Contrary to what the headlines claim, the latest crisis to engulf the British government is not really about immigration and asylum policy. There is no racist mob on the streets demanding the head of New Labour ministers for fast-tracking some visa applications. The problem comes from the centre of the political class itself.
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The crisis that led to the resignation of immigration minister Beverley Hughes is about the disintegration of government institutions, particularly the civil service. It is about the loss of nerve and sense of panic at the top of the New Labour establishment. And it is about the new power of the media, sections of which now feel free to act as a self-important opposition movement.
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Hughes is hardly the first government minister to be a little economical with the truth - a famous phrase coined by a top official to describe the practise of ministers in Margaret Thatcher's Tory government. Politicians have always edited the script to protect their interests, normally supported by civil servants whose job is to watch their masters' backs. The striking thing today is the inability of the government machine to present a united front. So Hughes' response to criticism over the handling of visa applications was publicly to blame officials in her department for keeping her in the dark. In turn, civil servants proved willing to go on the record exposing the holes in what the government was saying.
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What this exposes is not simply the breakdown in immigration policy, but far more importantly, the disintegration of any sense of institutional loyalty within the machine of government. The traditional sense of pulling together for the good of the state has been lost, along with any certainty about what that state stands for and what its mission might be. The prevailing mood within Whitehall circles is less 'man the pumps' and more every man/woman for him/herself. As former Labour minister Roy Hattersley has pointed out, in the not-too-distant past 'civil servants did their best to protect their political masters. Now, they feel it necessary to protect themselves.'
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The Hughes affair can be understood as part of the same disintegrative process that led Clare Short, former cabinet minister and still a member of the elite Privy Council, to run to the press with state secrets as if she was a teenage tattle-tale throwing a tantrum. Many have observed that the government has lost control of its immigration policy. But this problem goes way beyond that, calling into question the state's ability to do anything decisive or govern effectively.
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Beverley Hughes' sudden resignation, so soon after the government had insisted she was staying, also illustrates the implosion of political authority at the top. New Labour now seems incapable of holding the line under the slightest pressure. The fact that such an uninspiring, barely competent and easily blown-over figure as Ms Hughes had until recently been 'tipped for the cabinet' confirms the shallowness and lack of substance in the political class today.
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After all, what hanging offence was Hughes really found guilty of? Not lying to MPs, but misleading the media. She said in her resignation statement that she had become aware that she 'may have given a misleading impression in my interviews on Monday night' about whether concerns about Romanian visas had 'crossed my desk at any stage in the last two years'. As Ann Treneman put it in The Times (London), having first assumed that the minister had gone for the usual offence of misleading parliament, it now 'seems that Ms Hughes has misled Newsnight'. If every minister who span a line on the BBC's flagship news programme fell on their sword, we would have been living in a state of ungoverned anarchy for many years.
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The fact that misleading Newsnight's Kirsty Wark has now become such a crime also illustrates the self-important status of sections of the media - most notably the BBC - who, with the collapse of more traditional political parties and institutions, now fancy themselves as the new opposition. Far from the Hutton Report putting an end to this trend, as some predicted, it has only confirmed the BBC's image as some sort of resistance movement to political tyranny.
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 | | The consequence is to elevate the obsession with 'sleaze' over any public debate about political issues |
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As we have argued before on spiked, the media owes its new status largely to its role as the voice of popular cynicism about politics, continually searching for scandals, lies, or mere inconsistencies in what politicians say. Typically, the Daily Mail headlined the Hughes' resignation, 'Why Do They Keep Lying?'. This may seem like radical stuff. But the consequence once again is to elevate the obsession with 'sleaze' over any public debate about political issues. So rather than an open, rational discussion of immigration or asylum, we are faced with yet another round of lowlife gossip about the contents of private emails and who-said-what-to-whom-when behind the scenes.
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In one sense it could be seen as an accident that issues to do with immigration and asylum have now become the vehicle for expressing broader problems. Yet at the same time, these issues are particularly well suited to providing a focus for the crisis of authority.
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Public anxieties about immigration and asylum today are a far cry from the focused racial hostility directed against immigrant communities in the past. The flag-waving 'Falklands factor' nationalism on which racism and chauvinism fed has lost its purchase along with every other traditional British value. Our society today lacks any strong sense of what it means to be British, leading to much angst-ridden discussion about citizenship, multiculturalism and all of that. That makes the emergence of any coherent racist movement highly unlikely. But it also leads to greater public insecurity and confusion, raw nerves that can readily be touched upon by scares about immigration and asylum.
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In these uncertain times many perceive life as a fast-changing affair beyond their control, which you cannot do anything about and where you cannot believe what you are told. They can see no significant benefits to being British citizens, and no longer feel part of something bigger than themselves. These perceptions breed insecurities that seem tailor-made to be exploited by stories about immigration cover-ups, bogus asylum seekers and somebody else getting something for nothing.
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The root cause of these problems is not, however, the appearance of some Romanian gangsters or Muslim asylum-seekers at the periphery of society. It is the loss of any shared sense of core values and identity at the centre of British life. In a society that was more sure of itself, governments and public opinion could not be so easily traumatised by mention of a few dodgy immigration visas.
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Immigration and asylum are not a problem for Britain. So what if some of those desperate to come here and work actually manage it? Our green and pleasant expanses of empty countryside are hardly about to be overrun. The real problem is much closer to home.
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We do not need any more mind-numbingly banal inquiries into who stamped whose passport under what table. What we do need is an open-minded, no-holds-barred discussion about what sort of multiethnic society we want to live in, what binds us together and what keeps us apart. It would be a start if we had some political and intellectual leaders with the nerve to ask the hard questions and offer some bold answers, rather than puffed-up spineless sops who like to talk tough, then panic and run at the first sign of trouble.
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Mick Hume is editor of spiked.
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