It’s the Tories, Not Channel Migrants, Who Are Killing People

Hey-ho, the Torie are back to their old tricks again, drumming up hatred against immigrants and asylum-seekers. This time its the various illegal immigrants trying to make their way across thee Channel in whatever flimsy boats will take them. Mike and Zelo Street have both published excellent pieces demolishing this faux outrage. The Street reported the figures for the number of people immigrating to the UK last year and the number of asylum claims according to the Beeb. These were 677,000 and 49,000 respectively. Compared to this number, the 4,000 or so illegals who have arrived here is a vanishingly trivial number. Nevertheless, this is being described in terms of an invasion. Hatey Katie Hopkins wants gunboats to intercept them. However, the Lords of the Admiralty can’t send the navy against children and pregnant women. The odious, smirking Priti Patel has therefore chosen instead to appoint Dan O’Mahoney of the National Crime Agency to the position of chief in charge of intercepting these boats. The Royal Navy said that there wasn’t much more they could do, and Colin Yeo, a barrister specialising in immigration, stated that the navy couldn’t enter French waters to return migrants either. Furthermore, the hard Brexit sought by the government has meant that the current returns agreement with the EU ends on 31st December 2021, and so far there’s no replacement agreement for it. Which means that the government has actually made it harder to return such migrants than it was under the EU.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/08/migrants-brexit-and-taking-back-control.html

Mike has also pointed out that way back in 2014, Theresa May, then home secretary, cut the Border Force, which is why the Tories have had to appeal to the navy. Mike also guesses that many of the immigrants coming here are fleeing the wars in their homelands, we have helped to start. He also says that ‘The issue is why these people want to come to the UK at all. If we really wanted to stop them, we need to help end their reasons for leaving their own homelands.’ It’s a good point, but I think some of their reasons for leaving are beyond our control. The impoverishment of the Developing World is a major cause, and some of this is due neoliberalism and the various tariff restrictions on manufactured goods which prevent developing nations in Africa, for example, from diversifying their economies and developing manufacturing industries. But there are also major problems with corruption, ethnic and religious conflict, political oppression and maladministration, for which the various governments of the developing world are responsible and which, I believe, would be extremely difficult for western governments to do anything about. But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try.

But Mike has also argued very strongly that the Tories are also whipping up this hatred as a cynical distraction from their own failings.  He cites this tweet from James O’Brien:

The calculation is that, with the support of most of the media, the British public can be made angrier about innocent foreigners than guilty politicians responsible for thousands of British deaths.
And all while claiming to care about ‘Christian’ values.
It will work too.

And this from Nick Abbott

God we’re easily distracted. They don’t even have to really try any more. The excess deaths, the hundreds of millions for kit that doesn’t work, ripping up regulations to suit donors, the kleptocracy and nepotism. But look…a dinghy!

The Tories crippled their own border controls. Don’t let them use their own stupidity to boost racism

He’s right. It isn’t migrants from across the Channel, who have squandered taxpayers’ money giving contracts to firms owned by their donors for PPE that doesn’t work. It isn’t poor souls in leaky dinghies that are pushing for schools to reopen, so that parents will be forced to return to work to make money for the Tories despite the real, present danger of Covid-19.

Illegal immigrants aren’t responsible for the massive poverty caused by decades of stagnant wages and pay cuts. They aren’t responsible for real starvation and malnutrition returning to Britain because the welfare state doesn’t work thanks to benefit sanctions and the fitness for work tests, both of which are based on fraudulent research and an inbuilt presumption against the claimant in order to stop people from claiming. Illegal immigrants never made the decision to make the whole process of signing on as degrading and humiliating as possible in order to deter people from doing so – that was Maggie Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and so on. And it very definitely isn’t Black and Brown people coming off the beach from Dover, who have been selling off the NHS for the past forty years.

It hasn’t been powerless migrants, who have sacked thousands of low-paid workers during the lockdown while claiming the government bailout money to boost their chief executives’ pay and share dividends. And if there is competition between migrants and native Brits – by which I also mean Black and Asian Brits, who’ve been here for generations as well as Whites – for housing, jobs and other opportunities, it’s because the Tories have deliberately cut all those to make it difficult to get them.

There have been over a hundred thousands deaths due to austerity and cuts to benefits. Millions of people now have a choice between paying their rent and heating bills or feeding themselves or their children. Who are themselves going hungry to school. The number of people below the poverty line is now in millions.

