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6 December 2019

What we want: to cut the prison population, abolish Trident and embrace immigration

The Home Office should also be put in special measures, like a delinquent school, until it has a humane asylum policy.

By David Hare

I don’t care what colour it is, I just want a government that will do all the practical things that need to be done. First day in office, cut the male prison population in half and the female population by three-quarters.

Next day, abolish Trident. Then acknowledge that the British public only values and admires three British institutions: the NHS, the BBC and the monarchy. Have an amnesty, so that the majority who admire only one or two out of the three mutually accept that they will all be independently financed and given freedom to operate to their own standards. Stop bullying them. Then introduce a financial transaction tax to pay for better care for the old. Raise the national minimum wage.

Reinstate the two inquiries government corruption has closed down: the Leveson into the press, and, far more important, the promised judge-led inquiry into British complicity in torture and rendition. Celebrate and defend the outstanding success of the multiculturalism that has hugely improved and enlarged British identity. Sound happy about immigration. Close immigration detention centres.

The morning after the election, put the Home Office in special measures, like a delinquent school, until it comes up with an asylum policy that is not scandalously incompetent and inhumane.

Admit free-market capitalism lost all credibility in 2008 and develop the new environmental model needed to spread prosperity. End charitable status for private education. Organise to prevent the wildfire of angry-white-man terrorism that is destroying decent ways of life in the US spreading to destroy security in the UK.

Restore legal aid. Build social housing. Drop the voting age to 16. Shun Saudi Arabia. Force Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP, to show a shred of shame and resign over the cash for ash scandal in Northern Ireland. Refuse all contact with the DUP until she does. Should Brexit go through, then pay the appropriate price by unifying Ireland and liberating Scotland from the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, negotiate on behalf of any British citizen who demands the right to EU citizenship, so that they individually may retain its pleasures and privileges. Make Sharon D Clarke a dame. Way late, but do it. 

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This piece is part of our “What we want” series. Read the rest of the articles here

 

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