Don’t blame Boris Johnson for the mess over Rwanda – it’s what the public wants

Blame the progressive politicians for not taking the battle of ideas to the enemy and winning elections

Britain, or at least England, is drifting into becoming what you might call a Millwall nation (Reuters)

In politics, it tends to help if you can win an argument. So it is with the government’s Rwanda plan. It may be depressing, indeed appalling, to send vulnerable people to Rwanda to be settled, with many having a valid claim to asylum in the UK. It’s certainly illiberal. Our own bishops say it’s immoral. I happen to think it’s unspeakably cruel. But none of those arguments has much traction with the Great British Public.

The polling shows that most of them support the policy. I’ll repeat that: the polling shows that a significant proportion support the policy. I have the uneasy feeling that Ukrainians only get more sympathy because they’re white; the abandoned Afghans certainly don’t. Polling by Savanta ComRes indicates that 40 per cent plus of the population support the Rwanda policy, and more than half of 2019 Conservative voters.

However, despite the overall, albeit slim, net support, the polling also tells us that the public see faults in the Rwanda scheme: 67 per cent say that it’s likely that most of the migrants who end up in Rwanda will attempt to leave and return to Europe, and a significant 42 per cent say it’s unlikely the plan will drastically reduce the numbers of migrants arriving in the UK.

So even if these voters don’t think the policy will even work, they still back it. What they really want is a policy to stop people coming in that does work; not to have an unlimited right to asylum. It is just as the Conservative ministers say to Labour: “What would you do? Got any better ideas?”

It deserves an answer. When Amol Rajan asked David Lammy if Labour would repeal the removal of the right to asylum from British domestic law he said he couldn’t answer that because he’s not Yvette Cooper. This is not winning the argument.

A very significant chunk of the British electorate voted Conservative precisely because of things like Brexit, cutting benefits and the Rwanda policy, not despite them. These voters are not moved by being called cruel, immoral, appalling, fascistic, racist, evil or any other (justifiable) label you can stick on them. They’re not, in truth, that bothered about whether the deportees have been tortured. They don’t want them here because they believe, variously, that they’re economic migrants, they can happily live freely in France or Greece, and if they’re not and are genuine refugees they are anyway scroungers, criminals, and the rest, who’ll end up in overcrowded housing, overwhelming public services, undercutting wages and generally degrading the quality of life of what is termed the “indigenous” population.

These are precisely the same kinds of false arguments that have been used by the racist right for decades, and for a reason – they find a ready audience with people prepared to believe in scapegoating myths and propaganda. Some of those very same people – Patel, Johnson, Raab, Farage – may well have refugees back in their own family histories, but no matter to them. The Jews and Ugandan Asians were once demonised, but now it’s supposed to be different. It’s not, obviously. Yet the myths about migration won’t die while left unchallenged.

By merely asserting that these policies, and by implication the people supporting them, are immoral and so on isn’t going to kill those myths, and is probably counterproductive. It’s how the Brexit referendum was lost. What you need are some arguments about why migration is good for Britain, in the national interest, and makes the country better off.

An awful lot of people aren’t bothered about what the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations, the European Union or anyone else thinks about the Rwanda plan, Brexit or anything else for that matter. They would cheerfully quit the lot if it meant lower migration into the UK. You increasingly hear people wanting “food security”, “energy security”, self-sufficiency, and cutting ourselves off from trade and investment with the rest of the world. Nigel Farage and like-minded figures in the Tory party think that getting out of the European convention is part of Brexit.

No one seems to be explaining why being signed up to the Convention helps protect people in this country, rather than the ones who want to come here. Again, the argument is lost by default.

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“Global Britain” is really about becoming a hermit English kingdom, the ultimate gaslighting exercise. Don’t blame the Tories or Johnson, though – blame the voters. Or more to the point, blame the progressive politicians for not taking the battle of ideas to the enemy and winning elections. The Conservatives may be the nasty party, but Britain is a nasty country. Or at least until it’s persuaded there’s a better way.

Britain, or at least England, is drifting into becoming what you might call a Millwall nation – with apologies to today’s football club. You may be familiar with the old Millwall chant – “no one likes us, we don’t care” – sung to the tune of “Cwm Rhondda”. Millwall’s iconography – snarling lions and angry bulldogs – suits nasty Britain, and so does the bloody-minded sentiment in their fans’ song.

Understand that and you’re some way into thinking about how tough it is going to be to win the arguments about why there is a housing shortage, why public services are under pressure, and why Britain actually needs migrants to keep its economy and its hospitals running.

Our problems do not exist because of immigrants. Why isn’t anyone explaining why? Legal challenges and marches and protests are easier to organise than winning hearts and minds. That’s why we’re in the state we’re in.