Current Affairs The Conservative Party
- Thread starter Ashtonian
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PMQs is a terrible spectacle. I mean I kinda doubt any of them really care about the electorate anyway, but when they laugh and joke about whilst discussing things that are pretty important for many people, it just creates an impression of a political class completely out of touch.
The Tories seem to forget it is about British citizens being deported and not allowed back into their country. It is about British citizens threatened with deportation because of May's hostile 'where's your papers' environment targeted them, black Britons, deliberately.
Who are the Windrush generation and why were they threatened with deportation?
Apr 30, 2018
New Home Secretary Sajid Javid and the Prime Minister are facing awkward questions
Twitter
MV Empire Windrush arrives as Tilbury Docks in June 1948
Theresa May is facing growing pressure following the resignation of her home secretary last night in the wake of the Windrush scandal.
Amber Rudd sent a letter to the Prime Minister announcing that she was stepping down because “I inadvertently misled the Home Affairs Select Committee over targets for removal of illegal immigrants during their questions on Windrush”.
“Downing Street has been as tin-eared on this whole awful episode as the Home Office,” says HuffPost’s Paul Waugh.
And No.10 will be further worried by the assessment of 60-year-old Anthony Bryan, a former Windrush migrant who has spent a total of five weeks in detention centres despite having lived in the UK for more than 50 years, according to The Guardian.
“I feel like I helped bring down the Home Secretary. I feel sorry for her in a sense because it looks like she is taking the punishment for Theresa May”, Bryan said.
But “the circumstances of Rudd’s exit aren’t, actually, as bad for May as they ought to be”, says the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush, since “Rudd hasn’t quit over the Windrush scandal” but because she misled the Commons committee about whether the Home Office had deportation targets.
The question of targets “moves the conversation around Windrush on to territory where the Government has public support - the general existence of immigration targets - and away from one where it is weak: the specific mistreatment of Commonwealth Britons”, Bush continues.
But questions over the PM’s judgement remain. Caroline Slocock - who served as Margaret Thatcher’s private secretary on home affairs - told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last week that the real issue was May’s immigration policy, “which is simply wrong”.
“Britain’s immigration policy is in a mess,” says The Sunday Times’s Andrew Gilligan, “with some blaming a hard-line culture that grew up at the Home Office when the PM was in charge there.”
To “look at the Windrush scandal is to vividly see institutional racism at work”, adds The Guardian’s Hugh Muir.
May’s government “pursued and defended a policy that in its application, discriminated - not wholly but in large measure - against black Britons”, Muir says.
Who are the Windrush generation?
The group comprises British citizens who came to the UK from the Commonwealth as children following the Second World War, and whose rights were guaranteed in the Immigration Act of 1971.
Named the Windrush generation after British ship the Empire Windrush, which arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex with 492 Caribbean passengers in 1948, “many have made the UK their home for their entire lives”, says the Channel 4 News website.
However, under new immigation laws, these people must now prove continuous residence in the UK since 1973, something that has turned out to be almost impossible for those who have not kept up detailed records.
As a result, some are being denied access to state healthcare, made redundant from their job and even threatened with deportation, The Guardian reports.
BBC Newsnight
✔@BBCNewsnight
https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/986361271648862208
Junior Green was not allowed to return to the UK for his mother’s funeral even though he has lived in the UK for 60 years, his sister tells @JamesClayton5 the family “couldn't believe it” #newsnight
10:50 PM - Apr 17, 2018
Guy Hewitt, the high commissioner for Barbados, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he feels that the UK is saying to “people of my region: you are no longer welcome”.
Why is this happening?
The problem follows the ending of a previous system of Commonwealth citizenship and free movement, when status was conferred by law on people to safeguard them but some did not acquire the necessary papers, according to immigration law blog Free Movement.
This lack of papers was then exacerbated by May’s “hostile environment policy, under which landlords, hospitals, businesses and civil society have been forced to proactively prove that their employees, tenants and service users have the right to be in the United Kingdom”, says the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush.
The policy was introduced to achieve the Government’s lower migration targets, by making “living in the UK so unbearable that immigrants will decide to leave of their own accord”, says Bush.
Colin Yeo
✔@ColinYeo1
16 Apr
Replying to @ColinYeo1
4/ Since 1996 employers had to check employee immigration papers *in theory*. New laws in 2006 started to enforce this with big fines. But these privatised immigration checks were still limited in scope.
