Rwanda removals policy, for so long an anticipated cornerstone of the Tory re-election effort, has today officially become an ‘over the rainbow’ idea wide open to mockery from opposition parties. Not only will the deterrent impact on small boat crossings of the ‘regular drumbeat’ of flights that the Prime Minister promised us not have had time to be measured by polling day, but there won’t actually have been any flights whatsoever.
Sunak originally promised flights would be happening by the end of spring
Rishi Sunak, who originally promised flights would be happening by the end of spring, confirmed in a series of interviews that the plan actually getting implemented now depends on him continuing as Prime Minister after polling day. He told the BBC that flights would take off ‘in July’ and added: ‘That’s the choice at this election.’ Pressed whether that meant the first flight would be after the election rather than before, he responded: ‘Yes’.
If one thinks through the logic of this, it points strongly to Rwanda being a cynical mirage policy all along – the oasis that always disappears over the next sand dune as one approaches it – and Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick having been correct about the Safety of Rwanda Act being too weak to protect it from further legal challenges.
Unusually, it was even hard to disagree with the verdict of shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper when she said of Sunak: ‘He doesn’t believe that this plan will work, and that is why he has called the election now in the desperate hope that he won’t be found out.’
I am told that in fact Home Office lawyers have now accepted ‘systemic challenges’ will be heard by the courts and that this can be expected to delay flights by several further months.
If Sunak had much faith in the scheme then surely he would have waited until it was up and running before going to the polls. Yet if he could not get it off the ground with a substantial Commons majority at his disposal, how can he expect voters to believe he would do so under his absolute best-case scenario of a tiny Tory majority in the next parliament?
Factor in the publication today of a new set of gargantuan official figures for legal immigration in 2023 (some 685,000 net under Sunak’s watch) and it has clearly not been an auspicious start to the campaign.
What should be the strongest Tory suit – the issue that is propelling voters to the right all over Europe – is now effectively hors de combat for the UK election campaign. Given that the Conservatives have presided over an equally epic disaster on their other traditional home banker of law and order, the idea of Sunak being useless at politics can only gain more traction.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that there is literally nothing substantial and positive at hand to commend another Tory term in office to the British electorate. The only wind in Conservative sails comes as a result of the deficiencies of the party’s rivals: Nigel Farage announcing he will not lead Reform or stand in the election; Labour having more Achilles heels than a lame centipede.
It is now almost half a decade since the newly-installed PM Boris Johnson did a piece to camera promising illegal cross-Channel arrivals: ‘We will send you back.’ We didn’t. For the past two years ‘We will send you to Rwanda’ has been the mantra. We won’t.
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