We all want to protect our families and ensure that our children are safe. Any perceived threat to our family will naturally create fear. It’s a primal emotion, deeply ingrained in our psychology (far easier to stir up than love) and one that has been crucial to our survival.
Unfortunately, opportunistic politicians such as Farage, the leader of Reform, fully understand this and exploit this fear to create divisions within our society for their own political ends. It’s one of the oldest political tricks in the book, blaming scapegoats for societal problems and diverting attention from the real issues while gaining power.
This involves demonising a particular group and using them as a target for public anger and frustration, creating a sense of unity and purpose among followers by giving them a common enemy. Hitler practised this, as did Mussolini – Trump currently follows a similar playbook in the USA.
Of course, Farage will claim he is a patriot. The reality is that he is a grifter (albeit one with excellent communication skills) who is more than happy to create huge divisions in our communities for personal and political gain. He’s always delighted to ‘drop a hand grenade’ into any political issue, either by lying or unfounded suggestions and then walk away and say “nothing to do with me guv” when the s*** inevitably hits the fan.
It’s not people in small boats who have trashed our public services and enabled a corporate culture that always puts profits before people. Farage and Reform like to promote their ‘man of the people’ credentials, while being funded by wealthy corporate donors with links to the fossil fuel industry.
The lack of a genuine drive to create a fairer, more equal society by politicians from both sides of the political spectrum has created genuine grievances within our communities, particularly (but not limited to) working class post-industrial areas. The vacuum left by this failure has been seized by politicians such as Reform UK – but they are definitely not the answer the UK needs.
MPs must of course, acknowledge issues raised by constituents, but I do have concerns about the proportion of genuine grievances (and there will be genuine grievances) arising from the actions of asylum seekers relative to those being influenced by the fear and hate being stoked up by the hard right media and politicians for their own political gain.
In light of the huge levels of deliberate misinformation produced re asylum seekers and the deep divisions that this has created, it is vital that politicians correct these blatant lies and promote the huge benefits that immigration has brought to the UK, rather than see asylum seekers as a problem to be dealt with.
It is therefore, deeply disappointing that some Labour MPs are failing to do this. The new Labour government has a very difficult task, but it will not succeed by pandering to the far right and thereby enabling them to dictate the narrative – they will only want you to do more and they’re probably not going to vote for you whatever you do. Reform will only scapegoat others to blame when the asylum seeker backlog has been resolved.
Labour seems to have accepted the principle of a ‘safe route’ for asylum seekers, through their ‘one in-one out’ policy trial. However, in a grim irony, for an asylum seeker who has succeeded in their claim, for them to be legally admitted to the UK after processing in France, it relies on someone ‘breaking the law’ by arriving on a small boat and being deported, before the asylum seeker can enter.
Why not go the whole hog and create safe routes for all asylum seekers? This would reduce the number of people coming to the UK by a dangerous boat journey to a trickle.
History has taught us that we don’t defeat Fascism by appeasement. Our democracy and the tolerance and respect that make me so proud to be British are under threat. The stakes could not be higher.
Julian Vaughan
August 2025
Julian Vaughan 