Tuesday 20 November 2018

How to lose friends


Not for the first time, I found myself wondering yesterday whether the Prime Minister’s problem is the poor judgement of her advisors, or whether she simply ignores what they say.  Her comments about people from other EU countries ‘jumping the queue’ might have looked to her or her advisors like a nice sound bite, but from the perspective of people who have chosen to make their homes here and contribute to the UK’s economy and society, it was downright offensive, as these two reactions indicate.  It was a stupid and unnecessary comment to make, but perhaps it simply reveals, yet again, the casual, almost unthinking, sense of superiority which Anglo-British nationalists feel towards everyone else.  It’s also just plain wrong – there is no ‘queue’ to come to the UK.
It’s an obvious attempt to return to the anti-immigration theme which she has used before, but I doubt she’s really thought that through either.  Does she really believe that those people who voted for Brexit primarily because they thought it would halt immigration are going to jump for joy at the thought of encouraging more immigrants from India instead of Europe?  If she does believe that, then she’s not understood the true nature of the hostility which some people feel towards immigrants.  It’s a dangerous and unpleasant hostility which she should be trying to counter, not stoke up in an attempt to sell the removal of rights from UK citizens as being about controlling citizens from elsewhere.

1 comment:

dafis said...

John I suspect she's hopping around from one theme to another like some sort of demented snake oil saleswoman. "If it doesn't work like this, shake it about and it'll work like that ......." and so on. Her entire range of expression, a range of about 5 or 6 facial tics, sums her up. She's on tramlines and can't cope with any unplanned deviations, which is quite odd for someone who is evidently politically deviant and opportunistic!