We Have Taught Them Much

Even after half a century of independence, flashes of Imperial glory continue to fulgurate forth in Kenya, where British values are so firmly entrenched that the government is kicking out Somali refugees at the rate of four hundred a day. Democratic elections, which have almost certainly taken place in Kenya ever since the Imperial British East Africa Company rationalised the land, are again on the way; accordingly, the Kenyan government has announced an echt-British expulsion bonanza and has begun punting failed asylum seekers back where they belong. Kenya is home to the world's biggest holiday camp for asylum seekers, which holds approximately the population of Coventry; self-evidently, Kenya is even more full up than Britain, which balks at a couple of dozen not very large Syrians. Because Somalia is still a war zone, the UN and other foreign do-gooders have criticised Kenya for kicking people out too fast, even though the majority are women, children, elderly and disabled - the very categories most likely to put further strain on Somalia's doubtless already over-extended welfare system, unless they are healthy male job-stealers in disguise. Among the conditions of the repatriation package, therefore, is the stipulation that returnees give up their status as refugees in Kenya, so that if conditions in Somalia worsen they will be unable to return and will instead be internally displaced, which is clearly a more honourable calling and, thanks to the difficulties of getting aid to people in war zones and the resulting starvation, often tends to be a self-solving problem.