Anyone familiar with the career of Lee Anderson may not have been surprised at the way he expressed his feelings yesterday — he told migrants who didn’t like the idea of staying on a barge (a prison hulk-like vessel criticised by charities as unsuitable for human accommodation) that they could “f*** off back to France”.
This is after all the MP who has challenged Brexit protesters to fist fights, claimed that foodbank users “can’t cook”, and supports the death penalty, on the grounds that “nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed”.
Anderson is what he is, his defenders are fond of saying. But what he is now starting to infect the rest of the Tory party. The response of Alex Chalk, an otherwise sensible MP, was particularly surprising. On LBC yesterday he said there was “nothing unreasonable in principle with what [Anderson] was saying… Lee Anderson expresses the righteous indignation of the British people”. Although his language was “salty”, he said “his indignation is well placed”.
British voters are perfectly capable of telling between loudly trumpeted intentions and actual results
Anderson’s language was disgraceful. Why wouldn’t Chalk at least condemn it in stronger terms? Why wouldn’t No 10? Although polls show the public is concerned about illegal immigration, there is no evidence it wants asylum seekers to be insulted and treated badly. Perhaps there is only one conclusion to draw: the Government is too timid to condemn Anderson’s outburst because it does not itself feel confident on the small boats issue. Anderson’s lowest common denominator guff is of course a cack-handed version of the populist’s “straight talk” — a brand of anti-rhetoric rhetoric. It is a gift to those who want to seem authentic, but as Donald Trump has demonstrated, it does not always go hand in hand with the truth.
So with the Government’s policies on asylum seekers. The language is starting to drift ever further from the actual achievements. In fact the stronger the language, the weaker the position.
It’s not just Anderson’s comments. This week is Stop the Boats Week — a phrase only rivalled by the Professional Enablers Taskforce, the Home Office’s name for a new group tasked with tracking down “Lefty lawyers” who want to help illegal immigrants.
Yet for all the harsh and inflammatory language, little progress has been made. So far just 15 asylum seekers have boarded the Bibby Stockholm, the barge in Dorset which is supposedly set to accommodate some 500 migrants. The Home Office is now threatening a further 20 with withdrawal of their housing benefit. The hunt for “Lefty lawyers” turned up just five of them last year and seven in 2021.
Meanwhile, the Rwanda scheme has been foundering since it began. Although it has now been ruled legal, there is little sign it will ever get up and running.
As Conservative Home’s Henry Hill has pointed out, the answer to many of the Government’s problems with dealing with illegal immigration is to invest in infrastructure: a purpose-built detention centre, for example, would be one solution to the griping about putting asylum seekers up in hotels. Instead the Government seems to be pouring money into the production of expensive and unworkable signalling methods.
It seems odd that the Conservatives would be stoking public feeling on immigration — pushing it up the agenda — when this is a subject on which they are weak. A recent poll from YouGov shows just nine per cent of the public have confidence the Government will reduce the number of small boats crossing the Channel. Just one per cent are “very confident”. This mirrors public trust in the Rwanda scheme ever producing results — three-quarters of voters think the plan is unlikely to go ahead.
“After their abject failure,” Sadiq Khan has said, “all that’s left is stoking up more division and hate.” But creating noise about immigration doesn’t compensate for failure — it exposes it.
The risk in taking people like Anderson to represent British voters is that you underestimate them. They are perfectly capable of distinguishing between loudly trumpeted intentions and actual results.
And there’s another group of potential voters the party seems to have forgotten about — not every Conservative voter is vehemently opposed to treating asylum seekers with empathy.
In the past the party has taken care not to hack away at its more moderate voter base unnecessarily. Voters who support policies to assist those fleeing persecution will only be further turned off the Tory party.
Martha Gill is a columnist
