An asylum disaster risks being repeated, but as Green Deputy Rachel Millward speaks out, right wing fools have gone for a lamentable gotcha. Right, so a bit of bureaucracy, a sprinkling of dodgy decision-making, and a heap of political opportunism — and here we are. Green Party Deputy Leader Rachel Millward, in her capacity as a local council leader and her colleagues are getting shredded on social media for having the audacity to raise legitimate concerns over the Home Office’s hasty, ill-thought-out asylum housing plans in Crowborough, deciding to drop 600 asylum seekers in a former military base. It’s a move that makes you wonder if the Home Office’s main aim was not just to house asylum seekers, but to guarantee a decent local rebellion in the process. The real kicker though? Millward and the council had their power stripped away by Whitehall over this, who then washed their hands of any accountability as Millward and the council raised their objections. So, what do you get when you give local leaders no say, minimal information, and zero local engagement? A simmering pot of frustration and rightful outrage, which, when they stand up for that, instead of addressing those issues, it has been branded ‘nimbyism,’ the Greens showing their alleged ‘true colours’ over migration because its fine as long as they aren’t here, when the reality is too many people haven’t read Millward’s response letter properly and the backstory to all of this they haven’t a scooby about. Welcome to the latest round of political gaslighting as the establishment rounds on the Greens who are terrifying them and too many people who are too hard of thinking have jumped all over the bandwagon. Let’s peel back the curtain then shall we? Right, so the smear really only works if you don’t read the letter. That is the starting point. Everything else flows from it. The attacks against Rachel Millward are not organic. They are not thoughtful. They are not honest. They rely on one method only: that people share a screenshot of said letter without seeing what comes before it, what comes after it, and what the situation is on the ground right now. The truth has paperwork, but the lie has already done 3 laps of the planet. The bad-faith version doesn’t actually have any basis at all though. That’s why the full text of the letter matters. That’s why the context matters. And that’s why the attack collapses the moment both are placed in front of the public. It’s why the bad faith actors are avoiding the full text like the plague. It doesn’t suit their aims.