The Clapham chemical attack is ‘not really about asylum’. An actual government minister said this. Not some junior scribe for the Guardian or a right-on irritant with his pronouns and the Palestine flag in his social-media bio. No, a minister. A member of the cabinet. One of the highest officials in the land. The Tories really have lost the plot, haven’t they?

It was Gillian Keegan, the education secretary. She was on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News. He probed her about the horrific attack in Clapham on Wednesday night when a mother and her two young daughters were doused with alkali. The suspect is Abdul Ezedi, an Afghan who was granted asylum despite being denied the right to stay on two previous occasions, and despite being convicted of a sexual offence at Newcastle Crown Court in 2018.

‘How is it possible’, asked Phillips, ‘that someone turned down twice for asylum, who then commits a sexual offence… is granted refugee status by a tribunal?’ Keegan ermed and ahhed and then uttered the words that ought to haunt this government.

‘This is not really about asylum’, she said, with superb haughtiness, dismissing Phillips’s concerns, and the concerns of millions, out of hand. ‘This is about, obviously, the attack on, you know, a mother and her children’, she continued.

‘How is it possible, that someone turned down twice for asylum, who then commits more than one sexual offence, is granted refugee status?’

‘This is not really about asylum’ says Education Secretary @GillianKeegan. #TrevorPhillips https://t.co/fhIHlpTGAF pic.twitter.com/QCVsKcnkCa

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 4, 2024

Phillips was stunned. Who wasn’t? ‘You say that it’s not about asylum but it obviously is’, he said. ‘If he had not been granted asylum, he would not have been free to do what he [allegedly] did…’ Keegan interrupted. ‘Conflating those two [things], Trevor,’ she loudly complained, before trailing off.

What is she on about? Yes, Ms Keegan, we are ‘conflating’ those two things. We are making a connection between officialdom’s spectacularly dumb and dangerous decision to allow a convicted sexual offender and illegal migrant to stay in the UK and the vile offence that that individual is now suspected of carrying out. The former made the latter possible. They’re intimately linked. It is wilful moral blindness to deny that.

There’s a sly imputation in all this discouragement of discussion about asylum

You might expect one of those Novara numpties or a double-barrelled social justice warrior who devotes his days to blocking the deportation of illegal immigrants to say ‘It’s not about asylum’ in the wake of a grave crime in which the suspect is someone who was granted asylum. But a minister? The woman in charge of the education of the nation’s children? The mind boggles.

Keegan’s comments sum up the aloofness, the outright unworldliness, of the Tories right now. This was more than a throwaway remark or on-air error. Rather, it spoke to what a decadent, distant regime the Conservative government has become after nearly 14 years in power. For an actual member of government to say to the nation ‘This is not about asylum’ days after an asylum seeker, who was allowed to stay in Britain, allegedly visited abhorrent violence on a woman and two girls is concerning in the extreme. It confirms we have well and truly entered the twilight of this Tory administration.

And Keegan isn’t alone. Since last Wednesday, the message from on high, from those who fancy themselves as our moral betters, is that we mustn’t blame the Clapham attack on the asylum system. ‘His asylum status is not really the issue of concern’, said Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy on Newsnight the other evening. His asylum status was ‘done by the courts’, chimed in Tory MP Caroline Nokes, and ‘it’s wrong to comment on that’. That’s us told. Pipe down, plebs.

“Every day women will face misogyny and microaggressions… We have to do better,”

Caroline Nokes, Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, tells @KirstyWark more needs to be done to change the culture on abusive behaviour towards women. #Newsnight pic.twitter.com/Xcxh6ilLgY

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) February 1, 2024

They’re gaslighting us. We can see with our eyes that the Clapham horror has everything to do with the asylum system and yet they insist it has nothing to do with it. We know that granting asylum to a man who came here illegally and then committed sexual assault is wrong and immoral and potentially puts Brits at risk, yet they pompously decree that we shouldn’t be commenting on things like this. We say, ‘can we talk about this?’ They say, ‘no’.

There’s a sly imputation in all this discouragement of discussion about asylum. There’s a distinct undertone of ‘why are you so keen to talk about asylum? Do you have a problem with foreigners?’ Some in the political class, in both parties, dread nothing more than the unpredictable little people having frank chats about tough topics, be it asylum, border policy, grooming gangs, or whatever. After all, who knows what bigoted furies might be unleashed by such free, unfettered debate. Hence their stern moral instruction since last Wednesday: ‘this isn’t about asylum. Shut up.’

Enough is enough. It is entirely legitimate – necessary, in fact – for the public to ask why the ruling classes seem incapable of securing the borders, expelling foreign arrivals who commit serious offences, and treating Britain’s nationhood with the seriousness and respect it deserves. This is about asylum. It’s about something else too: the moral feebleness and bureaucratic sloth of those we have the misfortune to be governed by.