“Today is a day to demonstrate our sympathy for the victims and families of this deadly and tragic incident,” the home secretary, Suella Braverman, told the House of Commons on Wednesday. Sombre Conservative MPs nodded gravely as she spoke, following the death of at least four migrants in freezing waters off the Kent coast.
It would be wrong to view those words, or the response, as in any way insincere. And Ms Braverman was also right to praise the heroic work of first responders, who managed to rescue more than 30 people from the icy water in the early hours of the morning. But in the wake of this appalling news, almost exactly a year after 27 migrants died attempting to cross the Channel, it is hard not to reflect on the very different tone of parliamentary debate the previous day.
The timing of Rishi Sunak’s Tuesday statement on illegal migration was deliberate; it was designed to show tough leadership at a time when his government is presiding over a country in chaos and he has himself been accused of being weak. The prime minister announced a plan which doubles down on the notion that small boat crossings can be stopped by criminalising, confining and summarily deporting those who make them – if necessary to third countries such as Rwanda.
The red meat thus offered was rapturously received by packed Tory backbenches shouting “more!”. MPs representing “red wall” constituencies, in particular, believe that the more punitive the disposition towards small boat arrivals, the better their chances of holding on to their seats. Straight after Ms Braverman’s statement on Wednesday, a substantial minority backed a bill urging Mr Sunak to ignore future deportation rulings by the European court of human rights. As Brexit tropes are opportunistically replayed, asylum seekers and those who defend their legal entitlements are destined to become convenient scapegoats – and a diversion from the desperate state of the nation.
Sadly, and shamefully, it seems unlikely that Wednesday’s drownings will halt this trajectory. The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, observed that the deaths were “another reminder that debates about asylum seekers are not about statistics, but precious human lives”. When political discourse overwhelmingly focuses on “getting the numbers down”, that is a necessary thing to say. This was a tragedy foretold. Since last November, charities and maritime experts have urged that overstretched coastguard services be granted more resources. But in Mr Sunak’s statement on Tuesday there was no explicit focus on increasing search and rescue capacity. And while the prime minister gestured in pro-forma terms to expanding safe and legal routes, he offered scant detail and no assurances on family reunion.
It has been a telling juxtaposition: a day of empty rhetoric promoting a harsh strategy of deterrence, immediately followed by events that gave the lie to the bombast. Desperate people willing to gamble their lives on the sea in sub-zero temperatures are not operating according to some superficial rendering of rational choice theory. Many, in any case, will judge the environment they have left behind to be more hostile than any they may encounter in Britain. Large numbers, including children, are seeking to unite with family members and will do almost anything to achieve that goal. It is an abrogation of moral responsibility to ignore these evident truths and not to act upon them. But that is what this performatively heartless government appears intent on doing.
