands of pounds to serve as news presenters and interview the PM. Rather than impose sanctions on GB News, the regulator instead put the channel ‘on notice‘ and warned it against further breaches. GB News has broken broadcasting rules on 12 occasions in the past 18 months, with a further eight investigations in progress. 

Andrew Neil, who helped found GB News before quitting shortly after its launch, told the House of Lords on Tuesday he was amazed politicians sitting in the Houses of Parliament could present political TV programmes. He said: ‘I just find that incredible and I think on these areas Ofcom needs to find a backbone and quick.’ 

All of the above can be categorised as being part of the culture wars. I find this a bewildering claim as the practitioners are a bunch of uncultured thugs. However, the good news is that the majority of the electorate seem equally unimpressed.   

A new report by the centrist thinktank More in Common both suggests that the culture war strategy may have run out of road, and that there are limitations in how the topic is framed (1).  

The report finds that if voters receive leaflets from parliamentary candidates promising to deal with real issues, such as creating jobs, saving the high street or fixing potholes, they are far more likely to read on than if they receive, say, leaflets offering plans to save us from immigrants masses or hordes of transvestites.  

The report suggests that voters believe politicians talk about divisive social and cultural issues to attract attention from more pressing issues, such as the economy and the NHS. A significant number wisely believe ‘they are only doing it to distract from the poor job they are doing’. 
 

‘Starmer is so terrified of being seen as Labour that he has jumped on the bandwagon, too, as we saw with his reaction to the recent England football shirt’

 
Politically, the culture wars aren’t going away; Sunak needs them to distract from the mess the Tories have created, and Starmer is so terrified of being seen as Labour that he has jumped on the bandwagon, too, as we saw with his reaction to the recent England football shirt. 

Populism, which the Culture Wars are an integral part of, has created some strange bedfellows, with those struggling economically find themselves aligned with the powerful. Brexit highlights this; remain united young voters from often less privileged background with the Etonian David Cameron, whilst leave bought together an ex-miner in Mansfield and Jacob Rees-Mogg. 

The worry must be what happens next, and we can see in Germany and the US that when Labour’s sister parties triumphed with similar political prospectuses, they swiftly became unpopular and the far right surged. Labour retaining a Tory fiscal rule that bakes in austerity risks driving more of the public disenchantment that was always at the heart of the post-GFC UK. That fury will have to go somewhere, and the danger is a Tory opposition defined by culture war will channel it in disturbing directions, much as Trumpism has. 
 

‘Labour will win by default with an unpopular leadership team and few answers to the country’s problems’

 
Ultimately, this is an issue that will generate strong responses and force the Tories on the defensive, thus dominating the political conversation. The danger, otherwise, is Labour will win by default with an unpopular leadership team and few answers to the country’s problems – and a new Tory party, perhaps taken over by Nigel Farage, will take the inevitable disenchantment to the darkest possible places. 
 

‘It could have been so much more 

The time has nothing to show’ 

 
Notes: 
 

1. https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/research/backfire-culture-wars-and-the-general-election/ 

 

This week we look at immigration, and the immigrant politicians that find it such an issue.

Ben Habib’s comment will live long in the memory as to just how bigoted and evil people can become. The fact that he has a place in any political party is a damning indictment on the parties.

The PM is doing his bit, having finally got his Rwanda project approved. It will be interesting to see how many he manages to deport, or whether the courts time him out. Either way, we will hear much more about this in the run up to the election and the campaign itself, which will plumb the depths of nastiness.

Really, all of this is so unnecessary. What’s the point? The Tories are done, history.

Sunaks’ latest wheeze is defence, ramping up defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. A choice he thinks it is important for Britain to stand up for its values.

Who’s he fooling? At best we can support others, but on our own? I wouldn’t back us to beat Ukraine.

To fund this he will need to raise extra money. He wants to still enable tax cuts, therefore something has to go. That something is civil servants, 72.000 of them.

Which begs the question; are they doing nothing so they won’t be missed? If so, why has this Eureka moment taken so long? Or, will these cuts mean that services suffer?

He says this announcement is consistent with the government’s ability to “keep cutting taxes”. Which assumes that the defence spending announcement does not mean that further tax cuts won’t be included in the Tory election manifesto.

Tbh, It really doesn’t matter. None of this will be implemented as he will lose the elections and bugger off to California. There has never been any point in him, and that is never truer than now.

Lyrically, we start with ”Culture War” by Arcade Fire, and end with “Time (Clock of the Heart)” by Culture Club. The latter I picked for two reasons; one, it’s about the best thing they recorded, and two, Boy George is the summation of just about everything the uncultured warriors hate. 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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