MPs always seem puzzled by the way they’re viewed with such contempt. Well, here’s one reason, in a revealing story from the Hull Daily Mail:

In 2007, MP Alan Johnson sent the Home Office a “life and death” plea not to send asylum applicant Emmanuel Njoya back to Cameroon.

Njoya had been tortured for being a member of an opposition party, the South Cameroons National Council (SCNC).

Johnson wrote to Immigration Minister Liam Byrne in January 2007, saying that that Mr Njoya, by now a Labour Party activist, “should be given full asylum status”, and that “it could be fatal” if he were to be sent back to Cameroon.

Plus ca change…
But two years later, the political situation changed dramatically.

No, not in Cameroon. Here in the UK.

Johnson became Home Secretary.

Plus ce n’est pas la meme chose
As such, he wrote to Emmanuel’s close friend Rev Mick Fryer, of St Aidan’s Church, east Hull, to say he was “satisfied that the proper processes have been followed and that it would be inappropriate for me to intervene in this matter”.

Self-satisfied
Mr Johnson told the Mail that, after hearing all the evidence, he was satisfied Emmanuel was not a genuine asylum-seeker.

Mr Njoya, his wife, , and their baby have now been sent back to Cameroon where they’re in hiding, living off donations from St Aidan’s.

No comment
I hardly know what to say, really, though I can’t tell you how pleased I am that I never voted for them.

Pig of a job
Perhaps this quote from Orwell just about sums it up – the closing words from Animal Farm:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Nuff said.