No. 224 – Tragedy at Calais: Boris Negotiates by Megaphone

Dear James. 

Negotiation by megaphone. It’s a classic populist gambit. Or to put it more clearly, shout from the parapets what your supporters want to hear at the cost of outraging your negotiating partners. The ensuing fury has the additional advantage of distracting from your own troubles. What you don’t get however is a serious negotiation. In fact you can end up with no agreement at all. But that’s the beauty of it. When the negotiating partner says, ‘No’, you have established your enemy and your supporters will cheer you even more while the rest of us look on in dismay. Public belligerence and private compromise may be a common tactic in normal negotiations but when it involves the deaths of twenty seven desperate human beings seeking refuge in your own country, it verges on institutional manslaughter.

Boris Johnson’s tactics this week are a further example of the populists’ agenda playing out. The cycle of suspicion and self-sabotage began long before 2016 deep inside your party’s paranoid imagination. It started with the belief that Britain does not depend on its neighbours for trade or anything else. Diplomacy is therefore neglected and, rejecting the clear economic advantages of close cooperation, every negotiation has become a battle of national self-esteem. It’s a methodology that generates perpetual grievance. Brussels becomes the enemy, relationships are damaged and presented to a domestic audience as proof that the other side does not want to be friends.

The tactic is working James. Today the EU nations met in Calais to discuss the immigrant situation following last week’s tragedy off the Calais coast.  Mrs Patel however was not there. She’d been ‘disinvited’. By Issuing a series of ‘proposals’ by Twitter to the French government on Friday, Boris challenged normal diplomacy by publically making sure that our French friends would find them unacceptable. Predictably, the French Interior Minister reacted angrily, saying: "We consider the British prime minister's public letter unacceptable and counter to our discussions between partners... As a result Priti Patel is no longer invited."

The shadow home secretary accused the prime minister of a "grave error of judgement" in sending the letter. He told the BBC: "This is a humiliation for a prime minister and a home secretary who have completely lost control of the situation in the Channel, at the very moment when the Prime Minister needed to be a statesman."

In 2019 Mrs Patel  2019 pledged to halve migrant crossings of more than 1,400 people ‘by the end of the month’. More empty promises followed. This year so far 23,000 small-boat migrants have arrived on our shores. To put this in perspective, in the early 2000s, our figure was in excess of 80,000. Several of our European neighbours are currently managing similar numbers: around 80,000 applications so far this year in Germany, 70,000 in France, and 60,000 arrivals in Italy. In 2015 Germany successfully took in one million Syrian refugees. These figures suggest what moral strength we had, has emigrated from our nation to the dastardly EU?

In parliament on Thursday Mrs Patel said that Border Force was prepared to turn around boats that have come from France and send them back. This caused the head of the PCS union to warn that “It is shocking that the government is suggesting Border Force staff turn boats back, which will clearly be against international law and morally reprehensible.”

Yet again James, Boris and your government, have made a grave error. In your efforts to placate your right wing and in an attempt to head off the return to ‘beer hall’ politics of Nigel Farage, your party is backing our nation into an impossible situation. While Ministers such as Mr Zahawi praise our nation for allowing his family to escape the persecution of Sadaam Hussein, it is simultaneously putting every obstacle in the way of people doing the same. Last week twenty seven of them drowned. 

Immigration is a problem for the whole globe. It requires calm consideration, an integrated strategy and cooperation around the world. It also requires compassion. Our government is feeding right wing, red meat cravings for simplistic solutions. They yearn for an island fortress ignoring the fact that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Without the adoption of totalitarian rules and the accompanying suppression of all our rights, immigrants will always to get through. There is no such thing as an island fortress.

Mrs Patel was absent at Calais today. As was Boris and his government when those twenty seven people perished in the cold waters off Calais last week. James, your party has shamed us all. 

BH- Your Concerned Constituent