Ahtisaari: the ideal EU President

Martti Ahtisaari - respected but would he take the job?

The globe-trotting, millionaire, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would certainly stop the traffic between Washington and Beijing and be a high profile inaugural president of the European Union. He would no doubt generate a lot of personal traffic too, unless he plans to give up his money-making international speeches, board positions, side-line his Yale University Faith Foundation and presumably ditch his role in the stalled Middle East peace process.

But would Blair be good for Europe? If you want someone strong who will unite the gerrymandering and squabbling bloc of 27 nations he does not seem the obvious choice. His unwavering support for the Iraq war and strong trans-Atlantic ties bitters his appeal in many European capitals and amongst their citizens.

The ideal candidate, in my view, would be former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner – won for his role in brokering international peace – is notorious on the international stage albeit with less bling than Blair, he would stop traffic as well, but does not carry any baggage like Britain’s charismatic statesman.

Ahtisaari was a pinnacle broker for peace during the Balkans wars and the dissolve of Yugoslavia, something that severely divided the EU. Ahtisaari helped persuade then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept Nato’s terms for ending the war in Kosovo and subsequently resolved Kosovo’s independence last year as the UN representative. Beyond Europe, he played broker to the peace accord between the Indonesian government and the Aceh rebels in 2005.

He ticks the box for international notoriety, he meets German and other nations desires of having a candidate from a “small” country and he sends a very European message to Beijing and DC: that Europeans are for peace and dialogue. A Nobel peace prize winner as President who has helped the region to peace opposite Hu Jintao and his regime’s poor human rights instead of greeting Blair – someone who divided many Europeans, arguably eroded British civil liberties and undermined the English notion of Habeas Corpus and has achieved nothing of note as Middle East envoy.

The choice unfortunately is not ours nor our European cousins and friends. That is the saddest part: for all the moans of a democratic deficit in Europe, we the people can still not have say over who is our President and Foreign Affairs representative.

The silly pratts surrounding the BNP debate

Oh dear, I seem to have been unduly influenced by the BNP after their BBC platform and have descended into their derogatory style of language and using it against others to whom I disagree. How could the bastion of British journalism have been so prattish and not realised that we would be taken in so easily? Good lord if only that were true.

By the end of Question Time I was laughing, I’m afraid to say. Laughing at how nearly a million people could have voted for them earlier this year. What is no joke though, and what is satisfying about last night’s show is how reason won.

Anybody other than a diehard BNP supporter or outright bigot cannot have watched that debate without thinking: Griffen’s points just don’t add up. He had no answer for the fact that everybody every manifestation of what you could possibly claim as being “English” descends originally from Africa. He made no mention of what the Romans did Britain (though as I mentioned last week, his party’s website praises the Norse, Angles and Saxon people who came to these shores – all after the Romans). He had no answer to any of these fantastically delivered points from a composed Bonnie Greer, who only seemed rattled only when he talked of sharing a platform with a non-violent member of the KKK – non-violent in what way is what I would like to know.

The only pratt in all this is Peter Hain who’s outcry over their participation created more publicity for the BNP before they were faced down by the mainstream of society. Until Thursday the British public had never seen, on such a platform, someone squirm their way out of holocaust denying. I changed my minds with recent facts Griffen said. Auschwitz, as Jack Straw stated, is obviously no recent fact.

From a political point of view, Griffen missed out on his one opportunity to embarrass the mainstream and push his “not so far right as you would think” discourse to win-round those disaffected voters. When Dimbleby asked Straw and Warsi if their parties’ immigration policies had boosted the BNP the talk came to quotas. This was the opportunity. If he was smart and quick witted enough, he could have deflected some of the Nazi comments on to the mainstream. He could have argued that state selection of people based on the positive social merits and characteristics devised by politicians is a form of Nazism as it is an artificial version of social-Darwinism. The BNP would not discriminate against migrants per se because there simply would not be any. But who I am kidding, he never would have thought of that and it would be defeated with the BNP’s repatriation policy.

This was the one area Griffen was really let off the hook. The audience member who asked where will you send me back to? To which his response was: you are welcome to stay here, goes against the entire foundation of his party: keeping Britain for the indigenous population with a high implication that those indigenous people are white.
What was a shame is that more of the audience’s questions were not asked. The one about trade with Europe was a good one and Dimbleby never came back to it.

