This Kent migrant crisis proves it: the cruel ‘hostile environment’ policy lives on

Lifeboats carrying groups of people thought to be migrants arrive in Dungeness, Kent, in September. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Yesterday, I attended an event at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Britain welcoming about 30,000 Ugandan Asian refugees. It was remarkable to be among the many parliamentarians, business leaders and leading cultural figures who have emerged from a community that arrived in the UK with almost nothing.

But the celebration of the welcoming stance of a Conservative government in 1972 and the achievements of a community that the new king has called one of Britain’s “great successes” is in stark contrast to the sickening approach of the current government to refugee arrivals. And there’s the bittersweet irony that Priti Patel, a child of Ugandan Asian immigrants and also present at the event, was the pioneer of some of the most regressive migration policies Britain has seen.