And this is  very definitely the fault of the Tories, and Blair’s and Browns New Labour. It ain’t the fault of a vanishingly tiny number of illegals risking life and limb to get here.

Don’t be distracted. Don’t let them lie to you. Ignore the calls to hate them from the Tory press, Katie Hopkins and Nigel Farage. The people, who really are killing us and driving us into poverty are the Tories.

Daily Express Article from 30 Years Ago about Controversy over Black Tory Candidate in Cheltenham

For all that David Cameron tried to clean up the Tory party’s image of anti-Black, anti-Asian racism nearly two decades ago, the Tory party has always had a nasty undercurrent of it. Mike’s reminded people on his blog that Winston Churchill thought the Tories should campaign on a ‘Keep Britain White’ ticket in the 1950s. Then there were the posters screaming ‘If you want a N****r for a neighbour, vote Labour’, the scandals about Norman Tebbit and the Monday Club, the demands by the various Tory youth organisations for the adoption of racial nationalism – the doctrine that only Whites can be British citizens – as official Tory policy, and the vicious islamophobia, anti-Black, anti-Asian racism and anti-Semitism amongst the supporters of Bozo and Jacob Rees-Mogg uncovered by ‘Jacobsmates’. But Boris, who is hardly innocent of racism himself, has seen fit to do as little possible regarding an inquiry into islamophobia, while the Tories and the rest of the British political and media establishment screamed spurious accusations of anti-Semitism at the Labour Party. With the Black Lives Matter protests have come demands for proper investigations and steps to combat structural racism in Britain. And Bozo has promised an inquiry into it, just as he did last time.

Going back through my scrapbooks, I found this article below from the Depress by Nicholas Assinder from December 4th 1990 about the controversy over the appointment of a Black candidate, John Taylor, in Cheltenham. Taylor had the backing of Major and Tory bigwigs like Norman Tebbit and Geoffrey Dickens, but was strenuously opposed simply because of his race by some local Tories. The article reads

Black Tory Row: Major Steps In

Premier turns on bigot and defends candidate

John Major will act tonight to defuse the race row over the Tories’ first Black candidate to be selected in one of their traditional strongholds.

 The Prime Minister will round on critics at Cheltenham who are calling for the removal of their would-be MP John Taylor, a British-born son of West Indian parents.

Mr Major, who will demand the selection stands, is determined to halt the potentially-damaging situation which conflicts with his vision of a classless Britain.

He will defend barrister Mr Taylor in a speech to the Conservative National Association in London. And last night other senior Tories also came to the candidate’s aid. Home Secretary Kenneth Baker made a public show of support by warmly shaking hands with 38-year old Mr Taylor as he left his adviser’s job in Mr Baker’s department.

Mr Major’s intervention follows an outburst by Cheltenham party member Bill Galbraith in which he described the candidate as a “bloody n****r” who had been foisted on the constituency.

Former Tory chairman Norman Tebbit said yesterday Mr Galbraith was an “ignorant man who holds no position or power” in the local party.

Mr Tebbit predicted Mr Taylor would be Britain’s first Black Cabinet minister. “I have the greatest respect for him and am confident he will prove to be an excellent asset to the party,” he said.

Backbencher Geoffrey Dickens denounced Mr Galbraith’s attack as being reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

Home Office minister Angela Rumbold said of Mr Taylor: “he will make an excellent MP. I am sure he will appeal to a broad cross-section of the Cheltenham community. He is an extremely nice, gentle and approachable young man.”

The row began when Cheltenham Tories chose Mr Taylor to replace their retiring MP Sir Charles Irving who had a majority of 4,896 at the last general election….

There was a continuation to the article, but that’s nearly all that I clipped out. There are now, of course, several Black and Asian Tory MPs and no doubt the Tories will be keen to stress this against anti-racism protesters. As for Cheltenham, there was a mass Black Lives Matter demonstration there a few weeks ago, attended by both Blacks and Whites. It’s become far more diverse than when I was there as a student over thirty years ago. I gather from talking to friends up there that the Tory party was nearly split on the issue of Taylor’s candidacy, and that some really did want to see racial nationalism adopted as official party policy. But I don’t believe that the town as a whole is particularly racist.

But this incident does show how racist the Tories have been, as they still are, despite their efforts to get people to believe the opposite.