Colin Yeo
✔@ColinYeo1
5/ In 2012 T May announced the “hostile environment” and brought it into law with Immigration Acts 2014 and 2016. Now landlords, banks and public servants had to do “papers, please” checks on other citizens. Explainer: [URL='https://t.co/rHUXNnc7Jt']https://www.freemovement.org.uk/hostile-environment-affect/ …[/URL]
8:37 AM - Apr 16, 2018
Everything you need to know about the "hostile environment" for immigrants - Free Movement
What is the hostile environment? The “hostile environment” for migrants is a package of measures designed to make life so difficult for individuals without permission to remain that they will not...
freemovement.org.uk
Polly Mackenzie@pollymackenzie
https://twitter.com/pollymackenzie/status/986286517046988801
Replying to @pollymackenzie
Right from the start, Theresa May’s mission was to make it systematically difficult to get by without papers.
5:53 PM - Apr 17, 2018
What “seemed like a politically savvy policy of creating ‘very hostile environments’ for illegal immigrants now looks like a tin-eared, uncaring threat to people with every right to be here”, says The Times’s Matt Chorley.
Baroness Warsi agreed. “What happened, unfortunately, during those years and has continued is that we had an unhealthy obsession with numbers,” she told told ITV’s Peston on Sunday. “We were wedded to unrealistic migration targets, targets that we still haven’t met unfortunately a decade on – and yet we continue to remain wedded to targets.”
What happens next?
Rudd had said that all Windrush-generation immigrants will be granted the citizenship papers to which they are entitled, and that application fees will be waived. Those who have suffered as a result of the policy change will also receive compensation.
But the “full price of the Government's mistreatment of the Windrush generation could yet be higher than anyone expects”, says Stephen Bush.
May “has been badly exposed by the Windrush affair, which is difficult to see as anything other than the responsibility of whomever was home secretary between 2010 and 2016”, says Politico’s Jack Blanchard.
The PM’s standing with regards to Brexit has also been affected by the row.
The European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhoftstadt, has told The Daily Telegraph that the Windrush controversy “could be worrying for millions of EU citizens in the UK who may fear that they could face similar treatment after Brexit”.
“No one looking at the Windrush row could fairly claim not to understand why many in the European Parliament want a continuing role for the European Court of Justice as a guarantor of citizens' rights after Brexit,” says Bush.
And that “increases the chances of a Brexit deal that is either difficult for May to pass, or one that is rejected by members of the European Parliament,” Bush concludes".
Who are the Windrush generation and why were they threatened with deportation?
Apr 30, 2018
New Home Secretary Sajid Javid and the Prime Minister are facing awkward questions
MV Empire Windrush arrives as Tilbury Docks in June 1948
Theresa May is facing growing pressure following the resignation of her home secretary last night in the wake of the Windrush scandal.
Amber Rudd sent a letter to the Prime Minister announcing that she was stepping down because “I inadvertently misled the Home Affairs Select Committee over targets for removal of illegal immigrants during their questions on Windrush”.
“Downing Street has been as tin-eared on this whole awful episode as the Home Office,” says HuffPost’s Paul Waugh.
And No.10 will be further worried by the assessment of 60-year-old Anthony Bryan, a former Windrush migrant who has spent a total of five weeks in detention centres despite having lived in the UK for more than 50 years, according to The Guardian.
“I feel like I helped bring down the Home Secretary. I feel sorry for her in a sense because it looks like she is taking the punishment for Theresa May”, Bryan said.
But “the circumstances of Rudd’s exit aren’t, actually, as bad for May as they ought to be”, says the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush, since “Rudd hasn’t quit over the Windrush scandal” but because she misled the Commons committee about whether the Home Office had deportation targets.
The question of targets “moves the conversation around Windrush on to territory where the Government has public support - the general existence of immigration targets - and away from one where it is weak: the specific mistreatment of Commonwealth Britons”, Bush continues.
But questions over the PM’s judgement remain. Caroline Slocock - who served as Margaret Thatcher’s private secretary on home affairs - told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last week that the real issue was May’s immigration policy, “which is simply wrong”.
“Britain’s immigration policy is in a mess,” says The Sunday Times’s Andrew Gilligan, “with some blaming a hard-line culture that grew up at the Home Office when the PM was in charge there.”
