the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

'i commission this to be inscribed on a giant stone tablet:'

Before that, it was Tony Blair with ‘I say to you today’.

In respect of the fact that [LONG PAUSE] I'm an evil cunt..

blair was also a pioneer in using 'look' at the start of sentences to indicate that the bullshit which followed was actually some straight-talking, no-nonsense TRUTH

"We've been very clear about this" maybe came in with Cameron - that erudite "well if you'd been paying attention, Mr Journalist, you would know that..." condescension.

guys how do we make ash sarkar PM

we need to elect her as an mp first iirc

This is a huge can of worms:

https://www.ft.com/content/2ae9b7d2-4d0c-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

praesee for us skinflints?

In a judgment on the case of one Bangladeshi student, published last year, an immigration tribunal judge said that the Home Office’s behaviour was ”so unfair and unreasonable as to amount to an abuse of power.”

“The highly questionable quality of the evidence upon which these accusations have been based and the lack of any effective judicial oversight have given rise to some of the greatest injustices that I have encountered in over 20 years of practice,” said Mr Lewis, who has represented several of the affected claimants and overturned the Home Office’s ruling in each case.

Short summary to follow

yikes

Pretty sure no-one in the UK media or the GBP gives a hoot about how the Home Office treats some young Muslim from Bangladesh.

https://www.ft.com/content/2ae9b7d2-4d0c-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

Home Office told thousands of foreign students to leave UK in error https://t.co/BwHsXr1hoF

— Financial Times (@FT) May 1, 2018

The universities like the international student fees and Javid will have to say something or everyone of his background will be calling him a coconut on social media.

Ash Sarkar is one of my favourite commentators; love to see her gesturing with that dagger-nailed manicure and how much that annoys old white men plus it INCENSES them that she has ‘fucks like a champion’ on her Twitter bio.

A few years ago the government introduced a requirement that migrants and students had to speak English to get a visa or citizenship but spectacularly failed to set up much of a structure in place for which language tests were appropriate. Alongside the major tests used internationally for access to university and immigration, you had dozens and dozens of tests that were, for one reason or another, inappropriate for the purpose.

ETS delivers TOEFL, a reasonably well respected test used around the world - predominantly for access to US universities. They also deliver a lower-stakes, lower-cost version called TOEIC which started out as more of a commercial English test but is taken by huge numbers of people in Japan, Korea and France as a general English benchmarking test.

When the immigration rules came in, candidates understandably flocked to the easier, cheaper and more flexible options - so TOEIC rather than TOEFL or superior tests. TOEIC relies heavily on multiple choice which also facilitates cheating - it's much easier to evade scrutiny on tests where spelling and phrasing are less important. TOEIC does have an oral interview section, though.

It became very clear that there was massive malpractice going on across the assessment sector but particularly with TOEIC. ETS accredited dozens of dodgy colleges to deliver it and they'd charge £500, £800, etc for a guaranteed pass. A Panorama documentary did an undercover expose showing exam room doors being padlocked, large sums of money changing hands and answers being read out at the front of class.

Almost immediately, TOEIC was barred from the accepted list and all candidates who had taken it had their immigration processing frozen while the investigation went on. If they were in the process of applying for a visa they were told to take another test. If they had already obtained a visa, they were not told anything.

The investigation used what i'd assume was a combination of data analysis and "voice print matching" to determine how many candidates who had taken TOEIC had probably done so fraudulently. As a result, about 35,000 people had their visas yanked and most, i believe, were detained and deported. The problem is that ETS' voice-print matching tech doesn't really work. It is ok for what it does, which is give ETS grounds to launch investigations into their own centres, but isn't accurate enough to be proof positive. Subsequent analysis suggested that human raters (who are also obviously unreliable) agreed with the computer about 80% of the time - which is leading the FT to suggest that 7000 people might have been deported in error.

It's not as simple as that - ETS probably had other info to go on and a large majority were probably cheating - but it's very difficult to say, or at least to prove, any particular candidate was. As a result, i think every legal challenge to a specific deportation order (and there have been many) has been successful in overturning the ruling.

This all falls on May, tbh. She introduced the policy, she failed to implement a requirement for secure assessment until it was too late and she ordered the Home Office to err on the side of deportation when she knew the evidence was ropey.

She's under pressure in the papers as well ("Mayday Mayday" tick vg), but I feel that she'll be less vulnerable than Rudd because her position is basically "Yes, I've always done everything I can to fuck immigrants, is that not what you wanted?"

she should put "fucks over immigrants like a champion" on her twitter.

(xp) Probably OTM. Also Rudd was seen as an arch Remainer, so good riddance.

I would seriously believe that someone's had to argue her out of holding a press conference to say "Yes there were targets and yes they were ambitious, but if you look at these graphs you'll see that definite progress was being made towards them"

This is probably her single stupidest policy, and that's really saying something.

OTM. I can almost hear the but-but-but May internal monologue about how reducing immigration is firstly what she was told to do (at HO), and then what the public told her they wanted (as PM). And now her homework is being unfairly marked — by people who it turns out just wanted their racist feelings assuaged without causing any sob stories among figures they're sympathetic to.

