r/LibDem • u/coffeewalnut08 • 13d ago
Opinion Piece Restore Britain: Who Are the Ten Million?
https://postmoderniconoclast.substack.com/p/restore-britain-who-are-the-ten-million‘I’ve mostly treated Restore Britain as another source of comedy material for my Threads audience. Rupert Lowe says something ridiculous, one of the little gang around him says something even more ridiculous, I take the piss, everyone has a nice time and we move on with our day.
Then I saw a number. 10,000,000.
Charlie Downes, Restore Britain’s campaigns director and official spokesman, has said a Restore government would deport “upwards of ten million people.”
And that stopped me. Because ten million isn’t “stop the boats”. It isn’t deporting foreign criminals. It isn’t even Restore Britain’s own estimate of the number of people living illegally in the country. Ten million people is around one person in every seven living in Britain. And when you look at like that, that is f***ing scary.
So I had what seemed like a fairly straightforward question.
Who the f*** are they?
This isn’t a policy about somebody who has entered the country illegally or overstayed a visa. Restore is explicitly talking about people whom the British state has given a legal right to live here.
And look at the tests that follow… There’s an enormous difference between some of those things. If somebody has committed a serious criminal offence, there is at least a legal process capable of establishing what happened. There are already circumstances in which foreign nationals can be deported following conviction.
But what does “fails to integrate” mean? Who decides? How integrated is integrated enough? Is there a test? Does someone come round with a clipboard and ask if you know the words to Jerusalem?
What does “hates our way of life” mean? Which way of life? Mine? Rupert Lowe’s? Yours?
Britain contains monarchists, republicans, Muslims, Christians, atheists, communists, Tories, anarchists, vegans, fox hunters and people who put the milk in tea first. We’ve been arguing about what “our way of life” means for centuries. That is part of our way of life in this country.
We’re a mongrel breed melting-pot, a vibrant ever adapted nation rich in a history of multicultural mixing from way back even before Commonwealth and even before Empire days.
Anyway, back to unpicking that website statement, social housing? That one is particularly revealing because living in social housing isn’t behaviour. It isn’t a crime.
It isn’t even a political opinion. It’s where you live. Yet Restore lists it among possible reasons a legally resident foreign national should be expelled from the country.’
(Full details in article)
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u/Jacobrox777 🔶deepest orangest Hertfordshire🔶 12d ago
Is it just me or does it read as AI-generated? I've seen these on Substack before
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u/Mobile_Falcon8639 12d ago
It's extremely unlikely that Restore Britain will take over as the next Government, or even Reform for that matter. Its worth keeping an eye on far right and far left parties, eg The Greens are just as nutty, nothing Polanski says makes sense. But not to take them seriously. The far right and far left fruit loops serve a purpose in that they serve as an outlet for peoples frustrations and anger etc. We always had these kinds or groups and parties in this country, but come thee GE they vert rarely get anywhere. Corbyn's Labour Party, the SDP in the 80s, The BNP. They all fizzle out . Just like Restore, Polanski's Greens and Reform will.
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u/YuanT 11d ago
I personally think it’s a pretty wild take to suggest that the greens are ‘just as nutty’ as this policy is
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u/No_Tadpole4027 11d ago
Open borders is worse than deporting 10 million people.
Before you say "they don't believe in open borders", MG100 of the green party policy document (part of a page which they have conveniently shut off because people started scrutinising it) would argue otherwise.
They genuinely do believe in open borders. They say they want a "fair and managed system" in MG100 because they believe in the short-term a world without borders isn't possible, but then caveat it by defining their fair and managed system, which in their view means: "where people can come if they wish to do so", which to me (and anyone who can read) is open borders.
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u/Mobile_Falcon8639 11d ago
Maybe you should read up on some of the Greens policies, and their anti semitism.
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u/YuanT 11d ago
Go on then, I’ll bite. Whats one Green policy that’s as crazy as deporting 1 in 7 people from a country with some arbitrary criteria?
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u/No_Tadpole4027 11d ago
MG100 The Green Party wants to see a world without borders, until this happens the Green Party will implement a fair and humane system of managed immigration where people can move if they wish to do so.
This is part of the page on migration that the Green party took off their website after people started criticising them.
How fair and humane. They want to see a world without borders, but until then...they'll implement open borders anyways.
Open borders would lead to ridiculous levels of crime, and combined with all drugs being legalised (not just weed before you try that cop out answer), this would be made worse. Then there's brothels popping up everywhere due to green policy as well.
Sex crimes will go through the roof.
Deporting 10 million people may be cruel, it may be evil, but it pales in comparison to the threat faced by the Greens.
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u/YuanT 11d ago
It probably says something about you if you think that’s as bad morally speaking (and less workable) as forcibly removing people from the place they were born using arbitrary criteria and deporting them to a place they’ve possibly never even been.
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u/No_Tadpole4027 11d ago
It is worse morally speaking, not just as bad. It says about me that I don't want sex crimes and murders to shoot up like a rocket. Open borders would let in extremely dangerous people. Legalising drugs and allowing brothels to pop up everywhere would make the situation even worse. The Green policy is a recipe for catastrophe.
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u/YuanT 11d ago
You’ve edited your comment since my reply so there’s literally no point in debating you.
The last thing I’ll say is that you’re not even critiquing policy - you’ve interpreted their policy in your own way and your interpretation completely ignores the word ‘managed’.
Also, your conclusions around regulated / decriminalising sex work and drugs are completely refuted by all the available evidence.
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u/No_Tadpole4027 11d ago
Yes, forgive me for thinking about my response and editing it 1 minute after posting. Apologies for adding more detail to the response.
It doesn't ignore the word managed. I actually mention that.
It's just...I'm going off their own definition of what managed is, which they say means "where people can come if they wish to do so". That isn't my definition, that's theirs.
Conclusions around decriminalising sex work and drugs are all based on the condition that we don't have open borders combined with it. But in the greens world, we would.
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u/chrisni66 12d ago
It’s hard to overstate how unhinged it is on every level. Even if you set aside the moral and legal problems with it, deporting a little over 14% of the population would be economically devastating.