So let’s look at conservatives in the UK.
The Tories have proposed a new policy where they will reject all asylum seekers who enter the country without already having a visa. Which is a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, of which the UK was one of the original signers, as well as being a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights which the UK also signed, and would result in the UK basically rejecting 100% of refugees because the UK has no provisions with other countries to accept refugees in a more formalized way.
How big is the refugee problem in the UK? Last year, around 45,000 refugees crossed the English Channel in small boats and applied for asylum when they reached the UK. The population of the UK is 67 million people. In other words, .006% of their population, a tiny fraction of their population.
Let’s face facts: the proposed Tory policy is all about racism, not about any actual threat to the economy or stability of the UK. And famous footballer(*) Gary Lineker called them on it, calling the proposed policy “an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s“. And the response of the Tory chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, who bought his position by “donating” a major sum of money to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was to suspend him for a bogus violation of a social media policy that does not apply to a contract sports analyst, thereby violating his right of free speech, a right (freedom of expression) not guaranteed in the non-existent British constitution but guaranteed in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights that the UK signed.
Here’s the thing, though. Lineker is a multi-millionaire. He doesn’t really give a shit about the BBC trying to muzzle him. The same applies to most of the other sports commentators at the BBC, the BBC hires former sports stars to run their sports programs, and most of them have plenty of money in the bank and are doing it because they love their sport and were bored in retirement. So, most of the other sports analysts stayed home today, and the BBC was showing lots of reruns of non-sports shows to fill dead air space. They weren’t even able to have the few sports reporters remaining interview football stars about the games after the games, because the football stars refused to talk to the BBC in solidarity with their former colleague.
None of these are people that the BBC can intimidate. The butt-hurt Tories can replace their sports commentators with random Tory schmoes with no credibility and lose all their audience as well as create an uprising by a football-crazed viewing audience, but the Tories can’t intimidate them. So butt-hurt conservative snowflakes either are going to have to double down and risk a rebellion by even some of their own supporters, or are going to have to back down with some sort of face-saving gesture. That’s it. That’s their choices. We’ll see what happens… but one thing is clear: Conservatives are fragile snowflakes who can’t stand criticism regardless of what nation they’re in.
— Badtux the Snowflake-melting Penguin
(*) For some reason, Americans call football “soccer”. The term used in the entire rest of the world is used here.