I think this makes her *more* vulnerable though. "Yes, we meant control immigration, but not like THAT."

The angle May might be vulnerable on, if abuse of power doesn’t cut it, is how much this mess cost. They spent over £70m deporting people, I believe, and are now liable for all sorts of legal costs when people successfully appeal their cases. It underlines the idea that the Home Office simply failed to function properly under her watch.

She really doesn’t like anyone darker than the magnolia walls of a BTL landlord’s flat, does she?

Even allowing for the stupidity of depriving the country of cash cow overseas students AND encouraging the subsequent post-graduation brain drain, I would guess a small-but-important slice of the FT readership would be foreign students with aspirations of joining the global business elite and staying in London - ie FUTURE TORY VOTERS that they are happy to just piss away.

(xpost - when you're already spending billions on Brexit I think an extra £70m on deportations would barely touch the sides).

If they lose some high profile council on Thursday, she’s done imo.

If only....

They spent over £70m deporting people

jesus fuck the magical money tree just keeps on giving huh

The compensation for Windrush cases will run hundreds of thousands per person.

come on K&C

get some popcorn + beer in on Thurs, should be a good night in!

There are a lot of #FBPE-type parties with Apprentice team-style names (Renew, LOL) in RBKC trying to get traction there, but the Labour canvassing has been unreal.

A poll by @SkyData suggests 31% of people think Theresa May is most to blame for the Windrush scandal with 24% blaming civil servants, 18% blaming the last Labour Government and 4% blaming Amber Rudd

— Sky News Breaking (@SkyNewsBreak) April 30, 2018

Handy to know an approximate percentage for current U.K. gammon levels.

As somebody who has dealt with the sharp end of the home office immigration department (or actually the private companies it's farmed out to) and has spent years retweeting the constant horror stories which have been largely ignored by moreorless the whole country, I have little or no confidence that the British public have any more appetite for sympathising with the suffering of any non-white or foreign-sounding people at the hands of our country. Frankly I'm shocked that the scandal has even got this big.

tbf it's only been *checks calendar* almost exactly eight years since the last labour government, so you can see why nearly one in five britons would consider this catastrophic fuckup to be their fault

Be fair though, it's obviously Clement Attlee's fault for encouraging those people to come here in the first place.

I don't think it's controversial to suggest that New Labour laid the foundations for the whole hostile environment policy - the first immigration detention centres opened in what 2001? I'd stop short of directly blaming them for Windrush though.

blunkett was an awful home sec it's true

It was Blunkett who first floated the idea of language tests for citizenship and marriage iirc.

Get you a government that "lets too many of them in" AND increases the hostility of their environment eh.

Ex-Tory MP And His Floating Dog Inexplicably 'Photoshopped In To Road Junction Protest'

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/david-burrowes-local-campaign_uk_5ae87716e4b055fd7fcfca8b?fc5

xp,

There was a shift towards keeping people out during the Blair years but the drive from Blunkett, Straw, etc was more about language acquisition as proof of integration. If you had not learned English, you were perceived as at risk of not being part of society - with associated risk of extremism, etc. The fact that language funding was being cut back severely and the only people who don't have basic English tend to be a handful of Gujurati grannies highly unlikely to blow things up was besides the point. This was the era of taking policy leads from the Quilliam Foundation, etc.

Under May, it became much more of a tool to stop people from emigrating. Again, language levels are not the issue - it's the layer of bureaucracy that can be factored in that is important. There's a paranoia that people will go through the ludicrously circuitous route of enrolling at a university in order to work as an illegal immigrant on the Tesco night shift and by having a language certificate will somehow weed out the bad apples but the key point was telegraphing (successfully) that your sort are not wanted here.

Even when they’re paying £30k a year at UCL or similar!

Theoretically, yes, they're still open to "the best and brightest" but, in practice, you will be assumed to be suspicious until proven otherwise.

Student immigration patterns are cyclical and deeply influenced by perception. If there is a chance that your application to a top university will be arbitrarily rejected - or you think it will, just apply to Canada and Australia and save yourself the bother. UK universities are falling over themselves to send out the message that they're still open for business but, fundamentally, students don't go where they don't feel they're welcome and the UK has assiduously cultivated an image as a racist backwater for eight years.

Waiting on the outraged thinkpieces and wall-to-wall coverage on BBC and Sky of Theresa May's failure to tackle racism in the Tory Party:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43959705

Sajid's promotion is enough to shut down any suggestions they are an intrinsically Islamophobic party, google Indefinite Detention UK and nothing on the first page is BBC news either, shockingly.

They’ve suspended like 20 in the past week? Haven’t seen a handy thread linking them but most are being suspended for racism. They were called out by a Tory yesterday for the hepatitis leaflet!

Also, saw Baroness Warsi had mentioned the Islamophobia of the Conservatives on tv recently but hadn’t seen this:

Sadly the rot of Islamophobia has taken hold of sections of right wing politics and Zac you continue to feed it.
Of all my colleagues you should know better- have no idea where the Zac of years gone by has disappeared to 😢 https://t.co/ESAh8KDRVY

— Sayeeda Warsi (@SayeedaWarsi) April 28, 2018

old racist Zac has been replaced by new, slightly more racist Zac