How could Hain have seriously thought that the BNP would get an opportunity to air their views and encourage support? The irony is his moonlighting of the late night and twenty-four hour airwaves created a bigger hoo-ha than their appearance deserved. Instead of quelling the BNP he enticed undue interest and exposure before Question Time, in effect, gave them the rope to hang themselves as natural debate and discussion won the day. The BNP have been exposed as being unfit even as a protest party on a wide public national platform. I bet their number of votes will be down next year.

Obama’s line on Healthcare: It will save America money

Last night ahead of Susan Boyle’s address to the American nation, President Obama spelt out the need for health care reform highlighting that the US “spends more healthcare than any other nation but we are not any healthier for it”.

Whilst the US budget deficit deepens in recession, speaking at his White House news conference, Obama said his health measures will reduce the deficit and that he will not sign a health bill placed on his desk that deepens it. This though is not the crucible of the health problem in America. Instead it is this paradox: that the nation which develops more drugs and new ways of treating people than any other, has forty-seven million of its own citizens with no access to healthcare. A social deficit as deep as any financial one, but one that has lasted longer than any depression. Sixty years ago President Truman called vigorously for state supported health care, sixteen years ago the secretary of state was a central part of the failed attempt then.

Obama follows in the footsteps of failure but last night he put himself at the heart of the debate using his personal popularity to bring change to American healthcare, whilst stating personally he doesn’t need healthcare reform and neither do the members of Congress, but the masses of America do. But, instead of focusing on the benefits of getting access for 97% of Americans he focused primarily on the economic merits and how healthcare reform would shave off $2.2trn dollars from a projected deficit of $9trn. In other words support healthcare reform and it will save the US money.

How he envisages money will be saved is by cutting down on waste. He makes an excellent point that when a patient is being treated for problem if they are sent to a different consultant or hospital they redo all the diagnostic tests, duplicating them, with the multiple bills falling on the insurance companies tab and pushing up future premiums for the patients themselves. The government will save money according to Obama because the state already subsidises health policies through tax breaks. Controlling the costs of healthcare is controlling the deficit he reiterates.

On the one hand this seems like a clever focus as opposition from within his own party is due to projections of the trillion-dollar price tag and concerns about the tax burden. But he barely focused on the social need to cover more Americans only giving examples of the Coloradan woman who had to use her life savings because the cover she had would not protect her for her pre-existing conditions. This is the reality of why reform is so important.

This focus on money could backfire especially if the light is shone on what Americans must give up to reduce the costs. Answering this Obama used the analogy of a red pill and blue pill which do the same thing but the blue pill is cheaper why not take that? The problem for many middle Americans is that is, to pardon the pun, a bitter pill to swallow.

If you kid has a chronic condition and they are on the red pill, have been on for a while and their symptoms are under control are you going to put your child on a new medication for the sake of your premium and this new healthcare. Obama also highlights that those who are happy with their current policies need not change them, but how will this usher in the savings which he projects.

American healthcare does have waste and his ideas on cutting down numerous diagnostic tests and that Americans will have to “give up paying for things that don’t make them healthier” is a good idea. But really he should talk of the benefits of having a society where people do not worry as much about getting ill as they do in Europe. Healthcare costs, having a state-sponsored system costs, as the population ages the costs are likely to only get higher. But the social benefit of having more citizens healthy and a healthy workforce is surely worth it.

From the Commons: Order at last as Michael Martin stands down

Crammed into the lobby yesterday, with the throng of people who had come to see a moment in history that occurs only every three hundred and fourteen years: the resignation of the Speaker. As soon as we managed to get into the public gallery and sat down the fireworks went off but within thirty-five seconds the moment had fizzled out. For there had been no cheering, no great statement, no statesman-like speech only a short brief and to the point address and for less than a minute Michael Martin had briefly restored some order.

The mood in the Commons defused. When he had finished the tension left along with most of the MPs who began to file out as foreign affairs questions began. The PM as he left went over and shook Michael Martin’s hand as he left through the members exit. He was followed by many labour backbenchers the likes of Martin Salter, Dianne Abbott and Stephen Pound speaking to him briefly and exchanging pats on the back and hand shakes.

