Oi. You there. The foreign looking one. I can see you. Don’t try to sneak away and hide. Your time is up. We’ve had enough of you. And don’t try to play the racist card. It’s nothing to do with the colour of your skin. I hate everyone who isn’t British. What’s that? You have indefinite leave (ILR) to remain? Well, not any more you don’t. Look. It’s not personal. It’s just that you’re not culturally coherent. If you get my drift. You somehow don’t look right. Smell funny. You don’t fit in.
Welcome to the new Compassionate Conservatism. Remember the old days? Theresa May’s hostile environment. Home Office vans driving around towns with a sign telling immigrants to bugger off home. Sometimes you can be just too nice. Well, those days of sweet-talking foreigners are over. It’s now clear they aren’t going to leave of their own free will, so the time has come for mass deportations. Enough is enough. Send in the ICE squads now.
Speak to people inside the Tory party and they will tell you that Katie Lam, the Kent MP who was first elected to parliament last year, is one of their rising stars. Ear-marked for greatness. A future leader. She is already a junior whip, though that’s not particularly remarkable: there are so few Conservative MPs almost everyone gets to do something meaningless. Still, take it from those who care about these things: a Star is Born. Whether this tells you more about the abject state of the Tory party or Katie is for you to decide.
First, some background. After a few years at Goldman Sachs – the financial services firm dodged a bullet when she left – Katie went on to become a special adviser to Boris Johnson. She can clearly pick a winner. Safe to assume there’s nothing she doesn’t know about how to enjoy illegal parties during lockdown and how to lie through your teeth. Let’s just say that she might not be the best judge of character.
That’s not all. Katie has apparently also written eight musicals. Her ninth, currently in pre-production, is believed to be a mashup of The Sound of Music. A feelgood show in which a group of young children and their nanny try to flee repression by entering a country illegally. Katie loves an upbeat ending so the Swiss then reject their asylum claims and send them all back to generously appointed prison camps. Where they all die happily ever after.
Now here’s the thing. Katie is also a committed Brexiter so you might have thought she would have noticed that Boris had had an open doors immigration policy during the three years he was prime minister. But Katie didn’t say a word. Because what the British people had voted for was whatever Boris chose to do next. Yet, she is nothing if not entirely inconsistent. For since she has been a sitting MP Katie has made it her mission to deport as many people as possible.
Spare a thought for Robert Jenrick here. Honest Bob has made it his life’s work to make the most toxic, divisive statements possible. Anything to get the attention of racists. And he was doing so well. All traces of his former life as a liberal, remainer MP have been almost eradicated. And then up pops Katie to completely outclass him on the nastiness scale. Makes him look like a good-natured one nation Tory. It’s just not fair. But it won’t be easy for him to recover the low ground.
Over the last week or so Katie has been sharing her views on immigration with anyone who will listen. In interviews and on X. And the main takeaway is that no one is safe. Even if you are legally here and have been given ILR, you are still in the firing line for being deported. It’s not personal, she insists. She isn’t blaming those who came here in good faith, filled in every form and followed the legal immigration procedures. It’s just that the rules had been wrong so – and she says this more in pleasure than in anger – many people who have made a home in Britain will have to go. Sayonara motherfuckers.
“It’s all about ‘cultural coherence’,” says Katie. Definitely not racist, that. Keep Britain for the British. Just not the foreign British. Coming over here with their foreign foods and foreign ways. No wonder Britain has been going to the dogs. That and Brexit. Who mentioned Brexit? You can be first to leave. Everyone must go. Anyone who doesn’t look like us, think like us or speak like us. That includes anyone from the EU. Don’t think you get a free ride. Even if you married a Brit.
Keeping up with everyone that Katie hates is hard work. She doesn’t want any foreigners who have been given state benefits. So any woman with ILR who took statutory maternity pay can go for a start. Even if it means splitting up families. Be careful, Kemi. She’s coming for you. Hurry up. Piss off. Katie doesn’t have all day.
She also wants anybody legally here earning less than £38,700 to jog on. That’s most nurses working in the NHS. Spongers all of them. Katie just wants people who are going to make a net financial contribution to the country. So she is also open to raising taxes for the lowest paid. You can’t beat that level of genius.
Nor is Katie on her own with this. She is merely the most prominent and most vocal. Riding the waves. She is the one who lives and breathes this stuff. Believes in a deportation scheme that makes Idi Amin expelling hundreds of thousands of Asians from Uganda look reasonable. For all of this was the quarter-witted Chris Philp’s idea. In fact, it’s Tory party policy. Just read the draft immigration and visas bill tabled by the Philpster back in May. Then despair.
It’s also possible it’s only Katie and the Philpster who have read the bill. Asked on Times Radio if it was party policy to remove people who were legally entitled to be here, James Cleverly insisted it wasn’t. Except it’s there in black and white. Poor old Jimmy Dimly. Not the sharpest of minds. Though to be fair, he would probably claim it is the Tory party which is leaving him, rather than him leaving the Tory party.
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A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar
On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here.
