More election nargery from t'other place

[kaberett]

Explicitly about race, this time.

[Promoted from a comment because it's important and I have absolutely been glossing over the issue of my being white and what this government is going to do to people who aren't, /because I'm scared enough as it is that I can't imagine how much worse it is for people who aren't/; friends are telling me that explicit anti-immigrant backlash aimed at them 'coz they're brown ramped up significantly <6 hours after results were declared. This in response to the suggestion that a Conservative government will be good for immigrants, because small gov't is better than large.]

When I say I'm one of the lucky ones, what I mean is precisely that I *do* have white privilege, and when I say that I'm not going to be the first against the wall what I mean is that asylum seekers and refugees are going to be the first to be screwed over. (I'm a third-generation immigrant. English isn't my first language, but I'm still /safe/ until the racial purity laws come in). The thing is, I have *seen* what the Tories have been doing to asylum seekers (with deportations, with G4S, with deporting people because they're not queer *enough*, with insisting that any woman who's ever dated a man isn't queer), and it is my considered opinion that repealing the HRA will *actively make things worse for immigrants and asylum seekers*, not better. I am absolutely convinced that a Conservative government will kill more people in this category than a left-wing one. I am also unconvinced that this Conservative government can in any useful sense be described as "small": they're after more and more intrusive monitoring of *everyone*, they've pushed for intrusive monitoring even of non-EU students, and they've made absolutely explicit that now that the Lib Dems are no longer in coalition they're going to push to make "non-violent extremism" (not defined) prosecutable. This right-wing government WILL NOT be better for immigrants and asylum seekers, it just _won't_.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

...so they want to criminalize peaceful protest.

YEAH THAT IS REALLY GOING TO KEEP THE PROTESTS PEACEFUL, GOOD JOB THERE. "A riot is the language of the unheard" and all those good Dr. King quotes but one would think, especially for people who own a lot of things that a riot might destroy, trying to keep protests peaceful instead of violent is a universal goal.

Of course, Baltimore. So. :(

Everything I see about this election makes me more scared for you and the people like you and those less privileged than you.

[sashajwolf]

I chair the Refugee Law Group in my law firm. The Coalition was bad for refugees and asylum-seekers, but the last Labour government was much, much worse. The Coalition tended, on the whole, to respect the rule of law, which meant that when we won a case against them, it meant something - in some cases, hundreds of lives saved from a single court decision. Labour barely even pretended to obey the courts.

[kaberett]

Hrrgh, thanks. (How worried is it legit to be about them stripping protections, though? And yeah I am pretty much talking in comparison to the Rainbow Coalition I'd kind of hoped we'd get; I don't /actually/ trust Labour on human rights either.)

[sashajwolf]

I was hoping for a coalition involving the SNP and Greens, myself; the SNP are way more humane than either Labour or Tory, and the Greens have the best immigration policy I've ever seen. As for what the Tories will do now, I think they will hit economic migrants much harder than refugees and asylum-seekers. I haven't seen them talk about withdrawing from the Refugee Convention, but economic migrants from outside Europe don't have any similar international protection. I suppose they might try to reintroduce child asylum detention now they don't have the LDs stopping them, but even amongst their voters I doubt there's enough votes in that to make it worthwhile for them. The Human Rights Act does have some relevance to refugees and asylum-seekers, but as long as we're still in the EU and thus can't withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, those claims can still be pursued in Strasbourg, so the main effect is more delays. Withdrawing from the EU and the ECHR will take time, so there won't actually be time for that much damage before we get another chance to kick them out.

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you for these things; I'm glad to know them.

[deathbyshinies]

> As for what the Tories will do now, I think they will hit economic migrants much harder than refugees and asylum-seekers.

Yes, this. Most UK citizens are already, I think, unaware of exactly how difficult life has become for non-EU immigrants over the past ten years, and for some reason most of the people I know are weirdly reluctant to listen if I try to tell them about it.

I am currently about to start my Permanent Residency application (as in, am taking the Life in the UK test in a few weeks but can't formally file the application until mid-August) and am currently watching the skies to find out whether the new government will change things in a way that will pull the rug out from under me.

It is very hard not to take the swing to UKIP personally -- it feels very much like large swathes of the country ganging up to vote you off the island, which I imagine is also how it feels from the public-assistance-using perspective.

[untonuggan]

Thank you for posting this.

Here is I think a part of the problem with people in the US trying to comprehend this, if you care to read (I don't know if you or anyone has spoons).

In the US, this is the mass media coverage we get of the UK:
- the Royals did something! Probably involving fashion, babies, corgies, or other things to make us want to consume Royal-related products or vacations.
- the Queen gave a speech somewhere or had an anniversary or is in a picture waving for no apparent reason
- maybe one of the Royals is sick or like in the hospital for gas or did something inappropriate?
- are you having an election? John Oliver or someone made fun of something about the election on our TV shows! Apparently there is a serious election on the other side of the Pond!
- something something your banks
- did you know you have corporations and they do things?
- one of the Royals is also in the armed forces, apparently
- you just had an election, and here's who won!

When my gran was here she would look at our paper and go, "You don't have anything about us!" and I'd go, "Yes, but I will look up your news online for you and tell you what is going on in the UK."

[Note: this applies to basically anywhere outside the US that does not have a human interest story, an explosion, or an event where a US citizen has died in a shocking manner.]

No mass media thing I have read says anything about anything mentioned above. Hell, most of my own family *in the UK* does not mention it and a lot of them receive some form of public assistance. It is only through my dw friends bringing it to my attention that I even knew to look for articles about the BS going on, because it's not like it's on the front page of the BBC all the time either (unless I just missed those days, I don't check every day).

I'm not saying US interest is going to shift your election by any means. I'm just...I don't know what I'm saying.

My mom is a Brit by birth but doesn't closely follow UK politics but talks to family in the UK 1-2 times per week on Skype, and she doesn't even know most of this is going on.

It's bullshit. Utter bullshit, all of it, and it creeps me out.

[korafox]

This is very extremely true. As a US-dweller, I don't think I knew there was an upcoming UK election until about 48 hours beforehand, and that I got via Dreamwidth posts rather than any form of US news media.

There's also the fact that our schools teach us pretty much nothing about the UK political system/process, so most people wouldn't have the context to understand the things at stake. At least in specific terms. We can definitely understand the general horror of people voting in conservatives who want to gut the social safety net and treat non-white-cis-straight-Christian-male persons as less than human. For that, sadly, I can offer a fistbump of Where Do We Go From Here solidarity.

That said, thanks for all Brits who are talking about your elections. I appreciate being able to get people's perspectives about what's going on.

[swaldman]

To be fair, I don't think there's any particular reason that other countries *should* know about the UK political system or UK elections - thinking so by Brits is, I think, often a vestige of thinking-we're-still-a-superpower syndrome.

It's probable more apparent in a UK/US context because UKians tend to know what's going on in the US, as part of the usual one-way cultural exchange (and also because politics in the US easily have a world impact). But I no more expect an American to understand what's going on in the UK than I'd expect a Brit to understand what's going on in Brazil.

(there may be nothing interesting goign on in Brazil. I don't know. Which is sort of the point ;-))

[silveradept]

Funny how small government conservatives are in favor of creating the largest apparatuses they can to prevent anyone not them from getting help from the government. I think that no matter which elections you look at over the last decade or so, when the conservatives get in, everyone but rich white dudes suffers.