With his announcement it was back to business in the Commons. With all the understandable furore of MPs expenses over the past fortnight it was gratifying to see some proper debate and discussion. Denis MacShane former European Mission talked of his recent visit to Georgia informing the house that he had seen Russian flags of Russian outposts inside Georgia not far from Gori well within Georgia’s sovereignty. The government reiterated its support for Georgia’s sovereignty as Sir Nicholas Winterton on the Tory benches who asked whether the government would work to improve relations with Russia and be careful not to back one side after the Caucasus was put on the map of international problems during last summer’s war. Refreshing to hear this view from the Tory benches especially after Sir Nick was one of the numerous backbenchers heckling and shaking their heads vehemently against the Lisbon treaty. The Tories are still ardently calling for a referendum, Cameron’s PPS Desmond Swayne yesterday called on the government to have one especially as it was in both main parties manifestos to have one over the Constitution. Caroline Flint reiterated as she has said before that the Lisbon Treaty is different and told the house of Commons that the cost of a referendum would be the same as the general election costing in the region of seventy to eighty million pounds.

The BBC is right not to show the Gaza aid campaign

Gaza Protesters

Just when you think all maybe quiet on the White City front, splashed across the print media is a flurry of critique of the beeb from the Mail to the Times. 

The BBC carries on into this year like a series of one of its hit tragic comedies and Television Centre risks becoming a Fawlty Tower in its own right.  You find yourself cringing as they painfully make a greater mess of what is a simple situation.  Like Basil Fawlty dealing with his german guests, if the BBC were more careful, tactful with their response this would not have got so out of hand.

This television appeal, which is still being edited today for tonight’s broadcast on ITV, C4 and Five, is partial: it is aimed at helping one-side of a war.  You may agree with me that Israel’s actions were absolutely abhorrent and you may like me be about to make a donation to the Red Cross to help the families of Gaza rebuild their shattered lives.  But why should an international news network, famed around the world for its impartiality take a public line and advertise an appeal for one side in an armed conflict?  Were we not aware of the suffering after weeks of coverage?  We are certainly aware of the DEC campaign now, more so than we would have been had the BBC agreed to air it.  In fact, paradoxically the BBC may have done the campaign a favour through this extra publicity and furore which may come at the expense of disgruntled viewers tuning elsewhere for a time.

This whole situation has been born out of the fervent anti-BBC movement amongst elements of the media and politicians who have been brandishing their teeth and led by the antithesis of impartiality The Daily Mail.  Why has Sky News not been criticised, they have not (at the time of writing 5am gmt) not even made up their minds on whether to show the footage or not.  Are they then not heartless for not even deciding on what 11,000 people, 50 MPs, and Britain’s religious leaders see as essential viewing and sitting on the fence? Have they no conscience no standards?  At least the BBC said no.  Why hasn’t CNN been asked to air this campaign, it broadcasts  in Britain and internationally.  Could it not use its airwaves to raise relief for Gazans?  What about Al Jazeera:  the voice of the voiceless, should they not be vocal for this appeal?

The answer as mean spirited as it may sound is no.  All these outlets are there to inform, not to push people so directly in coming down on oneside and by opening up their wallets at the end of news bulletin.  In the last week, the international media has been very good at showing the shear devastation after watching from the sidelines of the Gaza border since 27^th December (with the exception of Al Jazeera who were the only news network in Gaza during the Israeli onslaught). We as the viewer must then take that information and decide whether we let the news roll on to Eastenders or Fawlty Towers re-runs.  We must not have the news followed by an advert which compels to feel one way or another.  Aid agencies already indirectly advertise themselves in war zones by appearing on news programmes talking about the Congo, Darfur or Gaza and give their causes publicity and air time without the need of free airspace and a slanted ad.

 That is the argument the BBC should be making and doing so as candidly as some of their reports from Gaza.  So when a BBC spokesperson is pressed on a radio debate about whether or not there is a “humanitarian crisis” and they try and squirm – like an interviewee on the Today Show – their way out of referring it as one, so as not to weaken their position further in the hostile public environment the beeb now has in the publics eyes.  They should instead stand firm and say: “there is a humanitarian crisis, and we have been reporting on it day in an day out, it is up to the viewers to decide how they react to our impartial reporting on the ground”.  That should be that and the BBC should not be expected spoon feed morals to the public.  If Douglas Alexander and the Archbishop of Canterbury want people to donate money to Gaza they can come and explain why on air or have a whip round the pulpits of Westminster, but not by way of an ad on our news programmes.

