The frailty of nationhood under a liberal paradigm
With both illegal and legal migration at record highs, and with Britain being bossed around by a court based in France, we can see the frailty of nationhood under a liberal paradigm. We must fight against it.
The Governments’ plan to repatriate asylum seekers who attempt to enter Britain via illegal routes has had a rocky start. After receiving much condemnation from NGO’s, journalists and commentators, the European Court of Human Rights has stepped in. It has been reported that up to seven migrants who attempted to settle in Britain illegally were to be sent to Rwanda for offshore processing, until the ECHR ruled that these deportations were illegal.
Some have described these events as an “embarrassing” turn for Boris Johnson and the Home Secretary, which it may well be, but it is also an embarrassment for Britain itself. A nation which cannot protect and enforce its own borders ceases to be a nation. Instead, it becomes a satellite-state for an international liberal rights-based order. It is curious that the country must still be beholden to this regime, given that it tore itself apart over this very issue in the period following the 2016 Brexit vote. In fact, it was just a few days ago that a British judge knocked down an NGO-led appeal against the Rwandan policy, reaffirming Britain’s stance on the legality of the policy. Yet now the Government faces an uphill battle to try and push it through. Why must this be the case? Why must Britain, a supposedly sovereign nation, bow to foreign judges and laws – laws based on abstract ideas which, in literal terms, do not exist?
A snap YouGov poll (which interestingly doesn’t emphasise the illegality of Channel-crossing, nor that the asylum seekers are arriving from a safe country) suggests that forty-four per cent of the country supports the Government’s policy to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda. This tellingly beats the number of people in opposition to the policy, with sixteen per cent of the poll’s respondents being undecided.
We have a Government in power that was voted in on the back of countless promises to reduce migration. We have voted to detach Britain from European law. There is healthy support for the Rwandan policy, and there is the fact that British law deems it lawful. No matter your personal view (including that the policy does not go anywhere near far enough, as has been highlighted by Migration Watch UK’s Alp Mehmet), it is in the best interests of the Government, the British people and those who support sovereignty that the policy is enacted.
Boris Johnson’s Government, no matter how greatly it has fumbled its mandate, was elected on a promise (however empty) of delivering Brexit and “taking back control” of Britain. This latest debacle only exposes the illusion of such promises. With both illegal and legal migration at record highs, and with Britain being bossed around by a court based in France, we can see the frailty of nationhood under a liberal paradigm. We need to fight against it.
