The Tories and Brexit are to blame for the asylum policy crisis

Suella Braverman has let the cat out of the bag regarding government policy on refugees. I am a member of the home affairs select committee where, in her evidence to us this week, she was unable to provide an answer to the basic question of how people seeking asylum can come here legally.

The accurate picture is that Tory ministers have systematically closed down all safe and legal routes for asylum seekers, then labelled all those who reach these shores as “illegal”. This is despite the fact that most claims of asylum here are officially found to be valid.

She is also the latest home secretary to sign a deal with French authorities, to ask them, Canute-like, to hold back the people coming here in the most precarious fashion. It is not an accident that successive home secretaries have been ardent Brexiteers. All of this is conditioned by Brexit, and the very hard Brexit Britain chose when we left the EU without a deal.

This also means no deal on the return of those whose claims have failed, no cooperation on tracking and intercepting people traffickers, and no concern for asylum seekers as vulnerable people.

It is Tory ministers and Brexit that are to blame for this policy crisis. While the government continues to imagine that some “Brexit benefits” can be found, the public has experienced the reality. The Brexit experiment is now deeply unpopular because it has clearly failed.

One of the consequences of Brexit is that there are so many political issues that depend on cooperative relations with the EU to resolve. But far from being cordial, the government seems to be deliberately adopting an antagonistic attitude on trade, on refugees and on the Northern Ireland protocol.

The government previously claimed that the protocol is ruining the Northern Ireland economy, which is entirely false. In fact, the benefits of the protocol far outweigh the difficulties for people in Ireland.

But the tune seems to have changed and the government is no longer marching to a Lambeg drum. Rishi Sunak has reportedly told Joe Biden that all these issues will be resolved by April. As Biden himself is a strong supporter of the protocol and the Good Friday Agreement, this points to a government U-turn that amounts to another double-cross of the Unionists by a British government.

These issues together highlight a key difficulty for Tory governments, stretching back many years. Due to their divisions and political weakness, the Tories frequently rely on allies such as Unionists, but the policies they attempt to pursue run counter to the interests of British people as a whole. In this case, siding with Unionism has risked a trade war with the EU and, at the very least, a deep freeze in relations with the US administration. All this comes at a time when we are seeking trade deals.

A similar pattern is evident on the issue of migrant small boats in the Channel. Part of the Tory coalition is held together by pandering to anti-immigrant feeling. Much of this is down to ex-Ukip and Brexit Party voters, urged on by some of the worst parts of the right-wing media. The more the numbers of migrants using this method rise, the more hysterical some media coverage becomes.

So, the government comes up with a series of responses that are as cruel as they are unworkable. Wave machines, turning migrant boats around mid-Channel, putting the Royal Navy in charge of the operation (Patel) and now the army (Braverman) have all proved unworkable, potentially lethal and redundant. The atrocious Rwanda policy is likely to fall into the same category, despite the High Court ruling this week that found it to be lawful. The idea was tried by the Israelis in the 1980s. It collapsed then and it will not work now.

Unfortunately, Britain is going to have increasingly fraught and antagonistic relations with the rest of the world for as long as the Tories remain in office. It is clear that their domestic coalitions and alliances demand it.

Diane Abbott is a former shadow home secretary and the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington