Starmer opens the door to the moral abominations of Farage

It was always predictable that a Labour government led by Keir Starmer would get very unpopular very quickly. Starmer’s promise of “change” was always hollow. A corporate centrist hell bent on opening the NHS to privatisation was never going to deliver the meaningful and far reaching change that Labour voters in July 2024 were led to believe that they were getting when they marked their X next to the Labour candidate’s name. Those of us who were a bit more cynical expected nothing from a Starmer government, yet he still managed to disappoint.

What is equally predictable is that the public anger and disappointment which will ensue should Nigel Farage ever become Prime Minister will be orders of magnitude greater than anything we’ve seen under this Labour government. I fear it could become violent. Farage is a political con merchant of the worst kind, a purveyor of snake oil and divisive nostrums. If his party gets into office, the struggling working class communities which voted Reform will only find that their already difficult lives become even harder. Farage will devastate the benefits and public services which poorer communities rely on, and they’ll no longer have asylum seekers to blame for their misery. Electing a notorious grifter whose lies brought us Brexit is only “Reform” if the reform you seek is being impoverished and being stripped of your employment rights and civil liberties.

While there is certainly a contingent of Reform UK supporters who care only that the party is vile to the minority groups that they themselves hate, its working class supporters will quickly discover that Farage’s bandwagon trundles along on wheels of lies as their already difficult lives become even harder while Farage’s millionaire backers feed like vultures on the corpse of the public sector.

Farage’s latest headline grabbing wheeze, his promise to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) status for settled migrants and replace it with a five year visa which will require even stricter qualifying conditions including an annual income of £60,000 annually – a figure more than double the average UK annual wage – while stripping settled migrants of their right to access the NHS or benefits, even though they are paying UK income tax and National Insurance, threatens to tear thousands of families apart.

This new policy proves that for Farage, it was never about combating illegal immigration, those who live in the UK with ILR status are by definition in the UK legally and moreover have proven that they are gainfully employed, are no drain on the state, speak English, and are of good character. Reform UK’s immigration policy is grounded in racism, pure and simple.

Farage falsely claimed that his policy would save the public purse £234 billion, citing figures from a discredited study by the Thatcherite think tank the Centre for Policy Studies, figures which the Centre for Policy Studies itself has disavowed and has said were arrived at on faulty methodology. Farage knew that but used the figures anyway. In reality, migrants create a net benefit to the economy.

We have first hand experience of applying for ILR. My husband arrived in the UK on a spouse visa in 2019. The current cost of this visa is £1,938. As a condition of the visa we had to prove that I could support him financially, that we had a place to live. We had to pay an NHS fee of £3105 for the two and a half year duration of his visa to allow him to use the NHS, but that aside his visa forbade him from any recourse to public funds. After two and a half years we had to renew his visa for a further two and a half years which cost £1321 plus another NHS fee of £3105 despite the fact that for the previous two years he’d been employed and paying UK income tax and national insurance.

We were strongly advised to use an immigration lawyer for our applications as if you make a mistake in the complex application process you lose the fees you paid to the Home Office. To give an idea of the complexity, the paperwork to support the initial application weighed over a kilo. Every application entailed a legal fee of over £1000. We had to prove that we were in a genuine relationship and are cohabiting. It’s a highly stressful and intrusive process. We had to submit reams of paperwork at every stage.

It was only after the second spouse visa expired and he had been in the UK for five years that we were able to apply for ILR. There was no NHS fee this time, but the Home Office fee was £3029. Additionally he had to pass a Life in the UK test, all of which apparently include a question about the 1966 World Cup and one token question on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The cost for this test is £50.

If you want an expedited decision you need to pay an extra £1000, otherwise you’re in limbo for six months or more and are unable to travel outwith the UK during this time.

We calculate that the entire process from beginning to getting ILR cost approximately £16,000 and took over five very stressful years. Now we discover that the indefinite in Indefinite Leave to Remain doesn’t actually mean indefinite, it means ” for as long as Nigel Farage says so”. I wonder if we would have grounds to sue the Home Office for selling us something on false pretences.

Thousands of families across the UK risk being torn apart under this disgusting scheme, people who came to the UK legally, obeyed all the rules, fulfilled all the obligations and obtained ILR in good faith, working and paying taxes, only to discover now that the British Government will not necessarily uphold its end of the bargain.

Starmer has predictably refused to condemn Farage’s plan for being cruel, unjust, or the moral abomination that it is. a spokesperson for Keir Starmer would say only that he thought Farage’s plan was “unworkable”, “unrealistic” and “unfunded”. It’s not that it’s immoral and reprehensible, Starmer will only quibble with the figures. There has been no real condemnation of mass deportation, no attempt to reassure worried and frightened people whose previously secure futures in the UK have now been thrown into doubt. This is how you open the door to fascism.

The need for Scottish independence has never been more pressing or urgent. If we are to have any chance of preserving humanity, decency and compassion in public office, we can only do so with independence. Otherwise the dark abyss of inhumane far right English nationalism will consume us all.

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