Today’s High Court ruling that the government’s plan to send irregular migrants to Rwanda on a one-way ticket is lawful will be greeted with huge relief in ministerial circles. It gives Rishi Sunak a fighting chance of being able to demonstrate progress in tackling the Channel boats issue by the time of the next general election.
The terms of the ruling, announced by Lord Justice Lewis, will delight ministers. He declared straightforwardly: ‘We have concluded that it is lawful for the government to make arrangements to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined there.’
This establishes a principle that ministers believe can be applied to other potential partner countries once the Rwanda scheme is up and running. It also gives Sunak a path – albeit a narrow and difficult one – to achieving his promise that nobody arriving in Britain illegally should get to live here, without even having to take us out of various international bodies and agreements.
The reaction of left-wing MPs, such as Caroline Lucas of the Green party who called the judgment ‘deeply disappointing’, underlines what a key decision this was. But her concluding thought – ‘here’s to the appeal’ – tells us that there is still no real prospect of anyone getting sent to Rwanda very soon.
Indeed, ministerial sources expect the Court of Appeal case to take at least until Easter. That will probably be followed by Supreme Court consideration lasting until late summer.
A subsidiary ruling by the High Court today that the cases of eight individuals who were due to be removed to Rwanda last summer must be considered afresh was widely expected by ministers. It is regarded as something they can live with. The danger is that the reconsideration ordered by the court results in the setting of new precedents that drastically narrow the scope of who can be removed.
To go into an October 2024 election with a drastic reduction in Channel migrant numbers would be a substantial achievement for the Tories
Yet to have planes taking off for Rwanda by the autumn of 2023 will give the policy a chance to achieve its key objective. That is, not to resettle the few hundred Channel migrants who are likely to be removed under it in the second half of next year, but to create a powerful deterrent against future irregular migrants paying large sums to people-smuggling gangs for a place in a dinghy. After all, who would hand over thousands of pounds simply to end up further away from the UK than where they started from?
If this deterrent works as it did for Australia more than a decade ago when it implemented something similar to deter illegal maritime arrivals, then the flood of Channel arrivals could be reduced to a trickle. To go into an election in October 2024 presiding over a drastic reduction in Channel migrant numbers compared to the more than 45,000 who have come this year would give the Tories a substantial achievement to tell voters about. And let’s face it, there aren’t many others.
It was notable that last week at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Labour leader Keir Starmer did not press Rishi Sunak on this issue, despite the tragic deaths that had occurred in the Channel that very morning. This tells us that both sides know the British public – especially working class voters in key Red Wall swing seats – are very much in favour of draconian action to stop the wholesale abuse of the UK asylum system.
Currently the opposition is seeking to paint the Rwanda policy as a ‘damaging distraction’, with shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper branding it ‘unworkable, unethical, extortionately expensive’. But if the policy takes effect and is seen to yield promising early results then such a position will become untenable and advertise Labour’s general queasiness around border control issues.
There are three major issues that Tory-leaning voters currently say they care about most: the economy, immigration and asylum and the state of the NHS in that order. Suddenly it is the middle one that seems most likely to be yielding improvements by the time voters next go to the polls.
Those planning the next Conservative election campaign may have something to work with after all.
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