Labour are failing to challenge Tories using migrant misery as propaganda

We don’t wonder if they should instead be turned back and left to their miserable fate. We don’t think to ourselves that these intrepid wanderers are about to take up too many resources in their newfound home and they should probably be disposed of as efficiently as possible at the earliest convenience.

Nor do we consider that for many people in the world, these stories aren’t “dystopian” at all; they’re just real life. It’s easy to miss the connection, of course, because in the fictional version the protagonists are usually white, Western, English-speaking people. Their mistreatment is shocking; their inherent right to compassion and protection is obvious.

In reality, the UN estimates that there are around 26 million refugees in the world, forced to leave their homes amid conflict or persecution. Around half of those are under 18. Most commonly, refugees come from Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar, as well as other parts of Africa and the Middle East. The majority of refugees do not travel far, but for the minority who come to countries in the European Union, most settle in Spain, France, Germany or Greece.

As of 2018 there were 126,720 refugees in the UK and 45,244​ asylum applications pending. The numbers who have arrived in the UK through unauthorised boat crossings from France – around 4000 this year –is a fraction of the overall picture. Immigration experts have said there are a number of reasons why some people might do this, from the poor treatment of asylum seekers in France, to having family members and connections inside the UK or a total lack of choice as criminal gangs control and exploit their lives.

READ MORE: Priti Patel warned using Navy to block asylum seekers ‘unlawful’

And yet instead of asking questions about what more we could do to support people in this desperate situation, about why the official system we have in place is so harsh that some feel that it’s necessary to risk their lives to get here, the political and media spotlight has turned on this small group of migrants as if they were the problem. As if the UK is doing too much (it’s not) and the people seeking safety on our shores are expecting more than they deserve.

At the forefront of this has been the Conservative Government, its Prime Minister and Home Secretary truly in their element with the opportunity to “clamp down” and bring in the RAF to scare off dinghies of refugees who, if they weren’t traumatised already, probably will be now.

With Boris Johnson promising to change the pesky laws which give rights to people seeking asylum, and sources close to Priti Patel warning that she plans to drive “the Left” into a frenzy with a merciless new immigration system and probably ban cookie dough ice cream while she’s at it, this feels less like a “crisis” for the Government than a propaganda exercise. The people in the boats are just extras in this grand piece of performance art, but their lives, their pain and their fears are very real.

More depressing than this bleak picture is the fact that the official opposition to the Government, in the form of the Labour Party frontbench, has been so hesitant to say anything meaningful on the subject at all. For a week, as public attention to the issue heightened, the Labour line was to go after the Tories on grounds of “competence”. On August 6 shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds pointed to the “lack of government competence” and said that “ministers are failing to get to grips with the crisis”.

Five days later shadow immigration minister Holly Lynch again referred to a “lack of grip and competence” and a need for detail on the Government’s action plan. Both responses read like a template for bland political comments, as though they had forgotten to fill in the blanks. This wasn’t an accident: it was a blatant decision to hedge their bets on an issue they knew could prove divisive. (A YouGov poll this week found that 49% in the UK had little or no sympathy for the people arriving in the boat crossings.)

Only on August 12, after a significant amount of pushback against the second non-statement from people – including Labour supporters – who questioned why the party was failing to speak up for the migrants, did Thomas-Symonds publish a somewhat more substantive letter to Priti Patel.

The letter said the “attempt to militarise a humanitarian crisis is shameful” and described the Government’s approach as “lacking in competence and compassion”.

On Twitter, Thomas-Symonds repeated the new mantra: “No compassion, no competence.” Clearly the message got through that it might be a good idea to display some empathy and not refer to human beings in the same language as you might a pothole. That this was not the initial response demonstrates the difficulty that the Labour Party has with this issue, and this is by no means a problem relegated to the Starmer era.

READ MORE: Refugee Council slams ‘dehumanising’ BBC and Sky News reports

From Ed Miliband’s “controls on immigration” mug, to attacking the Tories for not meeting their target to reduce net migration under Corbyn, Labour has form on trying to appeal to anti-immigration voters.

But pandering to the right has got Labour nowhere – other than standing outside watching an increasingly right-wing government enact its ideology at will. The fact that Labour has been unwilling to unambiguously pick apart the xenophobic scapegoating of the right-wing press and politicians over a number of years has only allowed this way of thinking to take a deeper hold. That’s never going to change with half-hearted vaguery or pleas for greater “competence”.

On Monday (two days before Labour’s letter to Patel), the SNP’s immigration spokesperson Stuart McDonald said “the scenes in the Channel ... shine a light on the inherent xenophobia at the very heart of the Tory party”. Calling for devolution of the relevant powers, McDonald said Scotland would “create a humanitarian, outward-looking approach to immigration”. The SNP has wholeheartedly adopted a pro-immigration, pro-refugee stance as part of the vision of Scotland – particularly an independent Scotland – which it promotes. Meanwhile, support for both the party and independence has continued to grow.

This is not because Scotland is some progressive paradise where anti-immigration sentiment does not exist. In fact, that YouGov poll showed that 45% in Scotland had little or no sympathy for the migrants. What this does indicate is that it’s not essential to electoral success to play into those misconceptions. It’s possible to both be principled on issues that some might disagree with and to present people with a better alternative for their own life at the same time. In time, the hope should be that people will come with you on the other stuff too.

Political and economic discontent is one feeling which unites the four nations of the UK. The question is, where do you tell people to direct their frustration? In Scotland, this anger is pointed squarely at the UK political establishment (even when some of it belongs elsewhere). Could there not be lessons in this for Labour to learn in England? In the absence of a clear, distinctly anti-racist alternative which meaningfully takes on the systems with which so many people are utterly disaffected, parts of the English electorate have been willingly handed over to the right.

The response to the Channel crossings is as clear an example as could be of how the Tories use migrants – an ever easy target – as a distraction from its own institutional failings and from the gross inequality enforced upon its citizens. To them, this is all a game. As long as the opposition plays by their rules, they’re going to keep winning.