To “look at the Windrush scandal is to vividly see institutional racism at work”, adds The Guardian’s Hugh Muir.
May’s government “pursued and defended a policy that in its application, discriminated - not wholly but in large measure - against black Britons”, Muir says.
Who are the Windrush generation?
The group comprises British citizens who came to the UK from the Commonwealth as children following the Second World War, and whose rights were guaranteed in the Immigration Act of 1971.
Named the Windrush generation after British ship the Empire Windrush, which arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex with 492 Caribbean passengers in 1948, “many have made the UK their home for their entire lives”, says the Channel 4 News website.
However, under new immigation laws, these people must now prove continuous residence in the UK since 1973, something that has turned out to be almost impossible for those who have not kept up detailed records.
As a result, some are being denied access to state healthcare, made redundant from their job and even threatened with deportation, The Guardian reports.
BBC Newsnight
✔@BBCNewsnight
https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/986361271648862208
Junior Green was not allowed to return to the UK for his mother’s funeral even though he has lived in the UK for 60 years, his sister tells @JamesClayton5 the family “couldn't believe it” #newsnight
10:50 PM - Apr 17, 2018
Guy Hewitt, the high commissioner for Barbados, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he feels that the UK is saying to “people of my region: you are no longer welcome”.
Why is this happening?
The problem follows the ending of a previous system of Commonwealth citizenship and free movement, when status was conferred by law on people to safeguard them but some did not acquire the necessary papers, according to immigration law blog Free Movement.
This lack of papers was then exacerbated by May’s “hostile environment policy, under which landlords, hospitals, businesses and civil society have been forced to proactively prove that their employees, tenants and service users have the right to be in the United Kingdom”, says the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush.
The policy was introduced to achieve the Government’s lower migration targets, by making “living in the UK so unbearable that immigrants will decide to leave of their own accord”, says Bush.
Colin Yeo
✔@ColinYeo1
16 Apr
Replying to @ColinYeo1
4/ Since 1996 employers had to check employee immigration papers *in theory*. New laws in 2006 started to enforce this with big fines. But these privatised immigration checks were still limited in scope.
Colin Yeo
✔@ColinYeo1
5/ In 2012 T May announced the “hostile environment” and brought it into law with Immigration Acts 2014 and 2016. Now landlords, banks and public servants had to do “papers, please” checks on other citizens. Explainer: [URL='https://t.co/rHUXNnc7Jt']https://www.freemovement.org.uk/hostile-environment-affect/ …[/URL]
8:37 AM - Apr 16, 2018
Everything you need to know about the "hostile environment" for immigrants - Free Movement
What is the hostile environment? The “hostile environment” for migrants is a package of measures designed to make life so difficult for individuals without permission to remain that they will not...
freemovement.org.uk
Polly Mackenzie@pollymackenzie
https://twitter.com/pollymackenzie/status/986286517046988801
Replying to @pollymackenzie
Right from the start, Theresa May’s mission was to make it systematically difficult to get by without papers.
5:53 PM - Apr 17, 2018
What “seemed like a politically savvy policy of creating ‘very hostile environments’ for illegal immigrants now looks like a tin-eared, uncaring threat to people with every right to be here”, says The Times’s Matt Chorley.
Baroness Warsi agreed. “What happened, unfortunately, during those years and has continued is that we had an unhealthy obsession with numbers,” she told told ITV’s Peston on Sunday. “We were wedded to unrealistic migration targets, targets that we still haven’t met unfortunately a decade on – and yet we continue to remain wedded to targets.”
What happens next?
Rudd had said that all Windrush-generation immigrants will be granted the citizenship papers to which they are entitled, and that application fees will be waived. Those who have suffered as a result of the policy change will also receive compensation.
But the “full price of the Government's mistreatment of the Windrush generation could yet be higher than anyone expects”, says Stephen Bush.
May “has been badly exposed by the Windrush affair, which is difficult to see as anything other than the responsibility of whomever was home secretary between 2010 and 2016”, says Politico’s Jack Blanchard.
The PM’s standing with regards to Brexit has also been affected by the row.
The European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhoftstadt, has told The Daily Telegraph that the Windrush controversy “could be worrying for millions of EU citizens in the UK who may fear that they could face similar treatment after Brexit”.
“No one looking at the Windrush row could fairly claim not to understand why many in the European Parliament want a continuing role for the European Court of Justice as a guarantor of citizens' rights after Brexit,” says Bush.
