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Dominic Raab, above, led a group of 85 Tories who were ready
to vote on his plan to stop foreign prisoners appealing against deportation on
human rights grounds. Rather than face the rebels, David Cameron's government
abstained / The Telegraph
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Lei da imigração obriga a novo recuo de Cameron face
aos radicais do seu partido
ANA FONSECA PEREIRA 30/01/2014 – in Público
Primeiro-ministro disse "simpatizar" com uma
proposta da ala direita dos conservadores que o seu Governo disse ser ilegal e
que acabou chumbada pelos votos da oposição e dos parceiros de coligação.
A 15 meses das legislativas, a ala mais à direita do Partido
Conservador está apostada em não dar descanso ao primeiro-ministro britânico.
Para evitar que a aprovação da nova lei de imigração ficasse marcada por uma
nova rebelião na sua bancada, David Cameron disse concordar com uma proposta
para agilizar a deportação de estrangeiros condenados no Reino Unido, mesmo
admitindo que a iniciativa violava a Convenção Europeia dos Direitos Humanos. O
projecto só não avançou porque os liberais-democratas, parceiros na coligação
de governo, e os trabalhistas se uniram contra a iniciativa.
A rebelião ensombrou a aprovação de uma lei com a qual o
Governo queria enviar aos eleitores uma mensagem de firmeza – a imigração está
entre as principais preocupações dos eleitores britânicos, num terreno que se
tem provado fértil para os populistas do Partido da Independência (UKIP),
ameaçando as hipóteses de reeleição de Cameron em 2015. Entre outras
alterações, a lei obriga os senhorios a verificar a documentação dos imigrantes
antes de lhes arrendar a casa, endurece as penas para quem contrate mão-de-obra
ilegal, obriga os residentes temporários, incluindo estudantes estrangeiros, a
pagar uma caução anual de 200 libras para ter acesso ao serviço nacional de
saúde e prevê que os estrangeiros condenados por crimes possam ser deportados
antes de esgotarem todos os recursos.
Mas para a ala mais radical da bancada conservadora, era
preciso ir mais longe. Depois de uma tentativa infrutífera para introduzir no
debate o prolongamento das restrições aos trabalhadores romenos e búlgaros (que
expiraram no início deste ano em todos os países da UE que tinham recorrido a
esse dispositivo), uma centena de deputados assinou uma proposta para impedir
que os estrangeiros condenados a penas superiores a um ano possam invocar o
direito a permanecer junto da família para evitarem a deportação.
Segundo dados do Ministério do Interior, dos mais de 200
estrangeiros que todos os anos recorrem aos tribunais para travar ordens de
expulsão, 90% apoiam-se no “direito à vida privada e familiar”, previsto no
artigo 8º da Convenção Europeia dos Direitos Humanos. Citando casos em que “perigosos criminosos” usaram o argumento
para evitar a deportação, o deputado Dominic Raab, autor da proposta, defendeu
que só o risco tortura no país de origem ou “prejuízo grave para os filhos” dos
condenados poderia ser invocado para evitar a deportação.
No Parlamento, a ministra do Interior, Theresa May, disse
que a medida não só seria ilegal à luz da Convenção – de que o Reino Unido é
subscritor, apesar dos sucessivos repúdios da ala eurocéptica – como poderia
acabar por dificultar as deportações. Pouco depois, contudo, Downing Street
emitia um comunicado, garantindo que Cameron tinha uma “imensa simpatia” pelos
planos e deu instruções para ninguém travar a proposta.
Uma concessão que de pouco lhe valeu – 85 tories votaram a
favor da proposta, os parceiros de coligação repudiaram a cedência e foi salvo
do embaraço pelos votos da oposição trabalhista. Mas com os avanços e recuos,
escreveu o jornal Telegraph, Cameron pôs de novo em causa “a sua autoridade
sobre o partido e o Governo”, já muito abalada pelas sucessivas cedências aos
eurocépticos. "Na melhor das hipóteses demos uma imagem de caos",
confessou à BBC um dirigente do partido.
O que acabou por ser aprovado foi a alteração de última hora
apresentada por May para tentar calar a rebelião e que prevê a retirada da
cidadania britânica a quem representar uma “ameaça para a segurança nacional”,
mesmo que isso transforme o visado em apátrida. Vários suspeitos de terrorismo
perderam já o passaporte britânico, mas até agora a lei impedia que a medida
fosse aplicada a quem não tem outra nacionalidade. “Os suspeitos de terrorismo
têm de ser ser acusados e julgados. Primeiro os políticos quiseram evitar
julgar os estrangeiros, agora querem fazer o mesmo com os cidadãos nacionais”,
reagiu Shami Chakrabarti, director da organização de direitos humanos Liberty.
The Tories’ loop of vengeance could sink their
election hopes
Many Conservative MPs are
more fixated on internal battles over Europe than on winning the public vote in
2015
By Fraser Nelson11:00PM GMT 30 Jan 2014 / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/fraser-nelson/10607626/The-Tories-loop-of-vengeance-could-sink-their-election-hopes.html
The Conservative Party can claim to be one of the most
lethal political machines in Europe. It has always attracted great thinkers and
hardy fighters, and for a happy period in the Eighties it focused its attention
on the Labour Party. Then, there was a malfunction, whereby the Tory machine
turned on its own leaders and spat them out with regularity. When David Cameron
took control he decided to keep his distance, fearing that the machine still
longed for the taste of Tory flesh. And yesterday, his concern was amply
vindicated.
