Rishi Sunak is both a sinister operator and a preposterous figure

The Rwandan deportation scheme and the fears of the Tory party

Colin Yeo is one of the UK’s leading immigration lawyers and the best person to interview on the Rwanda debacle. You can catch up withe the Lowdown on Apple (below) Spotify, Google and every other host

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The Sunak government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to the one-party state of Rwanda is simultaneously sinister and preposterous. You do not have to choose between laughing and crying; mocking and trembling. Performative cruelty and Whitehall farce play well together.

The prime minister’s proposals are both a manifest absurdity, that should be laughed to scorn, and a danger to the human rights of refugees – and, indeed, of all of us.

To date, the government has ignored warnings from its own officials that the “fraud risk is very high,” and given £240 million of our money to grateful Rwandan functionaries, without deporting a single asylum seeker. The Conservatives’ monomaniacal obsession with its deportation fantasy is driven by a deep fear that the Reform party, the latest manifestation of the Faragist movement, will trigger a collapse of the core Tory vote.  

Contrary to the misapprehensions of Conservative journalists, there is no widespread public concern.  “Though migration is at record highs, the share of voters rating it as a top priority is much lower now than it was in the decade before Brexit,” Prof Rob Ford of Manchester University has shown.  But it matters to the minority of potential Conservative voters, who worry about cheats gaming the system, as Colin Yeo and I discuss in the podcast.

Yet, and forgive me for stating the obvious, if you spend £240 million ($302m, or 2.3% of Rwandan GDP) without dispatching a single migrant to Kigali, then you will succeed only in convincing your core voters of your own uselessness.

Something like this has happened. Pollsters report that barely one in four people (27%) believe that Sunak will reduce the numbers making the perilous journey across the Channel. The very fact that they are prepared to risk their lives suggests that they will not be deterred by the unlikely prospect of deportation to central Africa. For even if the Conservatives manage to overcome the legal obstacles, or legislate them away, their own plans anticipate that only a few hundred people a year will be deported.

Presented with this abysmal failure disillusioned right-wingers will either vote Faragist or stay at home. We may conclude amid roars of laughter on election night, that it would have been better for the Tories if they had never heard of Rwanda.

So then, the Rwanda scheme is laughable, absurd, preposterous: the most expensive joke made at the expense of the British taxpayer.

And yet you cannot escape the whiff of the sinister.  Sunak is now allying with Elon Musk and Giorgia Meloni.  The Supreme Court ruled against his original policy because Rwanda is a dictatorship, currently sponsoring covert wars against its neighbours, and is clearly not a safe place to send refugees.

Rather than addressing the judges’ concerns, the Sunak government wishes to suspend human-rights legislation, ignore international law, and set Parliament in opposition to the judiciary. His new bill declares Rwanda to be safe by executive fiat. The proposed law no more makes Rwanda truly safe than a bill stating that two plus two equals five changes arithmetic. No one can feel safe in a country where the executive believes it can legislate away reality.

 Yet as the Economist notes “moderate Tory MPs cravenly go along with it.”  

And they are being craven. Although Tory ultras want an even tougher measure, the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights issued a statement this week arguing that, even as drafted, Sunak’s bill already breaches international law, a view endorsed by Professor Mark Elliot of Cambridge University, the leading academic authority.

The way to limit unauthorised migration (for you will never stop it) is not to throw hundreds of millions at vicious gimmicks but to cut a deal with the European Union, as Labour is proposing.

Please listen to the podcast interview with Colin Yeo, who is incredibly well informed on the massive backlog of asylum claims the government is presiding over, and the misery of the tens of thousands of people caught in limbo. Colin makes up for a failing in Westminster journalism, that is over-concerned with faction fighting in the Tory party, while missing the human cost of a disastrous government.

But consider that there is also a failure of language. Most commentators still talk about the UK Conservative party as if it were a traditional centre-right party. But since Brexit it has clearly moved to the far right. Indeed, in one respect Brexit puts it further to the right than Europe’s far-right parties. However much they hate the EU, none now dare advocate taking their own countries out of the union for fear of repeating the damage that Brexit caused to the UK.  When Sunak demeans his office by grovelling before Musk you can at the very least say that moderate conservatism is now a failing project.

Below is a piece I did on the collapse of moderate conservatism, one of the most ominous and under-reported developments of our time. It is for paying subscribers only. But as I always say, paying subscribers allow me to work! They also have access to all articles, archives and podcasts for a mere £1.15 a week. There’s even a free trial for the faint hearted.

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How the Conservative "moderates" opened the door for extremists

If they were serious, they would support Labour now

Before the purge: David Gauke and Boris Johnson in 2019 (CREDIT: GETTY)

Like a rabbi leading a gaggle of mourners to the Wailing Wall, David Gauke has collected a band of distraught Conservative moderates. As they bemoan the collapse of the centre right, one question rises through their sobs.

What the hell just happened?

They failed, that’s what happened. They failed because they could not contain the extremist right and failed to even realise they had a duty to fight extremists until it was too late for them - and this country. They failed because supposed moderate conservatism was nowhere near as moderate as they flattered themselves into believing. They failed because their policy of austerity economics created the stagnation that helped push millions into voting for Brexit. They failed, and are still failing, not only because they cannot accept the faults in their past, but because they have no chance of taking back their party in the future.

Before I continue with the charge sheet, I should observe the traditional courtesies and say that Gauke is an impressive figure and has collected an equally impressive group of conservative intellectuals and politicians to produce The Case for the Centre Right*.