And that “increases the chances of a Brexit deal that is either difficult for May to pass, or one that is rejected by members of the European Parliament,” Bush concludes".
Joint Council for Welfare of Immigrants says proposed Windrush review does not go far enough
This is what Theresa May said at PMQs earlier when she announced an inquiry into the Windrush scandal. She told MPs:
We all share the ambition to make sure we do right by members of the Windrush generation, which is why [Sajid Javid] will be announcing a package of measures to bring transparency on the issue, to make sure that the House is informed, and to reassure members of this House but, more importantly, to reassure those people who have been directly affected. Speed is of the essence and [Javid] will be commissioning a full review of lessons learned, independent oversight and external challenge, with the intention of reporting back to this House before we rise for the summer. The review will have full access to all relevant information in the Home Office, including policy papers and casework decisions.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has condemned this as inadequate. Satbir Singh, its chief executive, issued this response.
Nothing that the government has announced today in parliament will address the root causes of the Windrush scandal – namely the “hostile environment” policy. Hostility is still very much in play, the government still plans to roll Right to Rent out further to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which independent evidence by JCWI has proven discriminates and harms.
The hostile environment continues unabated denying people health care, stopping doctors and nurses and other workers we so desperately need, working in our beloved NHS.
If the government was truly committed to learning any lessons it would stop this hostility in its tracks, treat people as people, not numbers and carry out a fully independent review of the Home Office’s policies and practices".
Lammy says demanding 'compliance' of Windrush migrants reminiscent of slavery
Back in the House of Commons the Labour MP David Lammy was applauded as he likened the Home Office’s “compliant environment” to slavery. Lammy, whose father came to Britain from Guyana in 1956 and who has been a leading campaigner on behalf of the Windrush migrants, compliance was “written deep into our souls and passed down from our ancestors”.
Referring to the way the new home secretary Sajid Javid prefers the term “compliant” to “hostile” to describe that way the government wants to create an environment that discourages illegal immigration, he said:
On behalf of the Windrush generation, keep in mind that spiritual, let freedom reign: it will only reign when this country turns back from the path it’s on, ends the compliant environment in which I know my place, and starts along a humane path that at its heart has human rights ...
The Windrush generation are here because of slavery. The Windrush story is a story of British empire and the Windrush community and its ancestors know what hostile and compliance means.
We know what compliance means: it’s written deep into our souls and passed down from our ancestors.
Slaves having to nod and smile when they were being whipped in a cotton field or a sugarcane field were compliant.
Watching your partner being tied to a tree, beaten or raped on a plantation, is compliance.
Twelve million people being transported as slaves from Africa to the colonies is a compliant environment".
This is what Theresa May said at PMQs earlier when she announced an inquiry into the Windrush scandal. She told MPs:
We all share the ambition to make sure we do right by members of the Windrush generation, which is why [Sajid Javid] will be announcing a package of measures to bring transparency on the issue, to make sure that the House is informed, and to reassure members of this House but, more importantly, to reassure those people who have been directly affected. Speed is of the essence and [Javid] will be commissioning a full review of lessons learned, independent oversight and external challenge, with the intention of reporting back to this House before we rise for the summer. The review will have full access to all relevant information in the Home Office, including policy papers and casework decisions.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has condemned this as inadequate. Satbir Singh, its chief executive, issued this response.
Nothing that the government has announced today in parliament will address the root causes of the Windrush scandal – namely the “hostile environment” policy. Hostility is still very much in play, the government still plans to roll Right to Rent out further to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which independent evidence by JCWI has proven discriminates and harms.
The hostile environment continues unabated denying people health care, stopping doctors and nurses and other workers we so desperately need, working in our beloved NHS.
If the government was truly committed to learning any lessons it would stop this hostility in its tracks, treat people as people, not numbers and carry out a fully independent review of the Home Office’s policies and practices".
Lammy says demanding 'compliance' of Windrush migrants reminiscent of slavery
Back in the House of Commons the Labour MP David Lammy was applauded as he likened the Home Office’s “compliant environment” to slavery. Lammy, whose father came to Britain from Guyana in 1956 and who has been a leading campaigner on behalf of the Windrush migrants, compliance was “written deep into our souls and passed down from our ancestors”.
