The Great Game of Politics, Part 1

This morning I tried to write a reasoned response to Braverman and Sunak's latest round of votegrubbing.

I failed. This is not going to be coherent. I’m too angry.

The rats in the sack have stopped snarling at each other and turned instead to the one thing they can agree on: beating Labour in the Great Game of Politics.

They don’t care about asylum seekers. They don’t care about migrants. They don’t care about the UK. They care only to claw back votes, and continue feeling important.

That importance puts them in a privileged position. They get the reports. They’re able to study the statistics. They talk to experts. They ought to understand the threats. If they had a modicum of intelligence (we’ll leave Gullis out of this) they would know the immigrants in the Channel are potentially the tip of the iceberg.

Let your blood run cold this bitter morning. The whole world will soon be on the move. Climate change will see to that. Migrations to the North, South, East, and West. How many people? You tell me. This is unprecedented in human history.

The billionaires are probably betting on Mars. For the rest of the human race, there are only two options: find a way to absorb migration, or run and hide (one day the migrants will be armed).

We’re not there yet, thank God. Attenborough-like, some of us can still see a tiny light blinking at the end of the tunnel. We might, through international cooperation, achieve the near-impossible and get climate change under control.

We might create national and international mechanisms that enable migration to be both controlled and empowering.

We might offer hope rather than denial. The right to work, rather than detention. The right to contribute rather than go underground.

We might learn from each other.

We might, but Braverman’s little experiment in legalese yesterday suggests the opposite. Negative, negative, negative. Step by quagmired step, we’re creating a country ruled by fear. Fear of an undefined future. Fear of difference. Fear of other human beings, because there are so many now, and they’re coming our way, and there’s so little space left on this tiny island.

Or so we are told. Not just by the racists (yes, I mean that word) but by the people who represent them in government. The important people. The players in the Great Game of Politics, who can get away with saying anything because they know how to shroud it in sloganeering and ceremony; and whose pathway leads at worst to a comfy seat in the House of Lords.

That’s their calculation. They don’t care, I’m still angry, and it’s snowing in March. A fitting metaphor for the hearts of the English.