From Boris Johnson to Priti Patel, Britain’s handling of the refugee crisis has been shameful

Boiled down to its most essential element, the prime minister’s defence for his shameful response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis, apart from the usual pretence that it doesn’t exist, is that Vladimir Putin has lined up Britain for special retaliatory treatment. Perhaps he will use the crisis to smuggle in spies, novichok and other means to avenge himself. Hence the need for “checks”.

Perhaps the prime minister is underestimating the Russian secret service’s ability to infiltrate other countries, which has sadly been proved with fatal consequences on too many occasions. If President Putin wants to shoot, poison or strangle an enemy in any corner of the Earth, he will find a way to do so. He does not need to dress his spies up as bogus Ukrainian refugees. Besides, checks can be evaded and espionage is one of the few areas where Russia enjoys a global advantage.

Other countries have managed to allow in vastly more Ukrainian refugees with checks and controls, but in a rather more efficient manner. Even allowing for geography and the natural tendency for refugees to gather in bordering countries, the disparity in numbers of asylum seekers granted shelter is stark. On the prime minister’s own figure, about 1,000 Ukrainian refugees have made it to the UK.

For context, around 2,000 have entered Ireland (with passport-free access to the UK under the common travel area), some 50,000 have gone to Germany and – albeit as a close neighbour – around 1.2 million to Poland. The Home Office was this week condemned for “dirty propaganda” after appearing to protest that Ireland’s welcome for Ukraine refugees was a security threat to the UK.

The Ukrainian ambassador to the UK told MPs this week, with infinite politeness, “We also believe some bureaucratic procedures [for visas] could be simplified”. He added: “I believe something like dropping everything (all visa checks) could be considered.”

It is not nearly good enough, given the government’s boastful rhetoric and the unfortunate fact that it was the west’s collective failure to deter President Putin that visited this humanitarian disaster on Europe. Britain shares in the blame for that.

It is simply not the case, for example, that there is some unlimited guarantee of safety being offered to Ukrainians. The schemes are limited, highly conditional and – in any case – not even fully operational. For a distressed mother and child from, say, Mariupol, who knows no one in the UK, doesn’t know where to find a “sponsor”, and doesn’t qualify for a work visa, there is no way to safety in Britain. Even if she and the child did qualify for one of the schemes, she would find them difficult to use.

In the Commons and elsewhere, the government continues to “gaslight” MPs and journalists who find real-life cases of Ukrainian people, with legitimate claims to come to Britain, being sent away from supposed visa access centres and having to navigate bureaucratic obstacles.

Old habits and attitudes die hard – especially in the mind of Priti Patel. For years, the home secretary, like her predecessors, has been fostering a hostile environment for migration; and indeed even for those of the Windrush generation who thought themselves well-settled in the UK. It is no great surprise that Ukrainians encounter the same sort of attitudes so many others have encountered in the past.

It has hardly been one of Ms Patel’s finest hours, and the longer she spends in the post as home secretary, the more challenging parts of her brief are passed to other cabinet ministers.

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The Ukrainian crisis has been handed to Michael Gove, who may have a more compassionate approach – it would be difficult for him to be more flinty than Ms Patel. She cannot be indulged by Boris Johnson for much longer.

The prime minister has a formulation he likes to use about this refugee crisis which is that the government is doing “as much as it can”. This actually means as much as its backbenchers and reactionary elements in the grassroots will allow him to. The ones who see Putin’s assassins in the buggy of every Ukrainian child refugee, and a wannabe welfare scrounger pushing it.

This time, though, public opinion, including among Tory voters, is very much in favour of helping the homeless Ukrainians, and that shift in opinion is starting to be reflected in some of the more sensitive parts of the parliamentary Conservative Party.

No doubt Mr Gove will be offering a more humane face to the policy than Ms Patel has done. But it is all about the numbers. Mr Johnson says hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians will be helped to Britain soon. We shall see.