Mail Sick Refugee Blame Game

The NHS is still in a parlous state. Industrial unrest grows. Water companies continue to dump raw sewage into rivers and onto beaches. Companies across the board post obscene levels of profit, enriching themselves while many starve. The cost of living crisis shows no sign of abating any time soon.

This means that the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press is today majoring on … refugees. Which it likes to call MIGRANTS, its roster of less than appealing pundits occasionally adding ILLEGALS just to make sure they retain the attention of the Gammonati™. Yesterday, six poor souls lost their lives attempting the sea crossing from France to the UK.

So the conclusion that must be reached is that It Was Someone Else’s Fault. It cannot possibly be laid at the door of the Home Office and its effective abolition of all safe routes for claiming asylum: that would make the press’ preferred party of Government look even worse. The Sunday Brexit, still called the Express, has decided It Was People Smugglers Wot Done It.

They’re not agin The Forrins, you understand, just those entrepreneurs making money out of them. That’s the limit of their faux concern. Not so the Mail on Sunday, which has marched right in and declared “hold our beer”. The inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker don’t care for this namby-pamby offloading on people smugglers. They’re up for blaming the French.

Their front page is a masterclass in misinformation. “As six die in Channel tragedy after being ‘escorted’ towards UK waters, MPs ask … WAS FRENCH PATROL BOAT TO BLAME FOR MIGRANT DROWNINGS?” Note quote marks around “escorted”, because they can’t stand that claim up. So how do they persuade readers that this is not a straightforward QTWTAIN?

Here’s the schtick: “A French warship was escorting an overloaded small boat across the Channel to UK waters when it sank today, killing at least six migrants, it was claimed tonight. The PSP Cormoran is understood to have been tracking a number of small boats in rough conditions six miles off the French coast early this morning, according to a well-informed source”.

And here’s the breakdown. “IT WAS CLAIMED” [no citation]. “IS UNDERSTOOD TO HAVE BEEN TRACKING” [no citation once more, plus “escorting” and “tracking” are very different. Moreover, tracking “a number of small boats”. Still, that allows free rein for more of those Here Today And Gone Tomorrow Politicians to join the MoS in playing the blame game, these being Tories claiming that Labour somehow was also to blame.

How does one blame a party which has not been in power since 2010? Cue Iain Duncan Cough: “Surely we must do everything to deter them from making that decision and making that perilous crossing. It is a wake-up call for all those who speak only of rights, but seem incapable of balancing those rights against the terrible risks that people are undertaking as they pay their life savings to be shoved on to a boat that is unseaworthy, only to find that it all ends somewhere in the channel”. So he wants to remove people’s rights.

He is supported by Marco Longhi: “This terrible tragedy should be a wake-up call to Sir Keir Starmer, Labour and the whole of the Left, that this is what happens when they oppose the Government’s sensible measures to tackle the small-boats crisis. I hope to God that the Labour leader now sees this and changes his obstructionist approach as soon as possible. People’s lives depend on it”. But he’s just full of crap. No blame attaches to Labour.

It does, however, attach to the party which has been in Government since 2010, and which has abolished all safe routes for those wanting to claim asylum - including from Afghanistan, from where the six dead came.

And it attaches to those at the MoS, who have taken the single source of a charter fisherman who manages to get himself in the papers rather a lot, to declare that France has established a new policy towards those crossing the Channel in small boats, which as far as is known, they have not.

So it goes on: more unfortunate refugees lose their lives due to the Tories’ cruelty while their press pals blame someone else. But like Brexit, it’s not someone else’s fault. And no matter how many bad faith pundits get paid obscene amounts of money to pretend otherwise, it can’t be made someone else’s fault. It’s about a sick media class monetising tragedy.

A tragedy they had a hand in making. Power without responsibility, again.

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