#Abolish eHomeO ce Redux: Britain’s ongoing refugee crisis

Kieran Hurwood Contributor

In Rishi Sunak’s rst televised interview of 2023 on 8th December, the new PM blundered through veteran BBC politico Laura Kuennsberg’s questioning, trying hard to deny crisis and downplay his personal political weaknesses. is was not the rst time, over the Christmas period Sunak had been criticised for asking a homeless man if he was ‘interested in getting into’ the UK nance industry, and faced attacks from the new organised ‘faction’ of the right in the Conservative party. In that interview, Sunak was explicitly asked ‘why would anyone under 50 vote Conservative?’, Sunak’s response was that they were dealing with NHS backlogs and…small boats?

is article is mostly about Britain’s ongoing manufactured refugee crisis, but it’s also about the British government’s rhetorical and administrative decline in recent years. In an article I the time I had not necessarily anticipated the issue’s incessant leakage into political discourse that has occurred throughout the last 8 months of government crisis. In fact, this crisis –while apparently moderating Tory rhetoric – has led antiimmigration extremists within the Conservative party to become bolder and more in uential than ever before; causing even the PM to claim that the public hate ‘small boats’ because it is ‘unfair’. Yet, following Brexit and massive underinvestment in most public services, we remain unable to deal with the problem in any reasonable fashion. e truth is that now the situation – particularly on asylum – is far worse. is di cult winter has deeply impacted refugees, with poor heating, disastrous disease control, and shrinking space for asylum seekers in processing camps, such as the Manston processing facility. Being short of space in their camps, the Home O ce has been spending extortionate amounts on privately-run hotel of January, when a video was released of Suella Braverman being challenged by a Holocaust survivor on that very rhetoric. Indeed, last year saw the highest number of refugees attempt to cross the Channel in over a decade, with over 45,000 asylum seekers making the dangerous journey. However, following this, the Home O ce has made no obvious e ort to accelerate processing of individuals’ asylum claims beyond their proposed ‘New Plan for Immigration’this controversial plan includes measures to send refugees to Rwanda and Albania, practices they advertise to the world through their Twitter account.

Amid all the present crises, we might rightfully wonder why Sunak and Braverman are so devoted to channelling focus towards immigration. Is it a distraction to draw away from other crises perhaps? Unclear and unveri able. Is it an attempt at politically leveraging against Labour? Possible, but again unveri able. Instead, it seems there are two main motivations for the current Tory line. Firstly, the Tories genuinely believe the British state is currently institutionally-rigged to believe immigration is a bad thing. Following on from my past argument about the Home O ce’s institutional aws, recent years have revealed how the British state’s aversion to immigration is rooted in a persistent governmental anxiety about the scale of immigration amid ever-weakening state administrative capacity. of the core policies of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government was essentially budget cuts, cutting immigration, and welfare ‘reform’ – all while pursuing a sort of so Europhilia. e problem was that these goals were ultimately incompatible in the long-term. When the Conservatives eventually got their own majority in 2015, they attempted to unleash their full policy portfolio upon Britain. wrote for the Beaver in 2022 titled ‘#Abolish eHomeO ce: Reforming the UK’s worst government department’, I critiqued the UK government’s maintenance of a department which made crime, immigration, and national security synonymous concepts. is certainly remains an institutional problem, but at accommodation for asylum seekers, and continues to have inadequate administrative capacity to process their claims. Earlier this year, a farright terrorist attempted to rebomb a camp in Dover, and the government responded ine ectually by doubling down on their existing rhetoric and policy - including on the 13th that the public dislike refugee boats crossing the Channel, or at least a substantial enough subset that they are convinced this will a ect the next election. Some polling seems to suggest this has a basis, but this polling is not always completely clear and presents the immigrants as a problem, rather than the crossings themselves. Secondly,

When the Afghan withdrawal took place in 2021, the public saw just how worn down the Home O ce had become. Foreign and Home O ce civil servants were overburdened with thousands of phonein requests for extraction, including those in the personal o ces of Dominic Raab, then Foreign Secretary, who also happened to be on a holiday he refused to return from at that time. is wasn’t necessarily new, the government’s immigration and asylumhandling departments were already struggling, what was di erent was that it was now in the public eye. Ukraine too last year shone a light on this administrative crisis. While European countries welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms, the UK ailed and cited national security concerns and ‘work ow’ issues, delaying the implementation of the ‘families’ scheme for several months. e increased public attention to regular asylum claims is certainly new, but we should not be misled to believe that the problems with the system are hypermodern and purely down to our governmental crisis. is was a long-term neglect of the immigration issue by the current Conservative government.

Place yourself in the shoes of David Cameron 10 years ago for a moment. Your view

It is di cult to know whether they (David Cameron and George Osborne namely) knew of the likely consequences of their decisions 8 years later, but there is no doubt they are responsible. e institutionalisation of an obsessive budgeting mentality for political purposes, rather than planning based on social (and therefore economic) costs meant that ministers and MPs were constantly being asked to consider decisions which would weaken Britain’s ability to make phone calls.

