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| Theresa May is no liberal – and her rise to PM is no cause for celebration | Theresa May is no liberal – and her rise to PM is no cause for celebration |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| Little gives more of a sense of how far we have travelled over the last few weeks – and the variously appalling scenarios we have had to consider – than the fact that Theresa May’s speedy ascent to the office of prime minister is being greeted across party lines with something that looks suspiciously like relief. She’s a grownup, some say. Steady. Experienced, unlike Andrea Leadsom. Relatively liberal, reassuringly difficult (in Ken Clarke’s charismatic intervention): just the kind of tough operator we need in these tough times. | Little gives more of a sense of how far we have travelled over the last few weeks – and the variously appalling scenarios we have had to consider – than the fact that Theresa May’s speedy ascent to the office of prime minister is being greeted across party lines with something that looks suspiciously like relief. She’s a grownup, some say. Steady. Experienced, unlike Andrea Leadsom. Relatively liberal, reassuringly difficult (in Ken Clarke’s charismatic intervention): just the kind of tough operator we need in these tough times. |
| But before we relax and let her quietly take control, it may be instructive to take a look at what tough – May-style – actually means: what it has meant for those who have encountered the Home Office over the last six years, and what it has meant for the economy, with which she is now to be entrusted. | But before we relax and let her quietly take control, it may be instructive to take a look at what tough – May-style – actually means: what it has meant for those who have encountered the Home Office over the last six years, and what it has meant for the economy, with which she is now to be entrusted. |
| There has been a lot of tea-leaf reading over the last couple of days, a lot of hoping by progressives that the things that made one recoil in the past were gesture politics – pandering to zealots to later outmanoeuvre them, the sophisticated game of an ultimately liberal Machiavelli. Yes, she sent “Go Home” vans through London – but there were only two of them. Yes, her speech to the last Tory party conference was the political equivalent of an Express headline and was attacked, even by many on her own side, not least for not being exactly true – but this is the post-truth era; and besides, she’s already rowed back on her argument that Britain should ditch the European convention on human rights. Now she’s leader, hopefully there’ll be more of that sort of backtracking. | There has been a lot of tea-leaf reading over the last couple of days, a lot of hoping by progressives that the things that made one recoil in the past were gesture politics – pandering to zealots to later outmanoeuvre them, the sophisticated game of an ultimately liberal Machiavelli. Yes, she sent “Go Home” vans through London – but there were only two of them. Yes, her speech to the last Tory party conference was the political equivalent of an Express headline and was attacked, even by many on her own side, not least for not being exactly true – but this is the post-truth era; and besides, she’s already rowed back on her argument that Britain should ditch the European convention on human rights. Now she’s leader, hopefully there’ll be more of that sort of backtracking. |
| The thing about immigration is that the people most affected are often the most vulnerable, certainly have the fewest rights, and are the most invisible of anyone in this society. (One exception is those affected by minimum income visa rules that involves British citizens.) If May’s position on immigration really was about gesture politics she could have made her big plays, then moved on, and few would have noticed whether or not she really followed through. In fact, she has pursued government policy, and Cameron’s quixotic tens-of-thousands pledge in particular, with disturbing zeal and literal-mindedness. | The thing about immigration is that the people most affected are often the most vulnerable, certainly have the fewest rights, and are the most invisible of anyone in this society. (One exception is those affected by minimum income visa rules that involves British citizens.) If May’s position on immigration really was about gesture politics she could have made her big plays, then moved on, and few would have noticed whether or not she really followed through. In fact, she has pursued government policy, and Cameron’s quixotic tens-of-thousands pledge in particular, with disturbing zeal and literal-mindedness. |
| May's immigration policy, codified in the act, and built up to over her years as home secretary is markedly illiberal | May's immigration policy, codified in the act, and built up to over her years as home secretary is markedly illiberal |
| Over a few months earlier this year, I followed a legal aid immigration lawyer, Tom Giles, as he went about his work. It was often a lesson in the Home Office using a sledgehammer to crack a sesame seed. No case, it seemed, was too small to prosecute, no judicial decision water-tight enough not to challenge, all the way to the highest courts in the country – in an environment especially unfair and unequal because so very few cases now qualify for legal aid. And the Home Office often seemed a sore loser. One man, who had lived in Britain legally for nearly 30 years and won his plea to remain, fair and square – whose case is now on the statute books because it proved a point of law – was given six months to remain. To stay in the same country as his children he must now reapply every few months (cost: £649 fee to the Home Office, plus lawyers’ fees) and, in effect, is unable to work. | Over a few months earlier this year, I followed a legal aid immigration lawyer, Tom Giles, as he went about his work. It was often a lesson in the Home Office using a sledgehammer to crack a sesame seed. No case, it seemed, was too small to prosecute, no judicial decision water-tight enough not to challenge, all the way to the highest courts in the country – in an environment especially unfair and unequal because so very few cases now qualify for legal aid. And the Home Office often seemed a sore loser. One man, who had lived in Britain legally for nearly 30 years and won his plea to remain, fair and square – whose case is now on the statute books because it proved a point of law – was given six months to remain. To stay in the same country as his children he must now reapply every few months (cost: £649 fee to the Home Office, plus lawyers’ fees) and, in effect, is unable to work. |
