Stemming the Tide

Simply judged as a performance, Suella Braverman’s appearance in Parliament was impressively theatrical. She was confident and defiant, presenting herself as the champion of taxpayers whose concerns have been ignored. There’s an invasion going on, and to cope with it millions of government money is being wasted putting up foreigners in expensive hotels. Someone has to speak out against this nonsense, and that person will be Suella.

That’s the outline sketch, but there are details which it fails to mention. This isn’t an exceptional invasion; per capita, the UK comes in at No 18 among EU countries receiving migrants. Among that influx are thousands of genuine asylum seekers, entitled to a place in the country and the right to work, who are not only being deprived of those, but are being indefinitely housed in dangerously unhealthy conditions. Talk of “invasion” is a direct encouragement to unstable individuals, like the man who firebombed a migrants’ hostel. Braverman was warned of the impending rise in numbers and the accommodation problems accentuated by her failures in planning, but ignored this advice. She ignores most advice, insisting on carrying out government business on her personal phone, despite the threat that poses to security. She is different; no-one can tell her what to do, certainly not her civil servants. Which explains why the Home Office were delighted to be free of her when she resigned, and why there is no chance of these problems being solved with her in control of that department.

But if that’s clear to me, as an outsider, why isn’t it clear to Rishi Sunak? Or maybe it is, and the cost of having a dysfunctional Home Office is the price we pay for him bribing his way into Downing Street. Either way, the prospects look grim.