   

News-fright – The grim-reaper stalking Brown

The grim reaper: former whip stabs blunt kife into Brown

The political climate is beginning to heat up as the autumn leaves begin to fall in Westminster.   Brown was, and no doubt still is hoping, that September would bring an Indian summer of shine on his tainted administration and that he may be able to portray a lighter shade of Brown.  Instead the colours got darker for him on Friday.  A figure dressed head to toe in designer black with a garish, dark and weighty chain around her neck walked on to Westminster’s college green surrounded by the press pack and eventually, she made to the towers of the media in Millbank. 

“Losing my job doesn’t matter Kirsty” she told the BBC Newsnight’s presenter, she was doing it for the good of the party and speaking up for those on the backbenchers who don’t dare strike the wounds of poor public appeal that Brown has seeping from every Yougov and Mori wound.

Siobhan McDonagh maybe small fry compared to Brutus or even the chief whip.  But a whip she is.  Charged to defend the Prime Minister and even literally whip dissenting back-benchers into shape, she decided to lead a charge on Number Ten with chalice in hand and dent the scaffolding that is at present quite literally holding Downing Street up.  Will it end in a landslide for Brown of the sort that Blair never experienced?

The news came as Labour HQ admitted that several MPs had asked why leadership nomination papers had not been handed out ahead of the Labour Party conference in a fortnight’s time.   This is standard for the party and even Blair ran the risk that 20% of the parliamentary party – some 70 MPs at present – may try and cast him aside through hands in the air at party conference.

So why did she do it: “because I believe the debate is being had” in government and that they are  “not allowing the wider population in on it”.  Calls again for general election no doubt beckon from Tories voices with words like these, hardly the stuff of loyal party members let alone whips.  The public are only too part of this debate and the disgusted, obtuse voices can be heard in Wetherspoons to wine bars of contempt the public holds for the man who has longed to put GB into Great Britain.

“I want to know what the programme is” she said but you’re a government minister part of his team surely you must know cried Kirsty Wark, well “we’re not in it for the money” she said and apparently leadership candidates themselves could “come up with different ideas”.  Why not wait two weeks and see what Brown, his cabinet and inner circle come up with for the autumn conference?  Her position though she assured wasn’t anything new: she felt the same way she said when Tony Blair stepped down and team GB moved from 11 Downing street into number 10.  So why not say something at the time and instead take up the position of defending what you see as the indefensible?

Who knows; I’m not sure Siobhan knows herself.  “But you’re a loyal member of government there to shore-up support” as Kirsty eloquently put the bleeding obvious to McDonagh.  “Yeah” she said with a slight pause before going on to highlight her record.

So is Big Ben about to chime the clucking bell for Brown.  Hardly, it seems.   He survived Charles Clarke’s comments he’ll survive this rather thin assault.  It exposes once again to the public that the government is divided, concerned and in a self-effacing mess.  Thorns may sprout from many a Labour rose in the coming weeks and days.  Emily Thornberry herself came out at dusk to brandish McDonagh as a nobody and herself as a loyalist, maybe as a hint to fill Siobhan’s shoes and protect her Islington seat which hangs by a knife edge majority in Labour’s hands.

Hewitt and friends who write in Progress magazine next week that Labour needs “a convincing new narrative” are stating the obvious and maybe more unsavoury words for Brown and friends.  The story of who the author of this new narrative should be continues. 

Mc-Cained: Poll to poll with Sarah Palin

A week is a long time in politics, as is too frequently said, though it does feel like an eternity since Obama made his keynote speech in Denver after hurricane Palin blew on to the political scene. 

 

The Republican two, but McCain should have looked leftwards for his running mate

Within a day the media was mopping up the news that Sarah Palin, the Alaskan governor who replaced her Republican predecessor who embroiled himself in a political corruption scandal in 2006, would be McCain’s running mate.  What happened to Romney?  What happened to Lieberman?  The keys to the white house would now be a breath away from a forty-four year-old hockey mum.  McCain lost the experience card on his ticket and has gambled on someone who can steal some of the youthful limelight and mantra of change that Obama holds.

 

This was a mistake.  Whilst Gustav did not rain on the Republicans parade and the party’s rank and file maybe re-galvanised for a pavement-pounding, cyberspace-surfing campaign; McCain has blown his chance card of change.

 

In her inaugural speech ten days ago Palin spoke of eighteen million voters putting cracks in the glass ceiling by voting for Hillary and tried to pick up the fallen baton of the female voter.  Yet women were hardly turned off by Obama – politically as much as anything else – and with the under-35s he had greater support.  The reinforced, double-glazed glass-ceiling that the Republicans actually have to smash is keeping the White House against the odds for a third term.  And even though her convention speech was arousing for the social conservatives and she touched many popular bases with the small town, blue-collared Americans; her views of anti-green, anti-abortion, pro-gun and a hardline on terror sound exactly the same as the policies the US has had for the past eight years.  Joe Biden can tap into blue collar America just as well.

