Ruth Wishart: Count me out of 'British values' on immigration

Musing on the current UK Government’s ­latest ­attempt to insist that ­Rwanda is the safest of places to dispatch huddled masses yearning to breathe free, he considered the legislation to be akin to arguing that all dogs are cats.

Now Lord G is a man of some ­legal ­substance, if unfortunate political ­affiliations. In the same interview he ­apologised for his remarks perhaps being construed as “unhelpful” to Rishi Sunak. Nuttatall, your Lordship. You merely stated what most sentient beings already knew. To wit, this upcoming bill is mince. And gey expensive mince forbye.

We now know that the cost of sending ­nobody to the African state which, in the mid 1990’s, presided over 800,000 ­ethnic murders, is about to reach £290 million and counting. My gawd, you can almost get a train to London for less. If you book far enough in advance.

And you can imagine what councils queuing up to declare themselves bankrupt might have done had the same cash been diverted into their slender coffers.

The Labour Party pronounced themselves much exercised by this shocking shredding of taxpayers’ dosh. In truth, I’d rather they’d been more exercised over this government facing a rebellion because their absurdly cruel initiative isn’t nasty enough.

Yet this is where we find ourselves. ­Conservative MPs having a punch up in a sack because their latest leader, their fifth and counting, wasn’t able quite to ­decouple the UK from every treaty, refugee, and ­human rights laws to which it was a ­signatory.

It turns out the reason he mustered ­barely pass marks with the more ­Neanderthal of his troops, was that Rwanda was ­worried about the UK breaching international law. That is where we are at, possums; ­being ­lectured by Rwanda about courting ­illegality and human rights.

Perhaps Labour were trying to spare ­Conservative blushes, having failed to clock that this is an administration it has proved impossible to embarrass. It doesn’t do blushing. It doesn’t do much of ­anything bar scrounging around trying to find ­reasons anyone might want to keep them in office.

You rather suspect that flush is ­busted. Or, as they say in my home town, the gemme is already a bogey. Yet those ­suggesting that a change of UK ­Government will usher in fresh hope for the poor, and fresh thinking on our ­battered public services should not risk holding their breaths too long.

It is true that if there is a note saying “sorry, there’s no money” left in the desk drawer of an incoming Labour ­chancellor, it will not be a poor joke, but a reasonable summation of the fiscal realities after 13 years of mismanagement.

For all that, you would think that a ­Labour administration might wish to find itself on the same side as ­underpaid ­workforces rather than threatening ­ministers with their jotters if found ­within 100 metres of a picket line.

You might imagine that a Labour ­administration would enter office ­promising to halt the wholesale assault on the right to protest, not least in the matter of seeking urgency in addressing issues caused by climate change.

You might suppose that rather than ­endorsing the new fossil fuel licences tossed to companies responsible for much of the pollution, you’d look afresh at real incentives for renewables.

Of course, we need a just transition, but anyone who seriously thinks we can hang around till the mid-century to assemble any kind of act is totally delusional.

Or watching different news channels from everyone else.

Yet here is Sir Cautious and his former Bank of England would-be chancellor already rowing back on their promised green investment. Can’t be afforded, is the battle cry. For just about anything it seems.

And you could just about cope with this degree of fiscal caution dressed up as responsible government were the ­Labour leader to get torn into all the other ­appalling corruption we have witnessed.

It wasn’t a mystery virus which caused cabinet secretaries to create a fast track to pocket-lining for their pals and donors. Or create a scheme ensuring the maximum number of diners would crowd into the maximum number of eateries. Or wheel in a suitcase full of booze, and a fridge to better ensure illegal parties went with a swing.

I want some outrage here. I want a ­potential incoming government not to promise an earth it can’t afford, but at least to cry foul when the government of the day behaves with a monstrous disregard for common decency.

Which brings us to Gaza and an ­outbreak of mealy-mouthedness. If the best the actual government can come up with is to hire a PM retread as foreign secretary, then surely it’s not too much to ask for the would-be replacement to holler foul when it’s considered appropriate for one appalling atrocity to be addressed by arranging some more.

“A humanitarian pause” turns out to have been a glimpse of sanity before ­serial madness took hold again. Everyone knows that you can’t bomb your way to any kind of long-term solution for what has ailed the Middle East these many ­generations.

It will take what it always takes – ­diplomacy untainted by perceived ­political advantage. Those brutalised by October 7 will never rest until the ­perpetrators are ousted. Those ­families bereaved and starved by the army’s ­response will never rest until they too have vengeance.

Leadership, real leadership, means the ability to call out inhumanity whatever its source.

One of the most sickening aspects of watching this sorry apology for a ­Westminster government in its death throes is having to listen to members and ministers talking about “British ­values” and how we need to hold on to them ­without any tinpot foreigner telling them what to do.

They rabbit on about “sovereignty” and control, and patriotism whilst ­reminiscing about a golden age which exists only in their fevered imaginations.

There is a platoon in this demented ­cohort who were not even born until long after the Second World War and who pine for a time about which they knew and know nothing.

The same kind of eejits who want to ­restore imperial measurements despite the fact that most of the population haven’t a scooby what they’re on about it.

Well, enough of this Little ­Englander nonsense. Enough of demonising migrants, most especially when the ­people most vocal on the subject came from ­families who migrated here. On pricey planes rather than leaky boats Enough of complaining that people haven’t learned English well enough, whilst presiding over an education ­system which is systematically outlawing the ability of our children to learn other ­languages.

I’ve never felt especially British, but I’ve never felt so ashamed to have it as an assumed part of my identity.

It’s a myth, of course, that Scotland is a country which has set its face against prejudice. Yet it is still a country where its government argues in favour of equity and diversity. A government which thinks it rather more important to stop the war than stop the boats.

Boats that wouldn’t launch in the first place if there was a government in ­London that could fixate on stopping the traffickers rather than punishing the ­migrants.

A government that might have the ­intellectual capacity to acknowledge that the one surefire way to encourage illegal entry is making the legal variety, well, nigh-impossible.

And, not least, a Home Office which doesn’t let the asylum applications ­double and triple and quadruple on its watch, leading to both bureaucratic constipation and additional human misery.

This Conservative shower are the ­architects of their own misfortune. In Scotland, we can do better. In truth, it would be damn hard to do worse.