On sovereignty and small boats
The government is trying to put its Brexit coalition back together.
At first sight, the government’s high-profile promotion of its new Illegal Migration Bill seems counter-productive. By any measure its performance on small boats has been grossly incompetent. While the number of boat crossings has increased sharply, the total number seeking asylum in the UK not so. The spiralling backlog on the processing of claims, largely because of a failure to invest in and train sufficient staff, is inexcusable. Thousands of asylum seekers are now housed in hotels where they face the anger of local communities and create a focus for far-right groups. The costs run into millions of pounds per day. The operation of the new Bill requires thousands of secure detention places which don’t exist (and will also be hugely expensive), and agreements from origin or third-party governments to take the asylum seekers that also do not exist with the key countries or in the numbers that are needed.
Not surprising, perhaps, that the move has left some commentators baffled. The issue does matter, particularly to sections of 2019 Conservative voters. Even voters inclined to take a more generous approach to asylum find the perception of coastal lawlessness disconcerting. But if that’s the case, why draw attention to a policy area where you are so manifestly useless?
One view is that the government can only gain from talking about an issue voters care about. In the short term that is bound to be true. Labour promises to do better — even with quite specific proposals — may seem weak or carping. Perhaps. And perhaps £500m given to French policing — coming on the back of very large sums in the past — will lead to the ‘collapse of the smugglers’ business model’. If not the impression of (expensive) uselessness will be reinforced. Unless Labour gives the impression it does not care — something Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer have not done to date — any lasting Tory gains from talking about the issue look likely to be small.
A more plausible explanation lies in the deliberate flirting will of a willingness to challenge both the European Convention on Human Rights and international conventions on refugees. The issue at stake here is not the niceties of the law, but a question of national sovereignty: the right — as the Conservatives may put it — for this democratic country to take its own democratic decisions.
Sovereignty was, of course, the issue at the heart of Brexit. While the immediate issue driver was immigration, the EU referendum combined that policy issue with the sovereignty question: Who decides? Us or them? The strongest response came from English identifying voters with a strong sense of national democracy and sovereignty.
Since Brexit ‘was done’, and its benefits have been slow — shall we say — to materialise, the Conservative have struggled to sustain a coalition founded on those shared ideas of national sovereignty. Asylum, small boats, and the ECHR give them a slim opportunity to put uncontrolled immigration and national sovereignty back together again.
The argument, taken for granted on the liberal left, that a civilised democratic nation should participate fully in international legal agreements may never have enjoyed full popular consent. For all that it was British lawyers who drafted the ECHR, it was not in the expectation that these principles would be required in our own courts. (They were, in effect, writing down our principles for foreigners). The increasingly prominent role played by the ECHR has taken place through legal evolution (including its incorporation by Labour with the promise that nothing was really being changed) but without any measure of real public debate. I’ve not managed to find consistent polling on the ECHR, but what there is does not seem to indicate overwhelming support for membership. And support drops quickly if the question becomes ‘should the ECHR stop a British government doing x’ — a loaded question, but that is how politics works.
The dividing line being created is not directly whether we be in the ECHR, but whether, in principle, an international convention should bar our government from taking the action it deems necessary. Leaving the ECHR is not easy politics: many currently silent Tory MPs would be appalled, and it would have serious consequences for Northern Ireland and for the Brexit withdrawal agreements. But it is very unlikely to reach that stage any time before the next election. The issue will be one of resistance and principle: are we prepared to challenge court interpretations of the ECHR, or should we roll over and accept them? Stand up for Britain and the decisions of our parliament or concede to the imposition of foreign laws[1]? This is clearly trickier ground for opposition parties who will want to defend the principle of being a signatory to the ECHR or the Geneva Convention but having to do so irrespective of how it works in practice. While a significant section of the electorate already takes that position for granted, it is by no means self-evident to some of the voters they are trying to take from the Conservatives.
For what it is worth, I think this is a gamble that is as likely to blow up in the government’s face by underling how they have lost control. But it is worth understanding the appeal they are making to voters and why it may strike a chord.
John Denham
(edited 11.3.23.)
[1] I know these are not ‘foreign laws’ but this is the language that will be used.