 

As important as the VP maybe, even if Ms Palin herself was unaware of this just a month ago, it is still the Commander-in-Chief who most people will look to when they cast their vote on November 8.  McCain had rising popularity in the early days of the Primaries with his straight talking, centrist views which went against the grain of current Republican thinking.  He was critical of Guantanamo, recalling his own tortured past in Vietnam he called on the prison to be shut down.  On the economy, McCain was more liberal than Clinton and Obama who had supported more protectionist measures against free trade and NAFTA which has generated prosperity and growth for America, Mexico and Canada and has incredible potential.  His opponents attacked it (even though Bill Clinton signed the treaty) as though it was the gutter draining American jobs (this in fact is China which has also been draining Mexican jobs and finishing the Doha round of trade talks which have dragged for five years would go along way to improving the World’s economic climate).  On abortion he has been indifferent, once saying hypothetically that if his daughter wanted one it would be her decision (Palin said the same thing last week about her pregnant seventeen year-old by for other seventeen year-olds she would deny them the right to choose).  With foreign policy he has been much firmer and shown political courage supporting the surge in Iraq and immediately jumping to Georgia’s defence last month whilst Bush and Obama seemed at odds at what to say on the matter.

 

This is not to say that if I were able to vote across the pond I would mark a cross next to McCain.  The old McCain has gone and he has veered to the Republican right and pandered to the religious conservatives whom he once described as “agents of intolerance”.  This will be his undoing.  His party is unpopular.  Double digits separate them from the Democrats who are set for a landslide.  Yet before last weekend McCain led Obama in the polls and last week he had the chance to grab the party by their stensons and get them to take on his potentially winning mantle with the message “We need to change to win” and to have the audacity of hope by moving to the centre which is were he got his lead.  With former Democratic and now independent senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate he could have really made the point that he wants to work with democrats and independents and scoop up those wavering Democrats not sure what Obama stands for.  Lieberman would have strengthened McCain’s experienced hand with his economics knowledge as foreign policy and would not be seen as unfit for office even at the age of sixty-six.

 

But McCain did not do this.  His convention speech on Thursday night was bland even by his mediocre standards of public speaking compared to the Democrat’s two.  Instead he shamelessly tried to pin Obama as a tax increasing liberal and he the tax cutter ignoring completely the content of his opponent’s speech and going for the traditional Republican dig.  If Obama’s speech was thin on the specifics of his policy outlines at least he had outlines.  McCain offered little other than giving his biography and saying he would cut tax for corporations and the essentially the rich.  He has shunned the ideas and potential policies that would have turned on centrists and libertarians in the US and has started supporting the same old policies of Bush which he – like Obama – had once criticised.  McCain should have had resilience in the “real McCain” and stood for what he has believed in for more than a decade.  Now we wait to see what the polls show but this shift to the same old Republican core could be the beginning of his campaign folding.

Desperately Seeking Asylum

Last week immigration minister Liam Byrne tried to seek some political asylum for Brown’s ailing administration by bigging-up the record low in the number of people fleeing war-torn destitution and persecution and coming here to sponge the fruits of our fair shores.  Evidence he declared that “Britain’s borders are stronger than ever” and evidence that Labour was tackling successfully an issue close to the electorate’s heart.  The media, however, were more interested in our new foreign minister, David Cameron and his visit to Georgia and why the leader of the opposition Mr. Miliband had very little to say on the matter unlike our continental cousins the Germans and the French (though a few days later he finally went to Tbilisi and made a rallying speech this week in Ukraine).

 

Unfortunately for Byrne the number crunchers at the Office of National Statistics would not agree.  Their figures show that the 5,720 asylum applications made in the second quarter of this year are 15% higher than the same period in 2007 and in the first three months of 2008 were thirteen percent higher than last year.  Not such good news after all.  Even more sobering news for Labour was the HM Inspectorate of Prison’s report that children were being held for too long at the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire.  According to last week’s report the average time children were held has risen over the last two years from eight to fifteen days.  The “prolonged detention was having a detrimental effect on the welfare and behaviour of children” wrote Anne Owers who is the chief inspector of prisons.  Last week it seems the Home Office was too indisposed in trying to detain its own data sticks rather than caring about the foreign child guests staying at her majesty’s pleasure and getting their figures right.

