Michael Chessum

Labour members have long used the party conference to push for a more humanitarian approach to immigration and asylum. In Liverpool this week, however, at the redeveloped docks from which more than five million Europeans travelled to America at the end of the 19th century, the only progressive motion on immigration was arbitrarily ruled out of order. On Tuesday afternoon, delegates were instead invited to debate a motion that would have committed the party to ‘establish a new Border Security Command’, ‘negotiate additional returns arrangements to speed up returns’, ‘increase the number of safe countries to which failed asylum seekers can swiftly be returned’ and ‘deliver new counter-terror powers to tackle organised immigration crime’. It pledged to ‘act upstream’ to stop ‘the humanitarian crises’ that fuelled immigration.

An idea as radical as the nationalisation of the healthcare system, in the teeth of opposition from the medical profession, would never be entertained by the current crop of pundits and political managers. It is only by making Nye Bevan and the NHS into national treasures that our political establishment can leave this contradiction unexamined.

‘Will Britain soon get its own Geert Wilders?’ Allison Pearson asked in the Telegraph. Britain already has several, and they have been running the government for years.

The Adriana, a fishing boat, left the port of Tobruk in Libya early on 10 June in an attempt to reach Italy. It was carrying up to 750 people, including more than a hundred children. After almost four days at sea, the boat’s engine broke down and it was left stranded fifty miles off the Peloponnesian coast. In the early hours of 14 June, the boat capsized, with hundreds trapped in the hold and no one on board wearing a life jacket. This is a vision of hell. It is also a glimpse of the future.

Ducking fights on difficult issues may work in the short term, if your aim is to win the support of this or that portion of the electorate. In the long run, it is a proven disaster. The last Labour government built an economy around financial services and an electoral strategy around accepting Thatcher’s legacy. It won three elections, but provided the Tory right with the materials it needed to deliver austerity, harsher border controls and deepening privatisation.