Immigration isn’t the real issue it’s the risk of ‘friendly fire’ from our own side

Ever since the Brexit vote, Trump’s election and even Jeremy Corbyn’s elevation to the Labour leadership, people have been running around wringing their hands and wondering where it all went wrong.
By Richard Sherriff
Published 27th Apr 2019, 07:00 GMT
Amber Rudd is the latest Minister - Tory or Labour - to oversee a lacklustre departmentAmber Rudd is the latest Minister - Tory or Labour - to oversee a lacklustre department
Amber Rudd is the latest Minister - Tory or Labour - to oversee a lacklustre department

Well, the latter is easy - you can’t run a party based on understanding the challenges of people in underinvested post-industrial Britain from a public school background and living in Islington.

Trump needs more time but there are parallels, and then we come to Brexit.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

More money for the NHS, immigrants are your enemy - and then this week Farage says his Brexit Party will stand in the next General Election and drops in: ‘By the way, we need to sell off the NHS’.

This week produced two more shameful examples of how this country manages to mess up when it’s supposed to be helping some of the most vulverable in our society.

Even after the disasters of PIP and Universal Credit, the new issues show while the Government will seemingly do all in its power to help those at top of the tree climb higher, they’re chopping off the lower branches to stop others getting a start.

First, the GB Department of Work and Pensions announced that overpayments made under the Carer’s Allowance system will leave some facing years of deductions until the sums - up to £20,000 - are repaid.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

There’s no suggestion of fraud. In fact, the DWP said it was detecting more overpayments because it has recently put in place more staff and new systems and is resolving backlogs created by previous staff shortages.

So, an understaffed and underfunded system was supposed to help people who in turn are saving the nation a fortune in care bills.

Now aims to hammer those people and appears quite proud of the achievement.

The second scandal highlighted by Citizens Advice could potentially see someone missing an average council tax payment of £167 in the first month of the financial year see the size of their debt balloon to around £2,065 in just nine weeks.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Add to that the underinvestment in education especially in already impoverished, inner-city areas, and the erosion of support for young families to name a few and its not hard to see why people are feeling increasingly undervalued and disenfranchised.

It’s getting easier to spot the real enemies.

Related topics:ImmigrationBrexitJeremy CorbynLabourGovernmentNHSDWP