He surrendered, in the end, rather than face the 85 Tories
who were ready to vote on Dominic Raab’s plan to stop foreign prisoners
appealing against deportation on human rights grounds. His government
abstained, saying the plan would be illegal and impractical.
And why not oppose an illegal idea? Because the Prime
Minister felt too weak to confront Mr Raab, a black belt who sees politics as
karate by other means. He had raised a small army and persuaded Cameron that
the only winning move would be not to fight. It was a pitiful sight, revealing
just how weak the Prime Minister’s parliamentary authority is.
So a party that started the week boasting about the fastest
economic recovery in Europe has ended the week beating itself up. If Ed
Miliband needed cheering up, he should have stood outside the “no” lobby last
night and watched Tory rebels queue up to embarrass Cameron.
At this point before the 1997 election, Tony Blair had an
opinion poll lead of 40 points. Miliband’s lead has been reduced to just 2
vulnerable points. What was once unthinkable – an outright Tory victory at the
next election – now looks within grasp. But many Tories seem more fixated on
their own internal battles than the general election in 14 months’ time.
Yesterday is a case in point. There was much logic in Raab’s
policy: it’s an outrage that people such as Abu Qatada can wriggle out of the
deportation catapult by citing spurious human rights complaints. The other
rebel amendment, trying to limit Bulgarian and Romanian immigration, was also
perfectly sensible. But ordinary voters, who only ever see politics through
their peripheral vision, are unlikely to remember much about the text of a
parliamentary amendment. They’ll simply remember that the Tories seem to be at
war over Europe. Again.
We can expect more of this. The Referendum Bill, a stunt
which pretends to force the Prime Minister to hold an in-or-out vote within
four years, will probably collapse next month. We can then expect more rebel
anger. And yet more after the May elections, where Ukip is expected to come
first and the Tories third. Some of the more deluded rebels even imagine a
challenge to David Cameron around the summer and a new leader to be elected at
the party conference in October.
Surely it’s too bizarre to be considered seriously – yet
yesterday, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers was being
asked on radio whether he’s had letters demanding the Prime Minister’s
resignation. This is the same Prime Minister who has delivered radical welfare
reform, speedy school improvements, a pledge to hold a European Union
referendum and (now) the fastest economic recovery in Europe. Only the Tories
could take such good fortune and turn it into a crisis.
Cameron deserves at least part of the blame. He has made
little attempt to pretend that he values the opinions of his MPs and has left
them feeling abandoned. “Unless you’re black, gay or a woman there is no chance
of your being promoted,” one Cameron loyalist moaned recently. “And the only
people he actually listens to are those like him: posh Old Etonians.” Hence the
emergence of the league of Tory rebels: middle-aged men who, like Pinkie in
Brighton Rock, splash vitriol everywhere in the belief that they are already
damned.
Once, the whips had the power to damn – or to redeem. This
is how party discipline worked; whips pretty much decided who was given which
jobs in government. “Now, if you want a job you need to be a friend of George
Osborne’s,” one veteran Tory told me yesterday. “No 11 decides the reshuffles.
The whips have no power. So you end up with days like today, and the word
'shambles’ doesn’t do it justice. Since when did a government not feel able to
oppose an amendment to its own legislation?”
The grubby dynamics of coalition do not make things any
better. Both Cameron and Nick Clegg try to win power struggles by saying how
much pressure they’re under from their MPs. “I need to get this past my party,”
is one of Cameron’s favourite lines. But if he presents coalition government as
a never-ending tug of war, he should not feel surprised to find Eurosceptics
pulling as hard as they can. And each time, they are rewarded. The Immigration
Bill itself was intended as a sop to assuage Tories furious at being beaten by
Ukip in the Eastleigh by-election.
The Eurosceptics themselves are behaving like a party within
a party. “In the past, we were divided and ineffective,” explains one rebel.
“That’s why we stick together now, and why I’ve voted for motions that I didn’t
much like.”
This is how sensible MPs end up signing absurd letters or
backing pointless parliamentary amendments, seeking rebellion for its own sake.
What started out as rebellions with real purpose – to stop Lords reform, or a
war in Syria – have ended up as the political equivalent of happy slapping.
Sooner or later, the Eurosceptics will realise that the man
whom they have grown so good at humiliating is the only man who can deliver the
EU referendum. The Westminster voting system is slanted in Miliband’s favour;
his two-point opinion poll lead is easily large enough to win a majority. But
for a Conservative victory, pretty much everything needs to go right for the
Tories in the next 14 months. And if they look and sound like a regicidal
rabble, then they will discover – as John Major did in 1997 – that the British
electorate tend to inflict a heavy punishment on disunited parties.
Many of the rebels celebrating last night have, anyway,
stopped caring about a Labour government: some just loathe Cameron and want him
gone, others are positioning themselves for a post-Cameron Tory Party and
indulging in fantasies about being Europe minister in Boris Johnson’s
government. For his part, the Mayor has spoken with bafflement about how his
party seems unable to escape the “cycle of reprisals” that started with the
fall of Thatcher. A never-ending loop of vengeance.
“I’ve lost my love of popularity for its own sake,” Tony
Blair told the Labour Party at its 2002 Conference. “You’ve lost your love of
discipline for its own sake.” But the Left has found its love of discipline
again, just when the Tories seem to have lost it. And that’s why Miliband will
have been toasting the rebels last night, and wishing them a prosperous and
active 2014. They are, now, his single best chance of success.
Fraser Nelson is editor of 'The Spectator’
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