If you agree with Rwanda deportations, you should be deeply ashamed

The UK has truly lost its morals altogether. The Rwanda deportation is appalling and every Briton in favour of this half-baked scheme should be deeply ashamed. Our country is in crisis – and instead of having a proper strategy, this blusterer of a PM applies sticking plasters which of course keep falling off.

We have indeed a government from hell and a totally unsuitable and unfit PM who has no morals: he lies, does not know what “the truth” means, he makes laws and then breaks them, made manifesto promises he never kept and is bringing the UK to its knees. No other country in Europe has the same issues with food price hikes and out of control fuel costs – but nobody bothers to compare the UK outside its island. The PM tells us it is the same everywhere – it’s “global”. What?

The UK is becoming more and more corrupt – at this rate, investors will not put their trust into the UK because it’s seen as an untrustworthy and corrupt country all over the world; run by a government which cannot govern. And worse...

I spent some time in Europe (Spain, France, Switzerland and Italy) and it was a breath of fresh air – no chaos, no crisis, health services running smoothly and (if there are issues) the government governs. This country, however, under the current Tory government will not recover; so wake up British people and look at the bigger picture. It’s out there – but not under the Johnson regime.

Susanne Campbell

Address supplied

Home secretary Priti Patel has built her career persecuting refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants with the hostile environment plan first outlined a decade ago under Theresa May. In a tweet she posted in August 2020, Patel justified her brutality towards migrants and refugees on the grounds it is what “the British people want”. Actually, the opposite is true.

On 13 May 2021 hundreds of people in Glasgow mobilised in Kenmure Street to stop UK Border Agency officials and the Greater Glasgow police forcibly seizing two men on “immigration offences”. On Thursday 5 May 2022 a large crowd in Edinburgh, shouting, “no justice, no peace”, prevented home office officials from grabbing two people on Nicolson Square. On Saturday, 14 May 2022, the Met police raided Ashwin Street in Dalston, Hackney and tried to arrest at least two fast-food riders there for “immigration offences”. The people of Dalston came forward to liberate the arrested riders and force the police to back to their station to the chant of “whose streets? Our streets!”

On Saturday, 11 June 2022 the Met police tried to arrest a man in Queen’s Road, Peckham for “immigration offences”. Once again, the public rallied to the migrant’s defence. They blocked the streets in a stand-off that lasted for four hours until the police were forced to release their detainee. Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of activists – ordinary members of the public, lawyers, and human rights activists – mobilised to prevent the home office from forcibly deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The elemental, grassroots solidarity the people who live in the UK have shown toward refugees sends a clear message to Priti Patel that her brutal campaign against migrants is not what “the British people want”: it’s what a racist minority want. Patel is discovering that it is easier to pass evil laws than enforce them. The people have shown that active solidarity with the oppressed is stronger than Tory racism.

Yours truly,

Sasha Simic

London

The government’s Rwanda scheme is “ungodly” (the Archbishop of Canterbury) and “appalling” (the Prince of Wales). Is there any way to stop evasion of our border controls that they would find acceptable and, if not, are they in effect advocates for “no borders”?

It seems perverse to erase a border as a barrier to movement while retaining it as the line for an arbitrary step change in opportunities and entitlements. The pressure this generates to cross suggests we would not be achieving freedom of movement but rather the forced movement of labour.

To address this, we would need to remove all unnecessary obstacles to workers outside the UK accessing the British market. Import duties and other protectionist measures would have to go. We should look critically at where the services we require are provided. What is the virtue in patients who don’t get visitors, or no longer recognise them, staying put while workers are torn from their social networks and cross continents to care for them?

Why is the government spending per refugee so much less in other places than for those within our non-border? Shouldn’t the available money be distributed without such discrimination? If that fraction of us who are passionate for asylum seekers here to remain also want them to be better funded than others, then they can achieve this through their own voluntary charitable contributions.

Why are those who have crossed our non-border and gained employment taxed as appropriate for relatively low earners when they enjoy a relatively high income by the standards of their own country? Extra revenue levied using the latter comparison could contribute to our overseas aid budget.

John Riseley

Harrogate

It is becoming apparent that the instigators of Brexit, corporate Britain and lobbied MPs wanted to rid Britain of inconvenient legislation for business and control from Europe for government.

More and more of the government’s failed antics reveal not only its incompetence but the sheer hypocrisy, downright lies and obfuscation Brexiteers used to wrest us from Europe. This tired, inept and uncaring Tory party lack any semblance of ability to lead us out of the morass we currently are in. There is a buffoon at the helm of sycophants, acolytes and incompetents.

Brexit is still not “done”, causing chaos at our borders. Trading with the rest of the world has not replaced losses from leaving the EU, our largest trading partner. Covid-19 mismanagement, Partygate lies and law-breaking have derailed any possibility that we will not continue to slide into further chaos. By foolishly delaying giving Mr Johnson the sack, Tory MPs have further damaged Britain’s standing in the world and have continued his disastrous premiership. This shameful period in our history will forever be reviled.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Catherine Lough’s article out today, “Teachers fear pupils are less ready for world of work post-pandemic“ reveals sobering statistics from Teach First that highlight an exacerbation of skills shortages.

Certainly, the pandemic has changed our lives in ways that we could never have imagined. But our young people deserve more.

We need to make education relevant to life and work in the world today – we need to celebrate individual talent, to broaden what young people learn, to support young people to develop essential skills so they can flourish in life and work. Edge have long called for this from and we now need to see change happen. Our young people cannot wait any longer.

Alice Barnard

Chief Executive, Edge Foundation

It is alarming to read that Conservative MPs are calling on the government to weaken core environmental protections and lift barriers to US-approved pesticides (Tory MPs urge government to scrap EU pesticide regulations and allow all US chemicals on food, 14 June).

People in the UK have for decades benefited from governments prioritising the precautionary principle when looking at potentially dangerous substances. This has kept chemicals and pesticides with links to cancer and behavioural issues in children out of our fields and off our shelves.

By contrast, the United States has a far more lenient approach, sanctioning the use of more highly hazardous pesticides and three times as many pesticide products.

Brexit cannot be an excuse to junk decades of progress and abandon sensible tests and regulations. The government needs to ignore such calls and put public and environmental health at the heart of its future plans.

Ruth Chambers

Greener UK (London)