Dithering Dave and the Refugees

I detest the term "game-changing", but the wide publication of the little body of Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach touched millions of hearts coarsened by decades of anti-immigrant racism and hysteria. Having obstinately set his face against taking more refugees, Dave and his pitiful government were shamed by the huge numbers taken in by Germany, and a rare united front by the press (excepting the Express, and the Daily Star for whom the latest Big Brother was more newsworthy) who turned on his unsympathetic response to the crisis. Matters weren't helped either by Yvette Cooper exploiting the government's difficulties - perhaps the only leadership candidate to do so during the contest. It is to be hoped then that if any good is to come out of this tragedy, and the nameless stories of suffering and loss that go untold, let it be a stake through the toxic attitudes to refugees and migrants once and for all.

This shift caught the government on the hop. While the Labour leadership contest captured the commentariat's attention, the tabloids in particular spent the summer whipping up hate toward the three thousand or so refugees camped in Calais. Stories abounded of men jumping onto trains, hiding in storage containers, clinging beneath lorries ... and of holidaymakers inconvenienced during their short Eurostar hop over to Paris. The BBC got in on the act showing how the refugees lived, and profiling their determination to get into Britain. This allowed Dave to show the "strong leadership" trailed heavily by the Borg-like message discipline of the general election. A little bit of hand-wringing was allowed to acknowledge the plight of Syrians and Mediterranean boat people, before Dave "got tough", rhetorically speaking, with the French for lax security around the port and Channel Tunnel entrance. Aspersions were cast on their bona fides. After all, wouldn't a genuine refugee claim asylum in the first safe country they landed in? The PM showed "leadership" by offering assistance with security, and reassured the baying press that "the swarm" would not be reaching British shores, no matter how bad it got across the Channel. Being strong against the weak about sums it up.

And then that photo. All of a sudden, the plight of refugees braving the Med went from insects scurrying toward Britain's shores to desperate people fleeing war. Completely unprepared for this about turn in popular attitudes, Dave did what came naturally: he dithered. Now, I'm not one to talk about dithering seeing as I've had a recent bout of the undecideds as well, but for Dave it's a characteristic of his premiership. He dithered over energy prices. He dithered over the 2014 floods. His government are dithering still over Universal Credit. And, in-keeping with the ruling tone, the Chilcott Report is setting new records for procrastination.

Dave's paralysis all of last week, and today's miserable announcement that the UK would be prepared to take 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years has triangulation stamped all over it. After getting an easy press ride all summer, he was mindful of right wing raggery turning on him at the moment they could be running blood-curdling smears about Jeremy Corbyn. Worse, too much sympathy and this hard right flanks becomes dangerously exposed to UKIP. They might be suffering at the moment, but persistent anti-immigrant bile and Europhobia will surely see a return to form in the not too distant. And as Dave wants to win the EU referendum, stoking their fires is the last thing he wants to do. Yet, at the same time, our Dave isn't nasty. Believe it or not, putting the poor under the Tory kosh is tough love - what His Royal Blairness used to call "compassion with a hard edge". He knows what's bad for them is what's best for them. Appearing callous in the week public opinion changed made this posture impossible to sustain without severe reputation damage. Hence the dogs dinner we're left with. 20,000 is too many for the bigots. It's too few for anyone not undergone a compassion bypass.

Yet there are opportunities for the Tories here too. The one thing Dave lacks is a foreign policy triumph. Having lost interest in the mess he helped create in Libya, and content to leave Northern Ireland to the hapless Theresa Villiers, he wants a big win in Syria. Prevented from launching air strikes two years ago thanks to his own ineptitude, the mood music for bombing IS is increasing in volume. No stranger to opportunism, The Sun wasted no time using Aylan's image to call for war against IS to prevent, what they call, "the migrants crisis". Dave's refugee troubles can be quietly forgotten as the news bulletins follow laser guided bombs all the way down to their targets, and people quietly accept it in the name of "doing something". Never mind doing so will aid a regime guilty of the most appalling war crimes who, had Dave got his way in 2013, would no longer be in contention. However, it's an opportunity for the Tories to seize the agenda again and portray their opponents across the chamber as weak.

Will Dave's gambit work? "Doing something" will only work if, like the US bombing raids in Syria, they are tied to specific ground operations a la the Kurdish YPG. Militarily, the RAF taking up some of the slack from the US Air Force won't add much, apart from making Dave look like a war leader. But given the intractable nature of the conflict, air raids and drone strikes by Biggles and co. are likely to cause IS to implode and/or be put out of commission. And as tangible results refuse to show themselves, so the ticker starts running down and the refugee crisis comes back to haunt Dave. Like everything else about this government, questions of war and peace have become matters of day-to-day Tory party presentation.