| Last November the president of the upper tribunal, which considers asylum and immigration appeals, published a stern decision in which he noted that he had “the impression that the secretary of state [for the Home Office], as a matter of routine, applies for permission to appeal in every deportation appeal [resolved in favour of the appellant]”. These applications, it seemed to him, were often generic, not engaging with specific cases but lodged simply to try to ensure that no appeal could ultimately be successful. “If there is indeed a practice of this kind it must be disapproved,” he wrote. “[It] is not a proper or legitimate invocation of this tribunal’s jurisdiction.” | Last November the president of the upper tribunal, which considers asylum and immigration appeals, published a stern decision in which he noted that he had “the impression that the secretary of state [for the Home Office], as a matter of routine, applies for permission to appeal in every deportation appeal [resolved in favour of the appellant]”. These applications, it seemed to him, were often generic, not engaging with specific cases but lodged simply to try to ensure that no appeal could ultimately be successful. “If there is indeed a practice of this kind it must be disapproved,” he wrote. “[It] is not a proper or legitimate invocation of this tribunal’s jurisdiction.” |
| Not only is it a waste of court time, it is also wasteful of public resources at a time when that other set of the marginalised and vulnerable, the poor and the disabled, are being asked to bear the brunt of austerity measures. The lengths to which this can go – and how wasteful it can be – were graphically illustrated by another case Giles worked on. The client had applied for legal aid, which was refused. If it had been granted, the whole case, barrister included, would have cost £691. But because the government kept refusing through higher and higher courts, the case eventually involved 18 barristers and cost well over £600,000. It is also hard not to feel that the Home Office time (10 years) and money spent attempting to deport Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, one of May’s flagship achievements, could have been spent far more constructively elsewhere. | Not only is it a waste of court time, it is also wasteful of public resources at a time when that other set of the marginalised and vulnerable, the poor and the disabled, are being asked to bear the brunt of austerity measures. The lengths to which this can go – and how wasteful it can be – were graphically illustrated by another case Giles worked on. The client had applied for legal aid, which was refused. If it had been granted, the whole case, barrister included, would have cost £691. But because the government kept refusing through higher and higher courts, the case eventually involved 18 barristers and cost well over £600,000. It is also hard not to feel that the Home Office time (10 years) and money spent attempting to deport Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, one of May’s flagship achievements, could have been spent far more constructively elsewhere. |
| These are issues that will only be exacerbated by the remarkably tough Immigration Act 2016, which became law in May. I have heard arguments that the act, which May (and James Brokenshire, a loyalist tipped for promotion) brought to parliament last year, was an elaborate ploy to persuade the country that Cameron and Osborne could be trusted to be tough on immigration, and therefore to vote remain. Which, if true, looks like rather an own goal, because talking about being tough on immigration made it seem more of an overwhelming problem that could only (for a large percentage of people) be solved by Brexit. | These are issues that will only be exacerbated by the remarkably tough Immigration Act 2016, which became law in May. I have heard arguments that the act, which May (and James Brokenshire, a loyalist tipped for promotion) brought to parliament last year, was an elaborate ploy to persuade the country that Cameron and Osborne could be trusted to be tough on immigration, and therefore to vote remain. Which, if true, looks like rather an own goal, because talking about being tough on immigration made it seem more of an overwhelming problem that could only (for a large percentage of people) be solved by Brexit. |
| Regardless, we now have a situation in which a shrinking government (austerity again) must deal with an explosion of new criminal offences: working illegally or hiring illegal workers; renting accommodation while illegal or renting accommodation to someone who might be illegal; driving or having a bank account while illegal – on top of the huge amounts of time and money that will be required to extricate us from the EU. | Regardless, we now have a situation in which a shrinking government (austerity again) must deal with an explosion of new criminal offences: working illegally or hiring illegal workers; renting accommodation while illegal or renting accommodation to someone who might be illegal; driving or having a bank account while illegal – on top of the huge amounts of time and money that will be required to extricate us from the EU. |
| May’s immigration policy, codified in the act, and built up to over the years with seven bills and 45,000 changes to the rules since she became home secretary has been, in fact, markedly illiberal, argues Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister who runs the blog Free Movement, which tracks developments in immigration policy. “She has been quite happy to hurt families, and damage the economy”: the illegal working section of the act, which came into force on 12 July, for instance, immediately makes it harder for employers to hire from abroad, and for universities to attract students. The act represents not a shrinking, but an expansion of the state, not any sort of liberality but a kind of creeping authoritarianism. | May’s immigration policy, codified in the act, and built up to over the years with seven bills and 45,000 changes to the rules since she became home secretary has been, in fact, markedly illiberal, argues Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister who runs the blog Free Movement, which tracks developments in immigration policy. “She has been quite happy to hurt families, and damage the economy”: the illegal working section of the act, which came into force on 12 July, for instance, immediately makes it harder for employers to hire from abroad, and for universities to attract students. The act represents not a shrinking, but an expansion of the state, not any sort of liberality but a kind of creeping authoritarianism. |
| Not to mention the fact that at least two of the new measures, the right to rent and the right to drive, risk, as Doreen Lawrence pointed out when the bill was in the Lords, needlessly and sharply worsening race relations. And that was before the ugliness unleashed by Vote Leave. | Not to mention the fact that at least two of the new measures, the right to rent and the right to drive, risk, as Doreen Lawrence pointed out when the bill was in the Lords, needlessly and sharply worsening race relations. And that was before the ugliness unleashed by Vote Leave. |
| It’s worth pausing to consider all of this before we get carried away with wishful thinking. | It’s worth pausing to consider all of this before we get carried away with wishful thinking. |