Blood streams through Ukraine. Tears run through parliament. At PMQs today, numerous members urged Boris to show more compassion towards Ukraine’s refugees.
Poland has already taken 1.2 million. Barely a thousand have been received here, as Boris confirmed, but the number will rise sharply. Leading the pro-refugee campaign was the SNP’s Ian Blackford who seems to represent every region on earth apart from his own constituency. In a venomous speech he charged the home secretary, Priti Patel, with imposing a ‘hostile environment’ on refugees for ‘ideological’ reasons. Well, well. No one could accuse the SNP of embracing xenophobia for political gain.
Blackford lambasted the government for ‘putting up barriers and bureaucracy’. Yet he dreams of installing a barbed-wire frontier at Berwick-upon-Tweed and dividing Britain into two trading areas.
Boris was clear. He expects and wants a vast influx from Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands, he declared, will arrive through the family reunion scheme. He sees newcomers as wholly advantageous. His cabinet agrees and he cited their personal heritage. Dominic Raab, Priti Patel and he himself are all descended from emigres who escaped persecution to settle in Britain.
No one could accuse the SNP of embracing xenophobia for political gain
He’s already won this argument. Everyone in parliament wants more and more arrivals. The only snag is speed. They can’t get here fast enough. An SNP member complained that two Ukrainian runaways had been asked to wait for 13 days in Hungary while their biometric details were processed. That pushed Boris over the edge.
‘Can he pass me the details of the case he mentions?’ he said, offering to become their personal travel courier.
He vowed that he will ‘move heaven and earth’ to bring the exiles in from eastern Europe, and he again flaunted the internationalist character of his administration.
‘We are unlike any other in our understanding of what refugees can give and their benefit to this country.’
No downsides, apparently. He will also establish ‘routes by which the whole country can offer a welcome to people fleeing war.’
That sounds interesting. The first to use the scheme will be those MPs who called loudest for the new arrivals to be welcomed. Isn’t that how it works? Most MPs have two publicly subsidised homes to choose from. Bunk beds can be installed. Attics can be cheaply converted. Marquees can pop up in gardens to take the overspill from the main residence. And any late arrivals can crash out on the sofa for a month or two. The Commons website should post a daily chart to reveal how many families each MP is sheltering.
Ian Blackford will find this useful. As he said of Ukrainians, ‘these numbers don’t lie. These numbers tell a devastating truth.’
His Hebridean ranch will soon be teeming with displaced families. Brendan O’Hara, his SNP colleague, raised the stakes and spoke about a post-war reckoning. He predicts that Boris ‘will stand accused of lacking the one thing the Ukrainian people needed most – basic humanity.’
The SNP won’t be happy until Boris is charged with war-crimes.
Ed Davey trounced the SNP. He ordered Boris to send the army across the channel. Field Marshal Davey has analysed the military position with his characteristic pragmatism and gusto, and he believes that ground forces are needed to get the refugees out ‘swiftly and safely’. One question. Should the invading UK forces cross into Ukrainian territory and risk bumping into Russian paratroopers? Perhaps the great commander didn’t think that detail mattered. Either way, he didn’t mention it. Davey’s invasion would be the first deployment of British troops in Europe since D-Day. Not that he plans to go with them, of course. He’s too good a soldier for that.
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