Dehumanising language is key to legislating brutality for Rishi Sunak’s government
Contrary to popular opinion, Britain is a country with few asylum seekers, in contrast with its comparable neighbours. Last year, it recorded 74,751 asylum applications. While this was the highest annual number for Britain since 2002, France had more than double that number and Germany more than three times as many. Rather than sharing the burden of the chaos in much of the world with rich-country peers, Rishi Sunak wants fewer asylum seekers.
To do this he demonises those already here, and those coming on boats. The former are wrongly portrayed as merely economic migrants who have abused British hospitality for their own needs, creating backlogs and wasting state resources. The latter are customers of unscrupulous people smugglers. Dehumanising language is key to legislating brutality.
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