Analysis: Labour's leadership candidates on LGBT asylum, Balls the winner

Ed Balls image by Downing Street via Flickr  

By Paul Canning

LGBT Labour has released the leadership candidates final answers on LGBT asylum.

Although the winner will be either Ed or David Miliband, the others are likely to either take up senior shadow cabinet positions or positions of influence. Overall, the statements reflect the sort of information they have been paying attention to during the campaign as well as during their time as politicians. It's a fair measure of their knowledge of the subject and that's also a fair measure of the importance that the gay community and gay Labour people place on the issue.

On both of those measures mostly it's not good and overall the answers reflect badly on whether Labour as a party is prepared to look out for the most marginalised LGBT in the UK. They fail to correct the idea, which undoubtedly did lose them some votes in the last election, that they don't think there was any problem either with their treatment of LGBT asylum seekers or the pandering by some Labour people (such as Woolas and Blunkett) to anti-foreigner, anti-migrant sentiment (which backgrounded the LGBT asylum issue) or that this all happened because they were prepared to put votes before principals.

Starting with the answer from the leading candidate, David Miliband.

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UK Labour leadership candidates final answer on LGBT asylum

Image via Wikipedia

LGBT Labour has today released the answers to a Q & A from them to the Labour Party leadership candidates on LGBT equality. It includes their answers to the following question:

How can we ensure a fair asylum system to help LGBT people who face persecution in their countries of origin?

Their answers are as follows.

Diane Abbott

I understand the many problems with the immigration system better than any of my rivals and I frequently meet asylum seekers within my constituency.  The application process is flawed in many ways and lets down LGBT people and many others.

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Finally some humility from a Labour leader on LGBT asylum

By Paul Canning

Ed Miliband has become the first Labour Party leadership candidate to come out and criticise the government he was part of for its treatment of LGBT asylum seekers.

Writing for pinknews.co.uk he said:

I also believe we needed to show greater leadership on the question of those seeking asylum because they face persecution in their home country because of their sexuality. The fact that many forced to return to their home country were advised to be "discreet" is tantamount to an admission that the system recognised the dangers of their forced return but did too little about them. I don’t believe the answers are easy but we must find them even when they are difficult. My family fled persecution by the Nazis and I will always speak out for the protection of gay and trans people fleeing abuse and against persecution around the world.

His brother David, who is currently slightly leading Ed amongst pundits as the expected winner of the leadership campaign (and is also the descendant of asylum seekers), has by contrast been all over the place: during the election the issue was ignored or treated with indifference (here he was following the strategy of LGBT Labourites); when questioned in government he advanced the same bizarre line of 'pride' in Britain's treatment of LGBT asylum as that advanced by notorious anti-migrant and tabloid approval seeker the Labour Minister of State for Borders and Immigration Phil Woolas.

When given the opportunity in July to agree that 'Labour had let down gay supporters in this area', he refused to criticise the government he was in.

Asked in that interview about the Supreme Court decision which eviscerated the government LGBT asylum policy of 'go home and be discrete' he claimed not to know of it and gave the same stock response as other then and now former Ministers, including Gordon Brown, have ("I think the whole point is that [things are done] on a case by case basis"), a spin line which ignores the existence of Labour's 'discretion' policy, as advanced by them to the Supreme Court (or homophobia in the UK Border Agency for that matter).

Yet one month before in an online question-and-answer session he was asked whether "telling [LGBT asylum seekers] to ‘keep it a secret’ .. is a surrender and degrading to the individual?"

David Miliband typed:

We should stick to our international obligations – no ifs not buts.

This was the very point on which the Supreme Court decision hinged! His answer surely suggests that he knew this yet a month later he'd somehow forgotten that 'telling people to ‘keep it a secret’' was policy and fell back to the rote answer.

Of the other leadership candidates only Diane Abbott has a record of defending asylum seekers including LGBT ones and has criticised the Labour government's treatment of them during the leadership campaign.