Race Card or Red Card For Cameron?

It was with trepidation that I listened to David Cameron's government relaunch big speech on immigration yesterday. The Prime Minister red faced, flushed and hands shaking may have actually delivered his speech but it was Lynton Crosby in the wings with his arm stuck up Cameron's back that governed what Cameron was saying!

As you would expect David Cameron started off with all the flannel about immigrants benefiting this country before proceeding to pepper the the speech with vague policy promises about immigration. There was no substance and nothing in the way of firm proposals. I tweeted early yesterday that I wondered how long it would be before Cameron's speech descended into farce, apparently it did so be fore he had even left the lectern! Jeremy Hunt the Health Secretary contradicting Cameron's figures. It really doesn't bode well for the Tories that they have a chancellor who cannot add up and now they seem to have swelled their ranks with a mathematically illiterate election strategist too. Is the taxpayer picking up the tab for Lynton Crosby's salary?

What is it about this government that they appear simply incapable of getting anything right? Last week when the Deputy PM made his own speech on immigration, Clegg's plan for immigration "bail bonds" was blasted as illiberal and unworkable almost immediately and not for the first time, this week the prime minister has got himself into a  hopeless muddle over his figures and his own policy detail. If the PM is not even sure of the numbers or his policy how are we expected to understand it all? It was only a couple of weeks ago that Ed Miliband showed that Cameron did not understand the detail on his government's bedroom tax, despite the fact that this will blight and destroy many peoples lives through absolutely no fault of their own.

Yesterday Cameron tried to pull off on the one hand sounding like he welcomed immigrants at the exact same time as on the other hand wanting to be seen that he was giving immigrants a serious kicking, I wonder, why didn't he tell us all that he has already arranged with the Indian government to take 80% of unskilled workers into this country, in the form of cheap labour? This deal was done a few weeks back on another one of Cameron's arms tours with his buddies in the arms trade, it was relevant, yet Cameron chose not to mention it - why?

Throughout the speech I was slightly perturbed by the PM slightly bouncing around and curling his top lip, I've notice Mr Cameron does this when he is trying extra hard to convince us that this time he means what he is saying and he is not really lying (like all the other times he has lied to our faces) and this time his proposals will not quickly descend into complete farce like everything else he and his government propose.

The truth is that the PM's so called big immigration speech amounted to introducing policy that is *already* in  place, like withdrawing JSA if no work found within 6 months, it's already happening!

Talking about policy this PM has *already* promised years ago but has not quite got around to doing anything about it and talking about introducing policy that looks almost certainly to be illegal. How will he apply some rules to some but not to others? This will open the government up to accusations of racial discrimination, in fact it will push all the progress made in this area back years!

Also out of the practical workable solutions, Cameron hasn't said anything that Ed Miliband hasn't already said, Cameron just said it in a different way!

Cameron promised 2000 extra places for "graduate entrepreneurs", who is going to pay for them, where are they going to be situated and how far will this figure go to correcting the 10% fall in the numbers applying to go to universities specifically brought about by the coalition government's trebling of tuition fees!

Cameron also forgets that it was his government hat cut the numbers of immigration officers on our Borders.

What David Cameron was doing in his immigration speech was appeal to lowest possible common denominator, while at the same time trying not to appear as if he was deliberately targeting and deliberately immigrant bashing for his own political agenda - he failed! Perhaps he should heed these words:

"Immigration makes us stronger, it keeps us vibrant, it keeps us hungry, it keeps us prosperous, it is a part of what makes this such a dynamic country". Barack Obama

Exactly the same can be said of Britain!

Is it really too much to ask that our prime minister actually leads this country, instead of following the crass immigrant bashing and misleading reporting going on in newspapers like the Sun and Daily Mail, in order to procure their support at the next election - just for once?

It's time David Cameron got a grip, everything he touches turns to dust, he hasn't managed to deliver one single policy without it descending into complete farce in the whole time he has been in government. Immigration and how best to handle it in these uncertain frightening times needs understanding and practicalities and compassion it does not need political grandstanding and rushed policies and scapegoating of other human beings just because the Tories fear the advancement of Ukip and what it is doing to their core vote!

Yesterday Cameron tried to be everything to everyone and failed miserably and he failed mainly because he wasn't being sincere and he wasn't being truthful about why he was making that speech. Why didn't he tell us that on his watch fewer foreign criminals are being deported and there is a backlog of more than 300,000 immigration cases and his woefully in adequate response to this problem was to do what he always does and that is not to accept responsibility for his own government failings but to turn around and find someone else to blame,  it's "Labour's fault" that he and George Osborne have tanked the economy, it's nurses fault that the NHS is buckling under the strain of privatisation, it is the unemployed's fault they are without a job,  it's the disabled's fault they are disabled, and Immigration Minister Mark Harper even tried to blame immigrants in a very politically motivated unpleasant slur when he said; "that people arriving in Britain appear to get better treatment for social housing", this is simply untrue, as councils  (even Tory ones) up and down this land will tell you they have a problem with housing not because of immigrants but because successive governments have failed to build the number of houses required, blaming immigrants was a cheap untrue and misleading shot! The blame game by the Tories just goes on and on and on and now its the fault of the UK Border Control that there are increasing problems there and  the PM completely omits to inform anyone that it was his government hat have slashed the number of immigration officers.

Yesterday was a day that saw a risible attempt by David Cameron to play the race card, in a blatant attempt to divert attention away from the failings of his government. Cameron is not stupid, he knows perfectly well that it is austerity not immigration that is causing this country's economy to come to a grinding halt, it is austerity not immigration that is driving down peoples living standards- scapegoating immigrants is cheap and nasty politics and for that Cameron should get the "red card"!