‘It’s moments like this that you realise how far we’ve fallen’: James O’Brien blasts Suella Braverman for ‘dream’ to deport migrants
5 October 2022, 15:17
‘It’s moments like this that you realise how far we’ve fallen’
In an emotional monologue, James O’Brien called out the Home Secretary’s "despicable policy" to send migrants to Rwanda.
This comes after Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, said it would be her "dream" and "obsession" to see a flight take asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Originally introduced by her predecessor, Priti Patel, the policy would see asylum seekers who arrive in the UK sent to Rwanda to claim asylum there. The policy has been met with backlash from human rights groups and a last-minute legal challenge from the European Court of Human Rights that cancelled the first planned flight just minutes before take-off.
READ MORE: Rwanda migrant plan is not 'appalling' but 'should be a deterrent', Priti Patel tells LBC
READ MORE: Over 230 migrants land on UK shores in one day as Rwanda flight delayed 'up to a year'
James began by describing the policy as the "consequence of treating people like Nigel Farage as if they had anything valid or decent to contribute to our country".
"That weaponisation of refugees and asylum seekers and immigrants in general that has polluted every corner of this country over the last decade", he added.
"This is still ostensibly a Christian country", James said.
He added: "It seems to me very strange that Conservative politicians who wear their Christianity most prominently on their sleeves, the ones who actually talk about it, are the ones who often seem to engage in the most callous and disgusting of conduct."
"They used to be on the fringes, they used to be beyond the boundaries of acceptability", James said, adding that "they were not people who had or would ever breach the mainstream".
He went on: "I don’t even know if I can use the word racism in the context of this mornings conversation because it’s different, it’s subtler than that, it’s what you might call just a hatred of people based upon their origins".
James then played an excerpt of Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech, followed by Suella Braverman’s comments that it was her "dream" to see a flight take migrants to Rwanda, asking viewers to "focus on how different those dreams are".
James asked: "Do you dream of winning the lottery, or someone ill in your family getting better, dream of financial security, dream of peace, dream of a victory for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Ukraine?"
"Imagine dreaming of desperate people being deported against their will to a country they might never of heard of before. Dreaming of that and living in a country, or rather living in a bubble where relishing that prospect is not just acceptable but even perhaps admirable."
James accused the Home Secretary of "smiling and smirking, grinning and gurning, while essentially describing the delight you would take in trafficking people against their will to the other side of the world".
He added: "People who may well be genuine refugees because they don’t even start the process under this despicable policy, they don’t even start the process of assessing the application until they get to Africa and if the application is successful, they stay in Rwanda."
"It’s disgusting and it is moments like this that you realise how far we’ve fallen", James said.
Appealing to his listeners for answers, James questioned: "What is wrong with this woman? How can anybody have ended up this curdled and cruel?"
He continued: "It’s not the support for the policy, it’s the delight in its implementation, its the idea that when most of us dream of winning the lottery or seeing our football team lift the FA Cup, Suella Braverman sits awake at night dreaming of deporting completely innocent and decent fellow human beings."
After playing the Home Secretary's comments again, James asked: "What's wrong with her? What happened? Who hurt her? How does someone end up in a position like this?"