Johnson’s Brexit Deal So Bad That Brexit MEP Urges Us to Remain

Things are not looking good for BoJob’s Brexit deal, and they certainly aren’t looking any better for Farage’s wretched party. Farage has gallantly ordered his candidates to stand aside in constituencies, where the Tories have a chance of winning, not wanting to split the right-wing, Brexit vote. But this hasn’t satisfied BoJob’s crew, who will take a mile if you offer them an inch, and they’ve been screaming at Farage to give them the rest. The pressure they were placing on the remaining Brexiteers was so severe that Farage has complained that it was aggressive intimidation. He and his lieutenant, Tice, have also claimed that the Tories have been offering them and some of their members peerages if they stand down, which is illegal under electoral law.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/farage-and-tory-bribe.html

But not everybody has been as impressed with our clownish prime minister’s deal as Farage. Ben Habib, the Brexit Party MEP for London, is so massively unimpressed with it that when he appeared on Sophie Ridge’s show on Sunday, he stated that the withdrawal agreement was subjugation of the UK and much worse than remaining in the EU. He made it very clear that one of the reasons he believed remaining was far better than leaving as the latter would leave Northern Ireland bereft.

Mike’s article about this draws the proper conclusion, and urges Brexiteers to take Habib’s word for it, and vote against Johnson’s withdrawal bill.

Brexiters: take this Brexit Party MEP’s word for it and vote AGAINST Boris Johnson and his Tory Brexit deal

And many Brexiteers haven’t taken kindly to being told to stand down by Farage. Wayne Bayley, the prospective Brexit candidate for Crawley, was understandably annoyed. He and the other candidates had put their own money forward, and now they were told that they had wasted their money and that there would be no refunds. Farage made that very clear when speaking to Eddie Mair on LBC. Bayley stated that he had personally employed a full-time campaign coordinator on a two month contract, and had an outbuilding full of Brexit party leaflets and signs. He estimated that the Fuhrage owed him £10,000. Fed up with Farage’s treatment, he announced that he and others like him would be open to returning to UKIP:

“Hi [UKIP] there are a large number of EX Brexit Party candidates looking for a new home since Nigel has sold us all down the river in exchange for a peerage”.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/farage-on-roll-backwards.html

Other former Brexit candidates made it clear that they were considering suing. Essex Brexit announced on Twitter

“We are taking legal advice on the matter so cannot comment too much at this stage. What we will say however is there are many across the UK who have invested in the Brexit Party PLC and demands answers and refunds. Fast”.

The former prosecutor Nazir Afzal said exactly what this looked like – a pyramid scheme:

How many other Brexit Party Ltd candidates, promised a campaign have lost thousands like this guy … They paid to be considered, selected & contracted I presume … Should seek legal advice on claiming their losses from Farage & Co … Hallmarks of a pyramid scheme … All legal of course”.

The problem is that it may well be all legal. As another commenter on Twitter pointed out, the Brexit Party isn’t a party. It’s a company with Farage and Tice as directors. It has no members, no votes and no manifesto. Farage isn’t going to refund its 3,000 or so members their money, and by charging them a £100 membership fee has made himself a tidy £300,000.

But what is particularly annoying is that even as his party moves ever closer to dissolution, Farage was still being pandered to by the Beeb. Last week they invited people to join the audience at the first of the Question Time leader election specials which is being filmed today, 18th November 2019. And this would be on Farage. An annoyed Labour voter commented

“He’s not standing; his PPCs are probably getting legal advice to sue him; there probably won’t be a Brexit Party by the end of the week! But why is he, yet again, being given special privileges by the BBC? I swear you’d have had Hitler on QT!”

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/brexit-party-lawyers-called-in.html

We’ve seen this before. Buddy Hell over at Guy Debord’s Cat has commented on how the Beeb goes easy on the Far Right, and many of the left-winger bloggers noticed all too clearly that the Beeb seemed to be boosting Farage when he was head of UKIP. From their coverage you would have been forgiven for thinking that Farage was about to storm the nation’s polls and get into government, even though their gains were far more modest. He was certainly given much more favourable coverage than Labour. This is more evidence to back up the conclusions of the media academics at Cardiff, Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, very clearly shown by Tory Fibs’ graphic: the Beeb are massively biased towards the Right.

Even when that part is on the verge of breaking up, its members are considering suing their leader and defecting to another party, and others are urging everyone to vote against its only central policy.