Serious Ethical Questions

Heaven forfend that members of Parliament and of the Privy Council might express political opinions. And while one third of voters support the Rwanda scheme, 40 per cent do not. The former are dyed in the wool Conservative supporters whom the Official Opposition could never reach under any circumstances, but that is not why it refuses to condemn this monstrous policy.

Having been otherwise engaged over the last few days, I do not know whether anyone has chosen to remember this, but Tony Blair wanted to send refugees to Tanzania, where they would have stayed, although they would have been allowed to "reapply" for asylum in Britain. 

Exactly that is proposed in relation to Rwanda, which unlike Tanzania was never in the British Empire, and has therefore not told Britain where to stick it. But even Paul Kagame, and there is that Blair connection again, has to die eventually. What will happen when Rwanda had changed its mind?

Speaking of Blair and immigration, it was mentioned recently that Dennis Skinner and Mark Seddon had confronted Blair in the Labour Party's National Executive Committee about the impending wage cuts at the time of EU enlargement, but he had insisted that no more than 30,000 would come each year, leaving the labour market unaffected.

Not that even Blair really believed that. Just as you cannot believe in the "free" movement of goods, services and capital but not in that of people, so you cannot believe in the "free" movement of people but not in that of goods, services and capital. You can be Blair, or you can be Skinner and Seddon. You can be a liberal, or you can be on the Left.

We have never met, but it was around 2003 that Seddon told me that there would be an all-women shortlist at North West Durham when Hilary Armstrong retired, leaving me no hope of the Labour nomination even though I was already being introduced at funerals as "our next MP". Hilary has lived to see Labour so resigned to never winning back this seat that it is calling for the constituency to be abolished. Seddon is no longer a party member. Who is?