So there’s some no mark Member of Parliament called Katie Lam who is a Conservative and was a new MP in our last general election. I didn’t know there were new MPs for the Tories in the last general election, but this particular MP has forced her way onto the national stage this week. Apparently she’s already being talked about as a future leader and she has some position in the shadow cabinet or she’s a whip or something like that. She’s young for a parliamentarian, currently thirty four and I like that in general. I think there should be a broad mix of people in our parliament and those who are a little younger might be able to pass on a slightly different perspective. Her heritage is interesting, her grandmother’s family escaped political persecution in Germany and fled to England. Most of her grandfather’s family were killed in the Holocaust.
I got most of the above from Wikipedia, so if I’m wrong apologies and I’ll correct, but her heritage is one of immigration to England, where her family seemingly have settled and prospered. Ms Lam herself studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and I think her family has done well to integrate into English society. She’s a former President of the Cambridge Union, a banker and she’s a lyricist and scriptwriter. All worthwhile pursuits. I consider her to be English and you can see more of my views on who should be considered English by clicking on the button below and reading my recent post:
She’s the granddaughter of immigrants. And she’s done well for herself. Good for her. Let’s move this little story along. Cut to this week and it’s what she has said that has infuriated me. She was explaining that a large number of people who have legal status to stay within the UK, who do not have British citizenship, should have their right to remain revoked and that they should ‘go home.’ She then provided the chaser, ‘what that will leave is a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people.’ What could she possibly mean? What does the term ‘culturally coherent’ mean?
This clever alliteration belies an ignorant gutter nastiness behind it. Here’s what I think she means. She means that if you’re an immigrant who we have granted leave to remain in the past, she doesn’t care, you should go ‘home’ even though your home is now in England. This unfettered idiocy has come out of the mouth of a serving Conservative MP. Those who we have welcomed into this country for a plethora of reasons, in her mind, are now not welcome. If she were in power and enacted this ‘policy’ immediately our NHS would fail, our social care system would fall over, our economy would crater, our manufacturing and service industries would grind to a halt and more importantly, the very fabric of our society would be ripped in two. What this clown doesn’t realise is that for our country to function, we need immigrants, those who have leave to remain, to run a successful country with all that entails. So point one, stupidness.
Here’s point number two and here’s where I think her outburst is really disgusting. This is racist. What’s come out of her mouth is racism. What else does getting rid of people who are not citizens and then what’s left will be ‘culturally coherent’ mean? What other possible meaning could this have? Apparently those who are not British citizens are not welcome. Othering people because of their race is racism. Bigotry in unadulterated form. I’ll say this again, it’s disgusting.
A lovely friend of mine recently posted on Facebook about a question that is in the test for becoming a British citizen. How many National Parks are there in Britain? I believe he’s a British citizen himself and he said three. I checked the comments and answers ranged all over the place. It’s fifteen by the way. Me, a British citizen, knows how to use Google, because I’ll be fucked if I knew the answer to that question. What relevance does knowing how many National Parks there are in Britain have to do with anything? It’s just so pathetic.
Onto point C. The sheer hypocrisy and ladder pulling that this is, is stunning. Her grandparents were immigrants at a time of great displacement of peoples. And I hope they were welcomed to England and were allowed to settle and then thrive in their new home. It fills me with pride that my forebears were open enough to allow those people to escape persecution and live in my country and bolster my country. And she has profited from those immigrants being allowed to settle here. See where I’m going with this? And so she has flourished and is now maintaining that others who are currently in the same boat as her grandparents should not be allowed to flourish. She has scampered up that ladder and wants to yank it upwards so hard she gets whiplash.
Here’s what’s really upsetting me. This sort of shit is escalating. Not that long ago, ‘politicians’ were calling for ‘illegal’ immigrants to be deported. Just so we’re clear, there is no such thing as an ‘illegal’ immigrant despite how many times that term is used. And over the coming months because of the popularity of Reform and it’s bellicose and repellent leader Nigel ‘Five Gaffs’ Farage this rhetoric against immigrants has shifted and mutated to the point where now Conservative MPs are calling for those who are here legally to be deported. It has to stop. The thing is, without immigration this country, my country, England, would not exist as it is now and would not exist in the future. And I’m really upset because without dynamic immigration my girlfriend wouldn’t be here, some of my best friends and favourite people and their children and grand children would not exist and my business wouldn’t survive.
Apologies, I’m nearly done. Immigration needs to be an organised affair. We need to know who’s coming and going so we can accommodate and we need to stop these boat crossings, not because we can’t handle the people but because the crossings are exploitative and dangerous for those people in the boats. So first thing we need to do is establish safe routes into the country. Next, process people fast so that we can get everyone moving and so immigrants do not need to be living in squalid conditions in what were formerly hotels. And C understand that our birth rate is plummeting because we’re not having enough kids and to maintain our way of living and to prop up our ageing population we’ll need some impetus from somewhere. O and fourth, stop fucking demonising immigrants.
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