[mattomac]

So basically every piece around this was working on a figure that is 20% out.

I wonder if Reeves figures are the same, that's atrocious reporting by the ONS.

[Abernathy]

A few people in my local Labour Party have been clutching their virtual pearls in outrage at Mahmood’s proposals to reform the UK’s immigration and asylum systems. A handful have even cancelled their membership. I’ve seen the proposed reforms being called “racist” and “far right”. Yep, a set of reforms modelled on a successful immigration & asylum system implemented by a left-of-centre democratic socialist government in a Scandinavian country is supposedly “far-right”. It all reminds me a little of the farrago of outrage that greeted Labour’s issuing in 2015 of a campaign coffee mug, one of a set with main policy offers/electoral pledges printed on them, that read simply “Controls on Immigration”. The backlash that provoked was frankly, out of all proportion, and maybe this is similar.

If we start from the premise that the Tories left behind an Asylum & immigration system that was shambolic, dysfunctional, clogged up and sclerotic from 14 years of often wilful neglect and backlog, and that the Labour government, elected on a promise of change, is obliged to do something to get things working again , then that means overhauling the system completely.

Mahmood’s proposed changes have the virtue of keeping the UK as a signatory to the European Court of Human Rights, where other parties would withdraw our country from this critically important international institution.

I’m wary that the proposals may be something that could conceivably mirror the Windrush scandal perpetrated by the Home Office under Theresa May’s government, but getting past the outrage, it would seem that we do have a set of proposals that are fairly radical, but not entirely unreasonable, and which may just get the job done.

It does feel instinctively somewhat against the grain of Labour values, but perhaps we need to bite the bullet. Build a new, fair, humane, and effective asylum & immigration system that will shoot the Reform/Tory fox.

[Andy McDandy]

I'd suggest starting claim processing in France, get safe routes into the UK established (as ever, nobody is getting on an inflatable to cross the Channel in the middle of winter by choice), get people processed faster, so they're not in hotel/holiday camp limbo, and are earning and paying taxes. No boats, no hotels, better for the migrants, removes the targets for the mob - aside from the deeply racist wankers who'll never be happy anyway so fuck 'em.

This entire thing is a fugazi - it's a problem because some people have decided it's a problem, and that there's only one solution. Thus, any discussion circles back to "how fast can we send 'em back?", rather than examine any other aspect of the situation.

[Abernathy]

David Knopfler on FB writes sensible, insightful, and incisive stuff, sincerely held views, clearly expressed :

When our Home Secretary claims that illegal immigration is “tearing our country apart” she is, in effect, saying to those who believe this lie — ‘we hear you and we are sorry.’
It’s grotesque for several reasons.
Who exactly are these people she has called illegal? Nobody who has claimed asylum is illegal unless and until they have had their claim for asylum fully processed, it has then been found wanting and they have then failed to leave the country. 70% of claims for Asylum are upheld, because we would be breaking international laws we once helped to draft if they weren’t properly upheld. There is nothing illegal about claiming Asylum.
The size and scale of the problem is substantially smaller than this false claim that it is “tearing us apart.” What is tearing us apart are the inflammatory lies of a cocktail of racists and public figures whipping up these unworthy emotions for personal advantage, and a media quite prepared to lie about the issue for ratings or sales or ideological pressure from their owners.
I am still personally (and I know I am far from alone in this) patiently waiting for an apology, long overdue, from our Government for the economic mess and social chaos they caused by ripping us out of the EU on an utterly false prospectus, whipped up by these same wreckers. That would be a statement I could get behind. An honest fulsome apology for the back wash of a comprehensively destructive policy, Brexit. That, and lowered living standards, is what is tearing us apart. An underfunded and undercut NHS tears us apart. A fetishistic obsession about boat people who are actually largely a consequence of Brexit is not what is tearing us apart. The steady drumbeat of othering by offshore owned, tax dodging, GBNews (constantly in trouble with an enfeebled Ofcom) is what tears us apart… backed by Grok lies, poisoning its data by white nationalist, South African, Elon Musk, who funds Tommy Robinson (founder of the fascist English Defence League) — That tears us apart. The coordinated attacks on the BBC from both within and without tears us apart. Ever increasing levels of wealth inequality tears us apart. The failure of Central Government to properly fund Local Government while not allowing them to raise rates tears us apart. The list goes on.
Meanwhile, foreign wars for Oil we recklessly supported that created the instability in the Middle East and as a result, the waves of refugees that Europe (Note, not the US) then had to process, gets a free pass.
We deserved better and we still do