Opinion Britain is trapped in political purgatory – waiting for its undead government to fall

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Policy that can’t work and laws written purely for campaign slogans are clear symptoms of a moribund regime.

 

The language of bureaucracy, while rarely poetic, sometimes has a sinister eloquence. Residents on board the Bibby Stockholm, the barge moored in Dorset to house asylum claimants, are classified by the Home Office as “non-detained” persons. They are not imprisoned, but nor are they free.

Occupants of the vessel can travel to places “agreed with local agencies” on special buses provided by the Home Office. They are not subject to a curfew, but there is a register. Checks are made to count people out and in again.

 

There is nothing new in non-detention. It is the normal condition of people granted immigration bail, including tens of thousands of asylum seekers who are waiting for permission to stay in the UK. It is an ambiguous zone between sanctuary and internment, between arrival and acceptance, where rights available to a refugee blur into conditions imposed on a criminal.

The government wants to shrink that zone, not least because it is expensive to keep people there. The Bibby Stockholm is cheaper than hotel accommodation but the barge only has room for about 500 people. It is what the Home Office might call a “non-solution” to the problem. Disused army barracks and portable buildings can add some capacity, but the obvious solution to an excess of people waiting for adjudication of asylum claims is to speed up the process.

That is notionally government policy, too. Rishi Sunak has set the improbable target of clearing the case backlog by the end of this year, which means churning through hundreds of files every day.

Meanwhile, new claimants keep arriving. The prime minister has a different plan for them. Under the Illegal Migration Act, given royal assent last month, anyone who arrives by illicit means – on a small boat from France, most pertinently – is disqualified from asylum in Britain. They become, in Home Office speak, “ineligible persons” liable for detention.

 

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[brewsterbudgen]

2024 will (hopefully) be another 1997. ????

[JonnyF]

Reading the headline I knew it had to be The Guardian. They're always good for a laugh .