The Labour Party, the BBC & Sky News are Playing the Politics of Appeasement

(issued by Ali Wilkin, interim Harmony Party Media Officer)

As desperate and frightened people seek freedom, and risk their lives crossing the channel, the BBC & Sky News have appeased the Johnson regime with reporting that further demonises human beings escaping war and tyranny. In ignoring the law, which stipulates that refugees are not behaving illegally (no matter how they enter the country they are seeking asylum in), the BBC & Sky have pandered to the hard-right narrative that fuelled so much of the Brexit advocacy.

The Labour Party too are playing the politics of appeasement – and just as Chamberlain found that his paper signed by Hitler was worthless, so too the Labour Party will find that playing to the same gallery as the Johnson regime will ultimately prove worthless. Like many who think they sit in the political ‘centre’, we live in an epoch where politics is being dragged ever further right, which in turn drags the ‘centre’ ever further to the right.

Instead of a party of ‘progressives’ making some statement defence of people who are seeking to be free of war and tyranny, what we have is an opposition who is comfortable with language that amplifies a non-existent crisis, and pathologizes refugees as ‘illegal immigrants’ and criminals.

This country is not ‘under siege’ from refugees, and refugees are not our enemy – it is indicative of the times in which we live that such a statement would be considered scandalous.