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Rishi Sunak’s continued lurch towards the far-right continued this weekend, when he attended a conference held by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. During a speech about immigration, the UK Prime Minister used inflammatory language to get his point across.
With just 1 in 10 Brits believing Sunak is doing a good job on immigration, the tech-minded politician tapped into the human emotions of fear and anger, dialling up the rhetoric against migrants and asylum seekers by saying they could ‘overwhelm the country’.
He predicted that high levels of immigration would ‘destabilise society’, and even destroy public faith in democracy. Sunak also stated that mass migration could be weaponised by enemy states, upsetting voters further:
“Our enemies will see that we are unable to deal with immigration. They will then use this as a weapon to deliberately drive people to our shores and destabilise our society. If we don’t deal with this problem, it will overwhelm our country.”
“The cost of accommodating these people will anger our citizens, who won’t understand why their money is being spent on dealing with the consequences. It will destroy the public’s faith in not just our politicians, but our very system of government.” | Rishi Sunak
The tone – described as ‘extreme’ by Sky News host Trevor Phillips – has left a sour taste in many mouths. Oliver Dowden, the Deputy PM, was quizzed earlier this morning by Phillips – and he has defended Mr. Sunak’s colourful choice of words:
“Rishi Sunak is absolutely right to issue this warning. It’s not just a warning, we have seen the weaponisation of immigration elsewhere. Is it extreme? No, I don’t think the Prime Minister meant it in that way at all.” | Oliver Dowden
There is, of course, a very rich irony to any claim Rishi Sunak makes about ‘our system of government’. After Boris Johnson vacated Downing Street last year, only members of the Conservative Party were allowed to vote for the next Prime Minister.
When the Liz Truss disasterclass ground to a halt in less than 50 days, even fewer people were given the opportunity to vote for her replacement. The ballot was made available only to Tory MPs – 193 of whom decided to give Sunak the keys to Number 10.
With roughly 46 million people registered to vote in the UK, you’re looking at an equation where just 0.0004% of the electorate had the final say – a devastating figure which is also fairly likely to damage the public’s trust in democracy.
