Rushi Sunak is getting “tough” on immigration?
Or lying through his back teeth, desperate to retain voters as the Conservative party sinks ever lower in the polls.
What (I think) Rishi’s ACTUAL message is:
“We paid Rwanda a stack of money to take maybe 200 illegal refugees and agreed to allow a (undisclosed) number of Rwandans into the country as part of the deal”
This is Rishi “getting tough”
Never mind the 745,000 or so that arrived in the past year (legal and illegal)
So, he’s (maybe) sending a few to Rwanda, if the ECHR allow him, but it’s all good. (Vote for us!)
The £500,0000,000+ he agreed to gave to France to “stop the boats” – I think France is using those payment to buy the smugglers more boats, offloading their illegal immigrant problems onto us.
(Half-joking here. They certainly appear to have made little to no effort to stop them.)
Below are some known (admitted) figures. The true figure will obviously be higher.
“In the year ending June 2023, there were 52,530 irregular migrants detected entering the UK, up 17% from the year ending June 2022. 85% of these arrived via small boats.”
Home Office: Official Statistics Irregular migration to the UK, year ending June 2023 (Updated 14 November 2023)
Related: BBC (September 2023): Highest number of migrants cross Channel in 2023
TO CLARIFY on immigration:
Legal immigrants are fine, needed even. (I hold dual nationality myself!)
GENUINE asylum seekers are fine. It’s the right thing to do.
Wave after wave after wave of illegals from all over the world, arriving without passports or papers, some sporting a full, manly beard but claiming to be 14 – but refusing a DNA swab or teeth inspection to help verify age because of their “human rights”… not so much.
In fact the law allows them to sue if they feel offended! (Guardian… 
)
Call me anything you like, but my feeling is that if they arrive here illegally, quoting their rights (rehearsed), refusing tests to verify their claimed age and origin, well, they need removing immediately – NOT put in a taxpayer funded hotel while their case is passed to lawyers.
It stands to reason, if they are crossing from Calais, they are not fleeing war or persecution, not in France. And if they are paying people smugglers instead of just getting on the ferry, with travel document, again, it’s dodgy. (Plus, they either have plenty of money, and or they are being pushed into slavery).
If – as some sectors of the mainsteam and social media like to present – the arrivals are mostly healthy young men “of fighting age”, then it should raise even more flags.
Steve Baker (MP) singing the PM’s praise
Strong statement from Rishi Sunak tonight (7th Dec 2023):
“My message to the vicious people smugglers is clear: there is no point in ruining people’s lives any longer. If an individual comes here illegally, they will be removed.”
Comment from Steve Baker (MP)
“He’s done more than any Prime Minister ever to stop the boats.”
So, I replied:
Sorry, but the government’s own figures make a mockery of his statement. Your party is going going to get crucified in the next election. From HS2 to a half-botched Brexit to ever increasing numbers of “asylum seekers” being smuggled into the country, you’ve become less and less popular with great scathes of the country.
The figure banded for the past year for net migration is around 750,000 – that’s greater than the population of Sheffield!
Unrealistic scenario, but it’s to make a point:
Imagine if those 750,000 immigrants (latest batch) migrated north to Sheffield.
Waiting list for dentists there: Doubles
Waiting list for GP, clinic and hospital appointments and treatment doubles.
Lists and class sizes for all school in the area: doubles
Crimes: (at least) doubles, police are overwhelmed, native Sheffielders are enraged
Rental prices: largely unregulated, these are hiked up beyond London levels. #Greed
House prices rocket: supply and demand, with a large helping of profiteering
etc. etc. etc.
Solution?
We need another city the size of Sheffield to accomodate them.
And another ready for next years influx
And several more for the waves (average ~300,000 a year) since Labour’s Tony Blair swung over the door and yelled, “Come on in, it’s your human right to live here. PS, vote Labour!”
Voting intentions and the political class
So – and I imagine a great many people feel the same:
I can’t vote for Conservatives because they haven’t earned our vote – or our trust, on well, actually, anything! #BrokenPromises
(P.S. Abolish the BBC license.
Actions, not vague half-promises! Also noting that – unlike the rest of the electorate – MPs are allowed to claim the cost of their TV license back under expenses – and many do! Amusingly, if delusions are amusing, the BBC claimed we’d happily pay £400 a year to subscribe to their service – as they push fees up, yet again.) So, not only are the Tories (and others) keeping up this this wretched licence, they expect us to pay theirs too! You might want to remember that over the coming months when they again imply or promise to abolish the TV licence “if we are elected”).
I won’t vote for Labour because those clowns would be far worse.
I won’t vote for anyone else because there’s no point; we are locked into a two-party system, have been for nearly a century, and no other party stands a chance – helped by gerrymandering by both the main parties over the decades.
Were all in this together
What a clever – and disingenuous – soundbyte, Cameron.
We (politicians and our friends) are all in this together. ‘This’ being a protected, ring-fenced and golden-parachute-secured Westminster bubble.
‘This’ for the rest of the country? Who cares! We are only of vague disinterest to when elections are near. Otherwise, we peasants can rot for all they care. They being all parties!
I SERIOUSLY doubt most (Eton, Oxbridge crowd, PPE educated) career politicians have the remotest idea how “the other half” live! As I understand it, most MPs (and all Lords, of all parties) are wealthy, many being multi-millionaires. (For instance, David Cameron, who just slithered back into a top government post, is worth about £40 million).
That’s without factoring in high salary, even higher expenses*, allowed ‘gifts’ from lobbyists, party donators etc, the grace-and-favour-homes, lined up directorships from the private sector (all allowed, old boy. We saw to that!)
*(“Let’s bill taxpayers for the cost of having the moat cleared, old boy, what ho!” #NeverForget #ExpensesScandal)
Apart from a few MPs, you are all locked into your elite Westminster bubble, aloof and insulated from the greater public and – at best – indifferent to the average voter. At worst, you (all parties) despise us!
You, Mr Baker, are one of the few I still respect, alas the rest, they are all in this together (for themselves)
Anyway, I’m betting on the lowest turnout in history – and a landslide for Labour.
Tick tock, Mr Baker. If you want a hope of staying in power*, your party needs to show us actions, not mockingly vacuous and clearly mendacious rhetoric!
(Current Parliament will automatically dissolve on Tuesday 17 December 2024, unless dissolved.
No date given, but the next General election will be no later than January 2025 (13 months away)
Meaningwhile, latest Ipsos put Labour far ahead: Labour 46%, Conservatives 25% .
Over 50% of voters dislike Rishi Sunak, though Starmer shouldn’t be too smug about it as nearly 50% of labour voters can’t stand him either!
Meanwhile, 8 in 10 people say public services have got worse over the past 5 years.
Rhetorical aside (ramping up closer to elections, it’s blindingly overvious that the political class only care about their own little cabal and really couldn’t give so much as a rat’s turd for the rest of us. Indeed, it seems they consider the great unwashed proletariat to be stupid and ignorant… (And that’s just how they feel about Remain voters. Their collective opinion of those of us that voted for Brexit is unprintable!)
… yet welcome into their busom such luminaries as Angela Rayner and Diane Abbot, neither of whom I suspect could ever get into Mensa.
*“With great power comes great responsibility” 🕷 … But “absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
(The feature image actually shows abandoned life jackets in Syria. Posted by jdblack on Pixabay)
