Sunday, 12 March 2023
Is Gary Linacre right about the new UK policy on illegal small-boats migrants?
In all the hullabaloo about BBC football presenter Gary Linacre and whether his tweet comparing the government's migrants policy with Germany in the 1930s breaches the corporation's rules on impartiality, the actual plan for illegal migrants who arrive in small boats across the Channel to be instantly deported has been swallowed up by tabloid anti-BBC mania. Linacre was suspended and the whole football TV edifice has crumbled overnight. I think Linacre went a little too far and as one of the best-paid presenters, albeit on sports not news or current affairs, his attack on Home Secretary Suella Braverman's plan of action for illegal migrants was bound to be controversial. Whether he should have compared her parliamentary statement to an era when Nazi Germany was getting into its stride is arguable. The Nazis were racists. Braverman, backed by Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, is not acting against illegal migrants because they are Afghani or Iraqi or Albanian or Somalian or whatever but because they are being criminally exploited by people smugglers, shoved into small boats to cross the English Channel at huge cost and enormous risk, and it simply cannot carry on like this. The government has tried and failed other ways to stop the criminals from abusing the rights and hopes of these poor people who want a better life in Britain. and ending the life-threatening crossings. Braverman's new policy sounds extreme: anyone crossing the Channel in small boats illegally will be banned for life from applying for asylum in this country and will be sent back to France or flown off to Rwanda for the rest of their days. It's supposed to create a disincentive to the thousands of refugees whose sole aim is to put their old life behind them and come to the UK which they have heard is compassionate and generous. The Braverman language doesn't sound either compassionate or generous. So you can see what Linacre was getting at. But it's an argument that would be better served by intelligent debates (if that's possible) in parliament rather than emanating from tweets by a very nice bloke who fronts the most popular football programme on the tele.
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