One day into Election 24. There’s plenty to write about. Rishi Sunak’s inability to remember who qualified for the Euros, perhaps. Or the mysterious appearance of Conservative councillors in high-vis at not-at-all-stage-managed campaign stops. Or the surprise that, even after the PM’s aquatic Number 10 D:Ream concert, 35 per cent of those surveyed thought the Tory campaign began well.
But I’ve instead opted for a word that might one day be found emblazoned on Suella Braverman’s heart: Rwanda. The Prime Minister announced yesterday that no asylum seekers will be sent to Africa’s hottest holiday destination before the election under the long-delayed deportation scheme. Sunak has promised the first flight will finally leave in the days after he is “re-elected” on July 4th.
Colour me shocked. I have long been sceptical that a flight would leave for Rwanda, let alone that it would have the deterrent effect long hoped for. From Boris Johnson and Priti Patel to Sunak and James Cleverly, we have had a succession of Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries promising this will be the silver bullet for small boats. Anything the Aussies can do, we can do better.
Sunak has said that “the choice at the election” is delivering deportations to Kigali with him or handing its fate over to Labour. Since Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper have promised to chuck the £310 million scheme entirely, this is as good as saying that nobody will be sent. As such, if you believe stopping the boats requires a one-way trip into Paul Kagame’s embrace, you know who to vote for.
Let us be honest. If the Prime Minister was confident that the Rwanda plan would be effective, he would not have gone to the polls without it running. Number 10 had always hoped that flights departing would be a big political moment – a hinge point where they were able to show they really were “Stopping the Boats” and challenge Labour to scrap a working scheme. Straws, clutched at.
Alas, the fears of Braverman and Robert Jenrick appear to have been vindicated. The Safety of Rwanda Act was not tight enough to prevent a dreaded tidal wave of legal challenges. Sunak cannot guarantee flights within his three-month timetable. Better to call the election now and promise flights in the future than endure the humiliation of a summer with none at all, as crossings continue.
If he has no confidence that he can send flights before the election, how can voters expect that he would be able to do so after? Are we going to see a promise to leave the European Court of Human Rights in the Tory manifesto? Along with motherhood, apple pie, and a free pony for every good boy and girl? That’s as likely as Sunak honouring his £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan.
That stunt was as crass as the usual output of YouTube’s newest non-entity. But for all its faults – unworkability, human rights concerns, ludicrous cost – the Rwanda scheme did have the gem of a good idea. Even with the opprobrium poured on this side of the Channel, our European friends back it as a pioneering approach to a common problem. It has the Von Der Leyen vote!
The reason is obvious. Functioning asylum proceedings in safe third countries would offer a deterrent to illegal arrivals. It is more credible than Labour’s pledge of combining a toothless knock-off of current policies and sucking up to Emmanuel Macron. Do you trust Starmer – a free movement fan, ex-human rights lawyer, and former Socialist Alternatives editor – with immigration?
I wouldn’t. But if an impartial observer looked at the last fourteen years, they wouldn’t much trust the Tories, either. Office for National Statistics figures published yesterday showed that net migration was 685,000 last year. That’s down from the all-time high of 764,000 in 2022. But it’s still almost three times as high as the level of 250,000 when we entered office back in 2010.
On both illegal and legal immigration, we have let voters down and broken promises. We squandered the opportunity Brexit provided to curb freedom of movement for intra-Johnson family satisfaction. Legal inflows are running at 25 times the level of illegal ones. As Karl Williams has highlighted, net migration has added at least 2 million to the UK population since the last election.
On immigration of both stripes, we have undermined our credibility. The Rwanda scheme’s fate is only the latest example of we Brexiteers failing to do our one job. Even if flights had taken off to Kigali, Starmer only had to point to yesterday’s figures as a sign we could not be trusted. He does not have to prove that he will do better, only that we have failed. We have made it easy for him.
With all this in mind, one wonders, in hindsight, why Sunak invested so much time and effort into delivering the Safety of Rwanda Bill. So many hurdles presented themselves. So many warnings were given that the scheme could not and would not work. So many opportunities were offered to wake up, admit the scheme was a dud, and return to the drawing board. Immanentize the eschaton!
That they weren’t heeded shows not only the Prime Minister’s characteristic bloody-mindedness but suggests he might really think that he can get the scheme to work. Given five years, he might manage it. Monkeys, Shakespeare, etc. But prior experience suggests it is unlikely – as Nigel Farage will be arguing from his comfortable election perch at GB News. Only 42 days left to go…
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