Progression

Remember those tasteless Conservative election posters? Many people, including myself, believe that they actually firmed up the Labour vote at the election. Those posters, along with the imaginary threat of Tory back door action, meant that many people felt they had no choice but to reach for the nosepeg and vote for the lesser of two evils.

I wonder what those people make of Neo-Labour's attempts to deport failed asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe. Are they proud of their decision? Do they still think they did the right thing? Surely even the most xenophobic of Tory politicians wouldn't have tried something quite so morally objectionable. Fortunately the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal has ruled against the government. David Davis believes that this was the right decision.

I've never been a Labour member myself so I can only imagine the pain this must cause Labour party members. David Davis, a man clearly on the right of the Conservative party, a man who attends Margaret Thatcher's birthday parties, is standing up for decency in the face of a Labour government which appears to have completely lost all sense of what is right and what is wrong. It is tragic is so many ways.

And the government response to the judgement:

The absolute sanctity of the 1951 convention at the root of the asylum system is that each and every individual case is decided on its own terms within its own circumstances.This judgement drives an entire coach and horses through that and leaves the entire system open to abuse.
Tony McNulty

Er, what? OK, AA made a fraudulent asylum application but the judgement said that a "real risk of harm exists now" if he is returned. The government doesn't want to know. The fact that this person might be tortured or killed is of no concern to them. Now I'm not a lawyer but I tend to think that death or torture are both rather extreme punishments for fraud. Blair and co. disagree.

There's nothing progressive about that. In fact it's becoming progressively more difficult to find any moral defence for this shower of callous power obsessed authoritarians as each day passes. The Labour Party membership and the MPs must take back their party if they want it to survive. If they wait much longer, it will already be too late.