Can Labour expose Sunak’s panicked exploitation of the asylum crisis?
Only if it breaks the taboo against working with the EU
When we were young and foolish, we thought all serious politicians had to do to squash crazy ideas was to say that they were crazy. Presented with Nigel Farage’s drive to take Britain out of the European Union in 2006, David Cameron dismissed his United Kingdom Independence Party as a home for “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists” – and we know how well that worked.
A decade on, presented with Donald Trump’s challenge in the 2016 presidential election, Hilary Clinton dismissed his supporters as a “basket of deplorables: the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.” Subsequent events once again revealed the flaws in her approach.
Presented with our right- and on occasion far-right government’s pretence that it can detain and deport every migrant who crosses the Channel, Labour’s Yvette Cooper dismissed a “chaotic” plan that will only “put more lives at risk.”
Will Cooper and her leader Keir Starmer fare better than Cameron and Clinton? If they do, they will provide a model for the social democratic world to follow. But first they must show they have the courage and intelligence to defuse a poisonous issue. They must listen to the Labour politicians privately calling for a bold deal with the EU. The UK will provide legal routes for genuine refugees to cross from the continent, the proposal runs. In return EU governments will destroy the smugglers’ business model by accepting the return of failed asylum claimants from the UK.
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