Are British immigrants becoming vessels for racism?

Braverman has been quite explicit in her abhorrence of the arrivals on the shores of Kent. She has publicly declared it a 'dream' of hers to stop them coming here.

She has also followed up her predecessor's policy, backed by Rishi Sunak, of deterring the crossings with a threat of deportation to Rwanda, but here is where things get yet more cognitively dissonant than the mere idea of anti-migrant immigrants.

She has travelled to Rwanda in person, having first made a point of letting only a handful of right-wing newspapers know about it, and visited the accommodation the Rwandans are building for our unwanted migrants.

She was shown laughing in front of these blocks and declaring them comfortable, blessed with all the most modern amenities. She even wished out loud that she could use the same interior designer.

But alas, Rwanda is a very long way from England. If any would-be migrant weighing up the pros and cons of risking their life crossing the Channel has seen this kind of deterrence in action, they might be wondering if Suella Braverman was luring them into a dinghy, in order to enjoy the good life in Africa.

Mixed messaging

Mixed messaging was never quite so muddled as this. What exactly was Ms Braverman thinking? Here's the thing, I don't believe much thought went into it. The Express has challenged the prime minister to solve the problem of 'the boats' in six months.

Ah, what touching naivety the right-wing press is still capable of sometimes. It is quite a comfort when you prefer not to dwell too long on fascist mobs surrounding hotels where migrants have been billeted or the latest wheeze to house them in barges, or disused liners moored of the coast like prison hulks.

The naivety to which I refer is the idea that a policy as flagrantly contradictory, inhumane, unlawful and cruel as the Rwandan one will ever be realised and not remain one woman's dream.

True, the very idea of it will help get Sunak through the carnage that is looming in the May local elections. It might even keep the Tory faithful happy while they wait for the lefty lawyers and other do-gooders to lose their cases against it in the courts.

Except, they won't lose their cases against it. Stop the Boats in its present form is a policy with its own built-in obsolescence. The beauty of this ruse is that the Tories can complain forever and a day that it has been sabotaged by the left.

All they wanted to do was solve the problem, stop the exploitation of vulnerable people by traffickers, and see, the misguided opponents of this policy thwart it at every turn. Far from being a problem for the Tories at future elections, the boats are an asset. The failure to stop them keeps the grievance alive.      

Strange phenomenon

As for this strange phenomenon of the descendants of migrants being the most zealous opponents of migration: the only right way of entering Britain is the way their parents did it, whether because they sought asylum or the chance to better themselves.

Back in the olden days, Enoch Powell spoke about the Tiber foaming with much blood. Margaret Thatcher had visions of Britain being swamped. Theresa May brought in a hostile environment and had little vans with 'Go Home' on them, driving around areas where illegal immigrants might be hiding.

Did any of this work? Well, it depends on what 'work' means. It certainly helped Powell get famous and was celebrated by racists. It probably helped Thatcher get elected. It helped Theresa May look like she was doing something.

These approaches were characterised by a mixture of hyperbole and euphemism. None of the people pushing these agendas were immigrants. They always looked and sounded like they were speaking for the white majority.

But in equal-opportunity Britain, everyone is entitled to be unpleasant. If the person speaking isan immigrant, it also has a certain irrefutability. They can say stuff without fear of contradiction, as no liberal opponent is going to say, "How dare you come here and say that?"

Opposing an immigrant-bashing immigrant could quickly shade into immigrant-bashing. It would take more than everyday cognitive dissonance to pull that one off. You would require two brains, one pro- and one anti-immigrant, like the biggest of the dinosaurs, though in truth it turns out that even dinosaurs only had the one.

There isa way this paradox can be avoided, however: fellow immigrants can oppose the bigoted immigrants in their midst. As Sunder Katwala pointed out in a Guardian article, "Asian and black politicians can choose to be bridgers or culture warriors just as their white colleagues can."

Yet it comes with a certain pungency when the member of a minority group enlists in the culture war.

Marketable racism

For Nels Abbey, the British-Nigerian writer of 'Think Like a White Man,' there is no equivalence between the white and non-white combatants. Racism is "more marketable and faces less challenge when it comes from ethnic minority politicians. Hence the likes of Suella and Kemi (Badenoch) are more dangerous, as they are more effective."

Speaking on LBC, he insisted that Suella Braverman was no friend of diversity, but rather was one of those who was 'going out of their way to prove how effective they are' by being harsher and 'a vessel for the very racism we'd hope they'd be getting rid of.'

There's an element of over-compensation in this attitude, as well as the desire for clear blue water between themselves and the 'bad' immigrants. There's also a use of racial prejudice as a form of camouflage.

With any luck, the liberals will fail to see the racist in plain sight, while the white racists will find it impossible to disagree with your views, as long as their ears are working harder than their eyes.

At the risk of succumbing to Godwin's law for a moment, wasn't Adolf Hitler an Austrian immigrant who the Germans thought sounded like he was eating dumplings?

But I must cease and desist making a comparison of that kind immediately. It's just the sort of thing that makes Gary Lineker so offensive, if only to Suella Braverman's husband.

Read more: Sunak achievements overshadowed by Lineker controversy

This very morning the racist in disguise was at it again, complaining that the members of grooming gangs were British Pakistanis. Some of them are, it's true, but a report by her own Home Office in 2020 found there was insufficient evidence to suggest that gang members were more likely to be Asian or black than other ethnicities.

The Labour party concurs with the Guardian that 'most child sexual abuse gangs [are] made up of white men'. Still, one mustn't let a little thing like the facts get in the way of a useful stereotype.

The object of being offensive one minute and taking offence the next; of now-you-see-it-now-you-don't deterrence; of brownness which masquerades as whiteness (otherwise known as Oreo) and of an Illegal Migration Bill that announces its own illegality, is to smuggle values across the border that directly contradict the programme of diversity under the semblance of… diversity.

Smuggling racism into an increasingly tolerant, multicultural society was never going to be easy, but the Conservatives may have come up with the most ingenious method yet: stowing it in the hold of HMS Braverman.