“They have faced down the Nazis, hacked their way through the Burmese jungle and fought the Taliban,” says The Economist. “Now, the Brigade of Gurkha can add another scalp to their collection: that of Phil Woolas, the immigration minister”. Woolas got a “metaphorical khukuri bludgeoning” this week when MPs of all parties voted to condemn the Home Office treatment of Gurkha veterans and overturned his efforts to keep those retired before July 1997 out of the country.
“But for all the pathos of bemedalled old Gurkhas being tearfully embraced by Joanna Lumley after the Commons vote”, they don’t actually have a great deal to complain about, says Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. The Gurkhas knew the deal when they signed up as British troops. “And a good deal it was too – which explains why, year after year, almost 20,000 young Nepalese would apply for the 230 new places available in the brigade”. A typical Gurkha NCO retiring at 33 after 15 years’ service now receives a pension greater than the salary of a Nepalese government minister.
The real rub, however, was the way the Home Office handled the Gurkhas’ appeal. “Many of the requirements seemed designed to frustrate,” says The Economist. One way to gain admission was by soldiering for at least 20 years, although most Gurkhas serve for only 15. Another was to prove a long-term medical condition was caused by active service – a tall order for those whose injuries were sustained decades ago. And Woolas’s warning that admitting the Gurkhas could cost the government “billions” in pension requirements “doesn’t wash when the government will not even listen to concerns about wider immigration,” says Fraser Nelson on The Spectator’s Coffee House blog.
The result, says The Economist, is “another self-inflicted wound” for a Brown government that misjudged the public mood.