Suella Braverman’s grim asylum seeker ‘dream’ is of a country we no longer recognise

Every day across the world thousands of people do just that, all for very different reasons. It could be that their politics have got them into trouble – that powerful opponents will threaten to hunt them down and kill them. It could be that a natural disaster has wiped away their home and there is nothing for it but to move. Or it could be war which has ravaged their country, and made it simply impossible to remain – or remain alive at any rate.

Or hunger or thirst, famine or drought. Or less life-threatening reasons. Perhaps it’s simply the prospect of year after year of poverty, being ground down by the lack of hope and lack of any potential for happiness. None of these reasons should attract criticism. Surely if desperate people feel forced to flee to start a new life, we should welcome them with open arms rather than judge?

READ MORE: Wee Ginger Dug: The polls show the writing is on the wall for the Tories

And sometimes we do. I’m still in awe of those people who opened their homes to refugees fleeing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for no reason other than simple human empathy and kindness.

But too often, we don’t. Too often we treat them with suspicion and resentment. Too often we accuse them of stealing our jobs or undermining our culture or “swamping” our country. The facts do not justify such claims – but sometimes facts don’t matter.

Certainly not to the current Westminster government, who rarely adopt a warm and welcoming approach to immigrants looking for sanctuary, no matter how desperate their need is. They’d rather ship them off to Rwanda. Out of sight, out of mind. Who cares about their human rights? Who cares how they will be treated in their new homeland? Just get them off our hands.

Britain’s new Home Secretary Suella Braverman this week pledged to do everything in her power to make the UK Government’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda “work”, by which she means simply get them out of this country.

Until recently, it was difficult to imagine a home secretary more pernicious and odious than Priti Patel. Then again, it wasn’t so long ago we thought it impossible to have a more incompetent inhabitant of Downing Street than Boris Johnson.

Those days were bad. Very, very bad. Not, however, as nightmarish as those unleashed by Tory MPs drunk on the blood of former leaders fallen out of favour, stabbed in the back and discarded as new demons crawled over their bodies in their desperation for power.

Braverman spoke to a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham of her “dream” to have a Rwanda flight take off before Christmas as if to infect a festival of peace and love and instead leave it festering with loathing and evil. It was not xenophobic, she insisted, to say mass and rapid migration places pressure on housing, public services and community relations. Whatever it is, it’s certainly not true, but then truth no longer has a place in what passes for political discourse in modern Britain.

This Britain is no longer a country I recognise. A country in which people wept with grief for a dead monarch they did not know while mere days later cheered to the rafters at promises to turn away the neediest of humanity, to stamp on their fingers as they clung to hope of salvation.

It is a strange feeling to watch the barricades go up, imprisoning us under the control of a political elite that feasts on a philosophy which steals from the poor, rewards the rich and greedy, and seeks to deny us even the right to vote on another way to live.

Of course, not all refugees are banished into the outer darkness. You can bet a barrowload of pounds that some will be welcomed into England with open arms by Tory politicians who pray each night for ammunition to help keep Scotland in its place. Those for whom the red carpet will be rolled out, the fatted calf will be killed and the Union Jack will be lovingly wrapped around.

These are the cream of the crop, the kings of the hill in the refugee world for the UK. The Scots that proudly say they are so desperate to keep even more of their wealth from the taxman that they will move to England to do it.

Such is the fury of those who are currently in the top tax band in Scotland and were stomping their feet, demanding that Nicola Sturgeon take the lead from UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and scrap that tax band altogether.

Yes, that’s right. Follow the man who put the desires of the rich above the needs of the poor, the man whose embrace of greed would put even Gordon Gekko to shame and proved too toxic even for the Conservative Party. The man is responsible for the most shameful government U-turn in living memory. That’s the man whose example Scotland should follow?

Of course, those Scots who would say they would move south of the Border to benefit from a more sympathetic tax regime inhabit a different world from those refugees coming here from war zones and disaster areas. They are just like us, only far richer.

They will be made to feel at home instead of being marched on a plane bound for Rwanda.

We should remember that these people are not threatening to move because their wealth is at risk. They will be bringing home at least the same as they currently earn. There is no threat to the cash already in their bank account.

No, they are threatening to leave to keep even more of their money. They don’t want to simply protect the comfortable lives they already enjoy, they want to make them better still, and make others pay for it. And they seem genuinely astounded that we cannot find it in our hearts to feel sorry for them.

Of course, they fail to even take into account the benefits living in Scotland brings with it. Sending our children to university has a price tag attached, but in Scotland, it is far lower because of free tuition fees. If we fall sick and need medication, we do not pay the prescription charges levied on those south of the Border.

These benefits are not inconsiderable and should not simply be dismissed or taken for granted, but nor can we count the attractions of living in a particular country in simply financial terms. There is value in living in a country that does not always prioritise wealth against the needs of the most vulnerable. There is a benefit in bringing our children up to believe we all have a right to have our basic needs met. The dream of a country where everyone has a right to pursue happiness – regardless of age, race, religion or sexual orientation – is worth fighting for. No tax cut is worth a threat to that right.

I’m pleased to count myself among the majority of Scots who believe that to be the case, a claim proved true by the fact that while Liz Truss witters away about “facing down separatists who threaten our precious Union”, opinion polls suggest that voters north of the Border will boot out the paltry six Scottish MPs the Conservatives currently have at Westminster.

What would it take to persuade you to leave behind a good home, a good life and a good country? The promise of more money… or the threat? I’m not sure how I’d answer that question. Certainly not money. I’m certain, though, of what would persuade me to stay. The chance to rid the country of Tory MPs and a philosophy which protects and nurtures the rich at the expense of the poor. And the opportunity to build a new, refreshed and independent country which can put the values of its own people at the heart of its economy. There is no way you can put a price on that.