Braverman & Patel

I have to admit to substantial emotional bias. I simply cannot warm to either of the recent conservative Home Secretary's. Braverman's parents came to the UK from Kenya & Mauritius. Patel's parents came here from Uganda. Both womens grandparents were from India. You would think that background would mean they were empathetic to migrants, whether economic or refugees. But apparently what was good enough for their family members isn't equally good for the many people fleeing far worse conditions in their home countries now. It is debatable whether Patel's parents would have been allowed into the UK now under current law.

Both women are members of the ERG (European Research Group), which is notably Eurosceptic. A 2017 Open Democracy's report said that "Taxpayers’ money is being used to fund an influential group of hard-line pro-Brexit Conservative MPs who are increasingly operating as a "party-within-a-party". The ERG has also been funded by a secretive group called the Constitutional Research Council.

Extreme views on either the right or left always worry me. Fundamentalist ideology is concerning. When the issues are as complex as population migrations due to war, famine, persecution, climate change or economic reasons there are innumerable grey areas. It isn't a simple problem. 

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/top-10-facts-about-refugees-and-people-seeking-asylum/

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/refugee-resettlement-facts/

The underlying problems are a human catastrophe, which isn't going away. The factors driving population movements are becoming more widespread & devastating. The relatively stable countries of the world need to act jointly to tackle whatever the issue is at source if possible, so that people don't feel forced to flee. If that isn't an option, all of us need to have proper equitable routes to re-settle people temporarily. Because it is a fact that the majority of migrants do actually want to return home. For a start the UK government has to tackle the lack of safe & legal routes into the UK which forces so called "illegal" routes. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2021-01/Amnesty%20International%20UK%20-%20Safe%20and%20Legal%20Routes%20Briefing_0.pdf

Just raising the drawbridge & using emotive & inaccurate language, ("invasion of illegal migrants", "overwhelmed by small boat crossings"), to incense voters isn't acceptable. This is a humanitarian story & educated politicians are deliberately obfusticating the real issues. 

Every one of us has to try to imagine three things;-

• What it would be like to live in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen.......
• What we would do to protect our families & ourselves
• What it must be like to flee across continents & seas, at the mercy of traffikers.

Frankly I don't have the capacity to do it. But I do think that we should all do everything we can to care for these people. Because it's just an accident of birth that makes us safe & them not.