What together we can do for the freedom of men on small boats

Choice is the essence of ethics.

Margaret Thatcher

Are you ready to play your part? I ask, because our new Prime Minister - a man called Andrew who I believe is from the North of England - appeared on the TV yesterday to tell us about an exciting new national project he has signed us all up for. Yes, that’s right - it’s good news. Britain has admittedly been in the economic doldrums; it has been divided by culture wars and increasing levels of mistrust and social breakdown; literally none of its public services work as they should; we have burned our way through a hundred and fifty seven Prime Ministers since David Cameron left office. But there is a plan.

What we have needed for all this time, you see, is something we could all rally around so as to reinvigorate public life. Covid didn’t do it; the war in Ukraine didn’t do it; the war in Iran didn’t do it; hatred of Sir Keir Starmer didn’t even quite do it. But Andrew has the answer. What we are all going to do - I know, I can hardly wait either - is ‘play our part’ in ‘receiv[ing] all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers’ who arrive illegally on our shores.

The problem, you see, is that we have all of these young men arriving (230 of them on a single boat, in one recent incident) from violent and misogynistic places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Eritrea, and we have been, until recently, housing them in hotels. But that is both expensive and unpopular. Since, owing to something something human rights, we cannot just send them home, another solution must be found. And it turns out this is ‘dispersing’ them to Houses of Multiple Occupancy or HMOs - ordinary residential buildings scattered throughout the land, where a handful of men can live at any one time.

Andrew is keen to impress upon us what a great opportunity it is do our bit by accepting this Great Dispersal in our neighourhoods wherever we might live. Just as Churchill, at his famous Harrow Speech in October 1941, told his audience that ‘we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race’, so too are we to remember that these are ‘not dark days’ but ‘great’ ones, indeed ‘the greatest days our country has ever lived’. Admittedly Andrew is no Churchill. But is your heart not moved nonetheless when he declares, in his Miscellaneous North West accent (the dialect of that species of person we on Merseyside refer to as a wool) what the magnificent task is that lies before us?

I do have to say, we cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that, you know, receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum-seekers. I do believe all parts of the country need to work, to play their part.

Stirring, isn’t it?

OK, enough messing around. There is something truly despicable about Andrew Burnham, and I say that not merely because I am imbued with a Scouser’s irrational prejudice against people from places like Newton-le-Willows. Popular opinion in the media has it that he is likeable, and I admit that he is likeable in comparison to other recent Prime Ministers insofar as he is recognisably a human being reacting to events and questions as a human being would.

But some human beings are smarmy and phoney, and condescending to boot. Just look at the clip closely and study the expression on Andrew’s face as he says that ‘We understand people’s concerns’; watch his eyes narrow slightly as though physically holding back an ocean of bilious cynicism that threatens to pour out of them. Listen to the tenor in his voice as he promises to ‘look into the issues raised’ by those who have expressed concern about ‘dispersal’ of asylum-seekers to their quiet slice of l’angleterre profonde. You will recognise that voice. It is the voice that would be used at a staff ‘townhall’ by a senior executive at the place where you work, shortly after declaring that he will ‘look into the issues raised’ by staff with regard to his recent decision to mandate the use of smaller shoes:

So, no, you may keep Andrew Burnham. He is not a likeable man. He is a banal and unimpressive man who lacks Starmer’s sanctimony but makes up for it with phoney mateyness that conceals deep arrogance. We all know the type, striding the corridors of the management suites of the land, asking secretaries how their kids are, telling everybody he passes that he’s off to a meeting but ‘let’s have a catch up soon’, engaging in ‘banter’ with the people he has identified as fans of football teams that are different to the one he pretends to support. These people are everywhere. They are not Prime Ministers, and nor is he. He is the epitome of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘type and genius of deep crime’ - a man whose nondescript everybloke demeanour speaks only of an internal ethical abyss: ‘I am a good person because I sound as though I am concerned about the right things, and support Everton.’

But I am not here merely to assassinate Andrew’s character, as enjoyable as it may be, because this is all deeply serious. It is serious for two reasons, one important and depressing, and the other very important and extremely depressing, but speaking to matters of political philosophy. Are you ready? Let’s begin with the important and depressing one first.