I have a piece over at the London Review of Books Blog about the UK government’s appalling changes to the way refugees are treated in the country.
“After the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced the government’s new policies for ‘Restoring Order and Control’ in the House of Commons yesterday, one MP after another stood up to commend the British people for their ‘proud tradition’ of giving sanctuary, for their openness and toleration, before moving onto questions of ‘stopping the boats’, ‘fairness for the British taxpayer’ and whether asylum seekers might be housed near their constituents. The European Convention on Human Rights was mentioned so often that one might have imagined it to be the international treaty at the centre of refugeehood. It isn’t: that’s the Refugee Convention of 1951, largely absent from the debate.”
Read the continuation over there.
{ 2 comments }
engels 11.20.25 at 9:16 pm
Good piece about a contemptible set of policies.
Laban 11.27.25 at 10:58 am
“one MP after another stood up to commend the British people for their ‘proud tradition’ of giving sanctuary”
I’m not sure the British people ever had much say one way or the other. But it was certainly a historical strategy to keep an alternative government or opposition movement on these shores for countries we were interested in (which historically was most of them), just in case a change of government took place by one means or other.
But that was then. Back in 1900 half the world could come here, but it was difficult, expensive, and relatively rare. Now half the world has cheap travel.
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