 

Mr Byrne instead reiterated that “Foreign lawbreakers are being removed from Britain at record levels” rather than focusing on the reality that foreign children are being held in prison at record lengths of stay.  About migrants he said “I have made it repeatedly clear that people who come here must earn the right to stay, work hard and play by the rules.” 

 

But asylum seekers right to stay is purely dependent on whether they were actually fleeing persecution in their country of origin in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and European Court of Human Rights.  They do not have to “earn their right to stay”.  Whether they commit crime or not does not change their fundamental status.

 

For more than a decade there has been confusion over whom and what an asylum seeker is and even with a legal definition it can be hard to define individual cases.  Often the home office staff in Croydon find it hard to confirm exactly where the applicants came from who they were fleeing.  But New Labour’s way of defining migrants over the past decade has a rather odd and yet politically convenient logic.

 

When Blair and friends came to power the number of asylum seekers was rising and deportations of failed asylums seekers had dwindled.  There was the exodus from the Balkans not to mention the Somalia’s, Sri Lanka’s, and Afghanistan’s of the world.  Many felt uneasy about these new arrivals and their views were hardened by articles in parts of the press that saw them as spongers who would live off their taxes and put a strain on public resources they use.

 

At the same time Blair wanted to attract highly skilled international workers.  He felt the best way to keep tax paying, investment spending and job generating multinationals on our island was to allow them to bring whoever they felt they needed to run and work in their companies from shores near and far.  Blair praised these migrants and did everything to let them in arguing that they were economic migrants coming here to work and add to our economy’s skill base: they were good.  But their alter-ego – those seeking asylum – were bad because most were not genuine asylum seekers but economic migrants in disguise coming here to take our jobs and get our benefits.  They should be perturbed from coming and stopped.  The migration sceptics of The Mail and company bought this narrative and the influx of the highly skilled was barely criticised and in fact seen positively, whilst asylum seekers, even the genuine ones, were ostracised by press, government and the views of the majority.  Legislation has tightened which means those seeking asylum cannot work and are completely reliant on benefits until they get a right to remain.  The benefits they receive are significantly lower than those which Brits receive.  For example a British mother with a child under a year old would receive £300 in child benefit a month, an asylum seeker £200 mostly in vouchers.

 

If asylum seekers are economic migrants and willing to work why not let them rather than leave them to live off handouts in a period when our economy was expanding?  Were the people who had the skills and the audacity to flee some of the darkest corners of this earth and the ability to muster the blood, sweat and tears of travelling across continents, get past border guards and deal with smugglers to get here not possessed with the same entrepreneurial panache and get up and go which would turn them into one of New Labour’s coveted hard-working families? 

 

A study by Janet Dobson for the Home Office in 2001 showed that when asylum seekers were allowed to enter the Labour market many were not able to apply the skills they had and these foreign doctors, scientists, teachers and business persons ended up doing semi or unskilled jobs.  Many could have applied there knowledge more usefully if they had the support of the state.  She also found that the cost of asylum seekers to the public purse was actually positive.  Those who were eventually able to work paid in taxes for the public resources they used, covered the cost administering new asylum seekers and even produced a surplus between 1988-2000 of around £120m for the rest of the community.

 

Asylum seekers do not necessarily choose Britain just because of our exceptional economy.  Research in 2006 by the Brookings Institute’s Khalid Koser and UCL’s Alan Gilbert into the reasons why asylum seekers chose Britain found that often it was the choice of traffickers and agents who helped people on their journeys – the asylum seekers did not care they simply wanted to leave where they were from.  Other pull factors were links to Britain like existing friends, family and a community or knowledge of the language base.

 

If asylum seekers were economic migrants and their numbers had fallen that would be more telling about the poor performance of our economy.  There numbers would fall like those real economic migrants the eastern Europeans and most notably the Poles whose influx just a year ago was feared by many, presumably because people felt their stay would permanent.  Well they are now leaving and fewer are coming to take their place.  Poland which is experiencing rapid growth is more appealing than dear old blighty.  With our Chancellor writing in today’s Guardian (Saturday 30^th August) that the British public are pretty “pissed off” with Labour and the state of the economy there is only one solution: beat the Poles at their own game and seek asylum in their booming economy.