What we now need is a return to rational decision-making on immigration. e small boats problem is a product of much deeper institutional and political decision-making which spans this whole last period of Conservative-led government. By promising to impose restrictions on immigration while also making public service cuts, the Conservatives trapped themselves politically and have seriously undermined Britain’s capacities to meet our international moral and legal duties. ough we may cast around the abolition of the Home O ce as a potential solution to these problems, the last few months and indeed years have demonstrated that this is a problem with the broader mindset of the government, not simply a single-issue failure.

E Decline Of Human Decency In The Age Of Individualism

Alan Nemirovski Features Editor

Illustrated by Lamisa Chowdhury

Iwork at a bar on campus, e ree Tuns. ere, I meet about a hundred customers every shi so my interactions with each one are eeting in nature. us, very little makes me remember someone. However, I have somehow retained a vivid catalogue of the people who don’t act with common courtesy, especially those who don’t, at a minimum, say “please” or “thank you.” Every interaction with no reciprocity of basic decency makes my blood boil. Worse still, with every passing shi the number of these interactions I remember grows higher. is continues to surprise me because here, on campus, I would expect students to treat each other with at least a little bit more humanity.

For those who have ever been the recipient of a drink at Tuns, I’m sure you can relate to my next anecdote. As many, I o en walk into the Silent Zone of the LSE library, hoping to get work done or cramming my studying in before an exam a couple of days away. Nonetheless, without fail, there will be a group of people roaring in laughter or shouting away despite the side eyes they get and gentle reminders from passers-by. And despite common stereotypes, no, these people are not always French. You could tell others to get noise-cancelling headphones or blame the people who have raised the issue, but it’s called the Silent Zone for a reason. is, among other similar scenarios, makes it apparent that people are becoming more self-centred.

is is not only a complaint about rude customers or loud people in the silent zone, nor a boomer-style rant about the moral decay of the young generation. Instead, it is a poignant observation of how individualism has consumed us, gradually eroding our ability to be decent human beings. Nowhere else have I seen this erosion appear more prominently than in large, cold, concrete jungles like London (and consequently, LSE), which have become the epicentre of individualism worldwide. is is not the fault of any one particular person or particular entity. I, too, have previously my previous point, it was only overcome with human cooperation. However, it also isolated everyone. We were all trapped in a 6-foot bubble, and many were le alone. It’s no surprise that many people, particularly those in their formative years, built habits centred on themselves. at translates well to essential predates Covid: social media. In the age of self-care (further propelled by the pandemic), the message to supremely prioritise oneself above others or be the ‘main character,’ seems to have gotten lost in translation. e takeaway has now become that only one’s feelings are of concern and that others’ feelings can be assume the worst in everyone, yet we all desperately try to create false narratives that only contain the best parts of ourselves and our lives. is contradiction makes it di cult to empathise with others online and o ine. Consequently, if we can’t empathise with others, we have little (if any) reason to help them. caught myself acting cold and disconnected from others out of sheer convenience — passing people on the street without acknowledgement or trying to avoid basic social interactions because it was simply easier. Nevertheless, this culture of individualism is being blindly perpetuated by many, and it’s time it’s addressed. As we face generational challenges and existential threats in the near future, the only way to deal with them is together.

One such existential threat was the pandemic. To issues such as self-care, but it poses a more considerable risk when attempting to bring isolated individuals together. Nobody else matters when one prioritises the self and survival above all, as we’ve seen in the pandemic. Aside from avoiding infection spread, it made no sense to consider others (notably, strangers) because why would one need to? Covid is not the sole contributor to this problem, but it was certainly a catalyst. e likeliest starter of this in present times, however, minimised, if not outright dismissed, as they don’t matter nearly as much (prime example: Rory Gilmore in the later seasons).

Also, similarly to Covid, everyone on social media is physically isolated and cruising around with no real person in sight. A er all, other people become reducible to just a set of pixels. We’ve been given massive doses of exposure therapy to obscenities we would never see in the real world, seeing people treat each other like garbage, worse than scum. We

Even larger institutions like capitalism could have caused this hyper-individuality in a way that predates modern technology and the rise of social media. is can be argued through historical claims highlighting the ongoing impact these institutions' laissezfaire, competitive, individualcentric nature has on broader discussions of collectivism and general empathy. Still, these may have played into the problem at hand, but their signi cance has diminished today. at doesn’t mean they should be entirely discounted, but instead, they are further down the list of urgency in which causational factors need to be addressed to remedy the issue. Only our daily interactions and how we choose to behave are up to us — and addressing our habits and tendencies is also well within our power, whereas reforming centuries-old institutions is simply unrealistic.

Positive interactions between humans certainly still exist, though they seem to be dwindling outside of people’s close circles. Not everyone may be good or nice, but not everyone is terrible or intent on being an asshole. As social creatures, how we interact does – in part –de ne us. Treating everyone with decency and respect rst, instead of with judgemental disgust and coldness, would make living nicer and easier for everyone. It won’t x all our problems, but it will make daily life more bearable.