Referring to the way the new home secretary Sajid Javid prefers the term “compliant” to “hostile” to describe that way the government wants to create an environment that discourages illegal immigration, he said:
On behalf of the Windrush generation, keep in mind that spiritual, let freedom reign: it will only reign when this country turns back from the path it’s on, ends the compliant environment in which I know my place, and starts along a humane path that at its heart has human rights ...
The Windrush generation are here because of slavery. The Windrush story is a story of British empire and the Windrush community and its ancestors know what hostile and compliance means.
We know what compliance means: it’s written deep into our souls and passed down from our ancestors.
Slaves having to nod and smile when they were being whipped in a cotton field or a sugarcane field were compliant.
Watching your partner being tied to a tree, beaten or raped on a plantation, is compliance.
Twelve million people being transported as slaves from Africa to the colonies is a compliant environment".
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
Sorry if this is a day late or has already been posted, but its easily the most spot on thing I've read in ages. I can't find fault with any of it:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ite-ordinary-people-contempt?CMP=share_btn_tw
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ite-ordinary-people-contempt?CMP=share_btn_tw
I agree with most of that, nearly all in fact.
Indeed, my view is 4/5 year parliaments are actually too short for that reason - it's like changing a manager every six months; you risk consistency. In terms of cabinet ministers, the article is bang on the money - they should be allowed two jobs max because otherwise you don't gain any expertise. Reshuffles are a bizarre concept.
However, I disagree with removing Corbyn from the same bracket. Because by God does he promise the earth and he would certainly leave the aftermath of his actions as PM to the next mug to come along, promising to fix it but doing their own damage in the process.
The Tories don't give the slightest toss about the lower class. They have absolutely no need to, because the lower class don't give the slightest toss about the Tories. Similarly, Corbyn doesn't give the slightest toss about business, because business doesn't give the slightest toss about Corbyn.
Politics is about playing to bases. When they get power, they solidify those bases. In that regard, Labour and the Tories are no different. Politics, in many ways, is truly futile - you're always voting for a douche or a turd. In May and Corbyn, you have two of the most definitive examples of it - they're both utterly dreadful.
It's an interesting article and I've mentioned the apparent lack of competence in another thread, but I'm not sure how Corbyn escapes the ire? He may be of a different style to the rest, but he's never had a job outside of politics either, and the vast majority of his time in politics has been spent sniping from the sidelines rather than running things himself. Isn't this lack of experience exactly what the author was riling against?
zzr45
#MURDERINGSCUM
No, because Corbyn has good intentions, which seems to trump all.
Corbyn's 'good intentions' are quite funny if you put it into an everyday analogy.
He's akin to a bloke on low income getting a £10,000 credit card, blowing it on holidays, nice clothes for the kids and so on, but then when he's spent it he hasn't even given a second thought about what to do about the debt he now has.
But hey, at least he had good intentions.
It's a shame the Tories are generally actual arseholes who treat the 'commoners' like absolute filth, because if they weren't such arseholes it'd be actually very easy to say that people mistake fiscal prudence for evil - you can't spend what you don't have, or rather you can't risk spending what you don't have if you can't guarantee an eventual return.
Thus I come back to my argument for the centre ground - you can spend wisely but identify areas that would benefit society overall, tax progressively. You know, keep multiple plates spinning. Instead, we now have politics where you screw the poor by being elitist douches towards them or you screw the poor by spending bucketloads and condemning them to decades of consequences. So no matter who you vote for, if you're lower class, you're screwed - you just may not realise it right now.
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
No, because he wasn't railing against a lack of experience - he was railing against the development of a narrow group of people who boast of their talent and competence and yet there is very little evidence that they are talented or competent (certainly that justifies what they think they deserved to be paid). What he said was:
Whatever you think of Corbyn, he has principles and he is demonstrably better at politics than the professional political class he is attempting to displace. He is also the best proof that exists of their incompetence; after all if a seventy year old backbencher with no organization, no media support and no money can run rings around the people whose entire existence is politics of the modern form then what on earth is the point of them?
I'd say the bulk of Corbyn's success to date has been down to the sheer incompetence of the Tories. All he has to do is not come across like a complete twonk and he's ahead. It's not exactly a ringing endorsement of his qualities.
not exactly accurate either
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
Perhaps, though that does ignore the 2015 leadership election, the 2016 one and the General Election where 99% of people said he'd get smashed.
Besides, the point is not that he is a genius; the point is that he is better than people who have told us all how they are great they are.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Nice rant.
- Status