Andrew Marr: The government's immigration bill is at the heart of a fight for the soul of the UK
10 May 2023, 18:12
The government's new Illegal Migration Bill is at the heart of a fight for the soul of the country, Andrew Marr has said.
On Wednesday, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Justice Secretary Alex Chalk urged those in the House of Lords to back their bill as "it is designed to meet the will of the British people in a humane and fair way".
But the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby slammed the bill, saying it "has no sense at all of the long term and the global nature of the challenge that the world faces".
This public division of opinion between the government and the Archbishop, Andew Marr says, represents an "extraordinary split that’s happened in what we used to call the British establishment".
Speaking on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, the presenter said: "Already right-wing commentators are suggesting that Bishops no longer have moral authority and that the unelected House of Lords has no right to block - yes indeed - the will of the people."
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Marr continued: "On the one side, Archbishop Welby, the man who just a few days ago placed the Crown on the head of the new king - a king who, after a well publicized argument with Boris Johnson back when, probably agrees with his senior cleric about all of this.
"On the other a Tory home Secretary and a Tory justice secretary. What happened to the Church of England as the Tory party at prayer? Long, long time ago, I guess.
"Anyway today the Archbishop also quoted St Matthew from the New Testament on Jesus's call to welcome the stranger.
"He said Britain couldn't take everyone but he thought the government's bill 'ignores the reality that migration must be engaged with at source, as well as in the Channel, as if we as a country were unrelated to the rest of the world.'
"And it isn't just at the archbishops who are queasy about this, by the way."
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"The former head of the British Army, Lord Richard Dannett, recently said he was uncomfortable with the policy of sending people to Rwanda as a deterrent: 'I've been to Rwanda, and the shadow of the genocide there in the 1990s hangs over that country. It's ruled with a very firm hand by Paul Kagami'
"That's the current president and a former ruthless military leader - 'It’s got a pretty dark history, and it’s not the sort of environment I would put people from Syria and elsewhere in the world into.'
"So whatever side you take on this, there's a real argument going on here, you might even say one about the soul of this country, what kind of people we are.
"And on the other side from Archbishop Welby and Lord Dannatt, alongside Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak is Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister who argued recently that excessive uncontrolled migration threatens to 'cannibalize the compassion of the British public' and said of the people crossing the channel that they have 'completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK.'"
