A picture tells it all: Ms Patel stands with Ukraine?

 I saw this in my paper this morning and it focused my mind on our government's appalling treament of refugees for the last ten years or so.

Steve Bell's cartoon in today's Guardian. Priti Patel is seated at the table.

 

Our prime minister is a boastful oaf. Everything his government does is “world-leading”, or some such phrase. However, you can never take a word he says at face value. Any statement is more than likely to be on a spectrum somewhere between a bare-faced lie, a distortion, a partial truth, or a gross distortion. The day that he tells the whole truth is an exception. The same applies to the members of his government.

 

My friends in USA and Mexico will be fortunate never to have come across our Home Secretary, Priti Patel. She and our prime minister will tell you, for example, that they are implementing a tough but fair asylum system to take back control of our borders, in the Brexit terminology. In fact, if you arrive in the UK by any means other than an officially sanctioned UK government procedure (which does not exist) you cease to be a person fleeing persecution. Instead, you have committed a crime: you might be imprisoned or sent to an offshore processing centre (which does not exist either). Priti and Johnson may tell you that they are leading the world in welcoming refugees from conflicts that tear at our heart strings. But, if you are not the right sort of refugee (for example, Syrian, Eritrean and the like don’t bother to apply). Nevertheless, she and the boastful oaf will assure you that everything they do is in the best tradition of the generous British people’s history of welcoming refugees.

 

Believe none of it. Her department has frequently been judged in the UK courts to have mistreated refugees, asylum seekers and/or immigrants unfairly (or worse) in breach of her department’s own rules and/or the law. She does not care. After the initial rescue of c.15,000 people from Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the western withdrawal, the government promised a world-leading, generous, “bespoke procedure” to allow Afghans to apply for asylum in the UK. Ms. Patel and her boastful boss love that word “bespoke”: you might think it means specially tailored to the desperate circumstances of desperate people. But you would be quite mistaken. “Bespoke” means “We will boast about it but will do nothing to implements it.” Six months after announcing the “bespoke” procedure for Afghans, nothing has been arranged.

 

Unfortunately for Ukrainians, the scheme established for them is also world-leadingly generous and bespoke and the boastful oaf himself has invited them to flock to the UK.

 

A few examples. First of all, you have to complete online a 14-page form and upload various documents on a website that crashes. Imagine that you have fled your bombed home. Do you stop to collect the documents that Ms Patel requires and do you have the time and internet access to complete the form as you flee? One British man described his attempt to bring his partner to the UK. They began the process in Kyiv before they decided to escape. The 14-page form requires the applicant to select a sub-contracted company that will take biometric data. This couple selected the contractor in Kyiv, but fled to Copenhagen before they could get the required data. A Home Office official patiently explained to them that they must return to Kyiv to source the data from the company named on the form. That’s the Patel procedure. Another British man and his Ukrainian partner managed to escape to Rome, only to be told that she must attend an appointment at the British consulate in Poland. Ukrainians who have managed to reach Calais (from where they can travel to the UK by ferry or train) were met by UK officials seated a trestle table with a hastily typed notice telling them to make an appointment with a consulate in Paris or Brussels (the latter open only 3.5 days per week).

 

The UK welcomes Ukrainian refugees in Calais

The scheme is so bespoke, that if you live in the UK your family members in Ukraine can be given refuge in the UK. But, if you are a Ukrainian who lives here but you do not have “settled status”, you cannot invite any members of your family to join you in the UK under any circumstances. If you do have settled status you may find that a person you consider to be a family member (e.g. an unmarried partner of many years, stepchildren over 18 years of age) are not “bespoke” members after all. They can “bespokely” wait in Ukraine or in a shelter in Poland.

 

Today, Jan heard the Transport Minister, Grant Shapps, asked on BBC Radio 4 why more Ukrainian refugees have not been welcomed to the UK. He explained patiently that Mr Zelensky wants his people to remain close to Ukraine! Mr Putin should hire Mr Shapps immediately as Minister of Propaganda in the UK.

 

Well said Steve Bell: