We’re supposed to think Javid will end ‘hostile environment’? His record suggests not

Former Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has been appointed to replace Amber Rudd as Home Secretary.

Judging by the apparently-coordinated media and social media campaign from Establishment figures, we’re supposed to think that a ‘BAME’ (black, Asian, minority ethnic) Home Secretary marks an end to the remote, callous and frankly racist policies of the ‘hostile environment’ that have so harmed the ‘Windrush generation’.

Javid’s record, however, suggests otherwise.

‘More Thatcherite than Thatcher’

In 2014, when Javid followed Maria Miller as Culture Secretary, Javid was ‘hailed‘ by a Tory commentator as the first ‘real son of Thatcher’ to reach the Cabinet.

Thatcher’s record of heartlessness – ‘Thatcher the milk-snatcher’ was coined after one of her less vile policies and former mining communities still bear the scars of the brutal, illegal attacks on the miners – is well-known.

But she was also ‘unabashedly racist‘, according to Australian minister Bob Carr.

In 1978, Thatcher told ITV’s World in Action programme that:

People are really rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people with a different culture.

Javid has already established his own record of at least borderline-racist comment, with this unpleasant tweet about the features of Labour’s Jewish then-leader, Ed Miliband:

As of this morning, the 2014 tweet – reminiscent of the S*n’s racist picture of Miliband eating a bacon sandwich – remains undeleted.

A ‘real son of Thatcher’ as Home Secretary will do nothing to calm the fears or distress of Windrush generation or other Commonwealth citizens under attack by this government.

Incompetence – or heartlessness?

The Establishment line is that Javid will come in to ‘sort out’ the longstanding problems in the Home Office. This conveniently ignores the fact that the deportations, denials of treatment etc were not ‘problems’ but policies – but it also ignores the fact that Javid has, so far, displayed no noticeable competence in his previous roles.

Almost a year ago, when Grenfell Tower was destroyed in that terrible blaze that took so many lives, Theresa May promised that survivors would be rehoused in permanent homes within three weeks. By February 2018, just fifty-eight families had been rehomed.

As Communities Secretary, Javid had direct responsibility for that process – yet just last month he told Grenfell families not to expect a solution for at least another year, as their Labour MP pointed out this morning:

Not only that, but the Grenfell families are fighting immigration issues that they were promised would not be held against them.

As Communities Secretary, Javid also refused cash for sprinklers to prevent a repeat of the Grenfell horror in thousands of potentially dangerous high-rises.

So his record of putting right ‘problems’ is dire.

At best, these failures represent gross incompetence. Just as likely, they reflect a complete lack of empathy and concern for people in terrible circumstances not of their making – which bodes ill for our Windrush citizens and those in a similar plight.

Uninhabitable housing

In 2016, Tory MPs appalled observers by voting against a Labour amendment to require rented housing to be fit for human habitation.

In another demonstration of heartlessness, Javid was one of seventy-two Tory MPs who voted against the amendment – and who have registered as receiving at least £10,000 a year income as a landlord.

Javid considered – unsurprisingly – the income of landlords more important than actually requiring that homes people live in be fit for people to live in.

Theft from disabled people

Also in 2016, Javid voted to force through legislation that would cut £30 a week from a vital benefit for hard-pressed disabled people – and made public statements defending the decision.

The Tories have been condemned by the United Nations for its inhumane treatment of disabled people – treatment that has pushed a shocking forty-three percent of disabled benefit claimants to attempt suicide.

Sajid Javid has been an enthusiastic participant in the implementation of the policies that have created this horrendous situation for our disabled citizens.

Immigration

Most directly worrying of all is Javid’s own personal voting record on immigration matters. Analysis by lawyer Katie Newbury shows it to be relentlessly vile – as just a small selection of her tweets this morning shows:

The whole, alarming thread can be viewed here.

Comment:

Four years of horror – caused by policies created by Theresa May and enthusiastically pursued by the Home Office under the now-departed Amber Rudd – have blighted the lives of people who have always been UK citizens yet were treated as criminals and interlopers by a heartless Tory government.

We are supposed to believe that will change under a man with a history of enthusiastically pursuing the abuse of some of our most vulnerable citizens – and a track record of failure in helping even the survivors of the Grenfell tragedy, either with rehoming or with immigration issues.

Yeah, right.

This is the Tory party, so anyone that might succeed Rudd would be a horror. But by choosing a ‘real son of Thatcher’ as the new Home Secretary, May is in fact sending a clear signal to everyone blighted by Tory policies that it’s business as usual.

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