Braverman gave a speech encouraging the narrative that the 1951 refugee convention needs an overhaul. This is just another attempt to pass on the blame for Tory ineptitude in tackling the Home Office inability to do it’s job, and to try and make the problem go away.

The problems that the Home Office has in processing asylum applications is entirely due to the Tory government. They should be processing applications within a few weeks rather than the many months that they are currently taking. The issues with accomodation are entirely down to the unacceptable delays that are the current norm. This is due to a lack of commitment to provide adequate staff and facilities. Rather than investing the money in staff and facilities Braverman would rather make the ‘problem’ evaporate by making more people ineligible for asylum. A cheap fix by pretending to have a higher purpose by addressing a global issue.

Her use of language invoking a spectre of many tens of millions of refugees beating a path to Dover is the same sort of errant nonsense that UKIP spouted about millions of Turks set to ‘invade’ the UK as part of their Brexit campaigning. Very few refugees choose to come to the UK, or the US either. This is just cheap scaremongering.

Nasty

She of course finds a willing audience in right leaning opinion shifters who essentially came up with the idea of diluting the convention because they don’t want to help anyone apart from themselves a

“But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin is sufficient to qualify for protection.”

There are 64 countries that have laws persecuting homosexuals, real or imagined. Many have capital punishment and lengthy prison sentences as part of their penal code for these ‘crimes’. This goes far beyond discrimination. To deny that being gay in some countries is sufficient grounds to seek protection is at best nasty. People who could face capital punishment or prison for merely being gay are absolutely the sort of people who should be protected by the current Refugee Convention. To.seek to persuade otherwise could be interpreted as homophobic.

There are also many countries where women are severely punished for daring to dress or behave outside a very narrowly defined set of conditions. In the news recently have been reports of women in Afghanistan and Iraq being imprisoned, beaten or killed. Shouldn’t women escaping from these countries who had perhaps dared to educate girls and faced severe punishment reasonably expect protection by asylum? To argue against this is nasty and misogynistic. It seems bizarre that a woman would be advocating misogyny.

Wrong

The 1951 Refugee Convention was agreed to create an obligation on nations to grant refugee status to anyone fearing persecution or harm.

Right wing politicians in the UK and USA like to pretend that they have a ‘realistic’ view of the world, without actually understanding the world. They would convince themselves that they are doing ‘their bit’ already. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Table of refugees hosted (2022) and GDP per capita

The table shows that it is predominantly the poorest countries that are doing the most to help refugees while rich countries sit around whining about how terrible it is and that ‘we’ need to change the definitions.

Politicians in the UK and USA have absolutely no moral right to even suggest that a rethink is required as they are not significantly involved in dealing with it. Countries such as Türkiye, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Germany and Colombia who are making a real contribution to dealing with refugees are the ones who have a legitimate right to call for any re-evaluation. Suella and her think tank chums are wrong on every level.

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