Tory home secretary, Suella Braverman doubles down over poor treatment of migrants (Picture: Attorney General’s Office and The Rt Hon Suella Braverman QC MP)
Does it matter if we have a non-white prime minister? It does, although not in the way that we’re now told. The Tories are ready to encourage the brutalising and burning of refugees to save their political skins.
Their words and policies are the background to why a man petrol bombed a migrant centre last weekend. The Tories’ response was to add to the incitement.
On an individual level home secretary Suella Braverman decided that revelling in the filthy onslaught against refugees could protect her position. She calculated that it was harder to sack her if she was the leader of the openly anti-migrant gang. But on a wider level the Tories as a whole are creating a hell for asylum seekers to deflect from their crises.
When Rishi Sunak became prime minister, there was the myth that rationality was back in charge. It was always rubbish, a cover-up for the ruling class assault on workers and the poor. But now we see the whole Tory party is to blame for setting up a concentration camp where scabies, diphtheria and more run unchecked.
They all, whatever wing they claim to represent, back policies that mean homeless people sleeping in the streets of British cities and Iranian refugees condemned to sleep on mats in a tent during the winter in Kent. Are the Tories going to get away with this? That depends on how working class people respond.
The Tories want us divided over issues such as refugees so that the strikes stop and they can ram through massive cuts. Labour disgracefully concedes to central parts of the Tories’ arguments. Keir Starmer will bend to the bankers over the economy and the racists over asylum seekers.
Union leaders will be tempted to talk only of pay and jobs and to run away from political arguments. That will hand the Tories a weapon to weaken the resistance.
This week showed the bosses are stepping up their assaults. Royal Mail’s legal threats saw the CWU union call off a raft of strikes. Management followed up with a new wave of attacks on pay and conditions. Rail companies have given not an inch on any of the issues that have sparked five months of on-off strikes.
Our side has to shift. On Saturday’s demonstration in London there has to be total opposition to the racist onslaught. And the whole movement has to learn the lessons of the strikes since the summer.
It has been an inspiration to see more workers on the picket lines. Now there has to be immediate escalation and unity.
We need extended strikes, all-out strikes and total war on the bosses and the government. We need a united insurgent fightback —and that has to be linked to socialist politics and organisation.
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