Voters are fed up, so the UK government is talking up a “bullsh*t” deportation scheme to shift the spotlight
Two-thirds of British voters say the country is on the wrong track. NHS waiting list targets haven’t been met since 2016. Prisons are at or over capacity, depending on who’s counting. Trend growth has nearly halved since the 2008 crash. Public investment has more than halved. Funding for further education colleges has been cut by 20 per cent.
So what? The prime minister wants people to focus on deportations to Rwanda instead.
His plan to send “irregular” asylum seekers there passed the House of Commons early yesterday. These refugees account for less than a twentieth of net inward migration to the UK and the state of the health service and the economy have consistently outranked immigration as voter concerns since Brexit.
Rishi Sunak has nonetheless made stopping small-boat migrants a “come what may” goal even though the Rwanda scheme
- may breach international law;
- is expensive and impractical;
- is unproven as a deterrent; and
- is not something British voters want or asked for.
Legality. The new law was designed to get around the UK’s Supreme Court ruling that Rwanda (a police state) is not safe for asylum seekers. It does so by declaring Rwanda is safe, regardless of the evidence. It also enables ministers to bypass the European Convention of Human Rights, which prohibits torture and inhuman treatment. Sunak has repeatedly said he would not allow foreign courts to dictate what the UK does – but companies whose services are required may feel differently.
Cost. The National Audit Office estimates that the Rwanda scheme will cost upwards of £500 million, and far more depending on how many people are deported. As of December, it had already cost £240 million. Rwanda has said it can only take up to 300 people at any point, but the UK insists there is no cap.
Logistics. Commercial airlines have been warned by the UN they may be in breach of international law if they fly asylum seekers to Kigali, and despite Sunak’s claim to have 150 judges and 25 courtrooms ready to fast-track cases it’s unclear where they would be found given that the UK’s court system is close to collapse.
Politics. The Conservatives chose to make stopping cross-Channel migrants a central campaign pledge, and Sunak frequently invokes “the will of the people” to explain why. Polling doesn’t bear him out. A study by Britain Future last month found that fewer than a quarter of voters backed the plan as it stood.
Furthermore…
- The Rwanda scheme wasn’t part of the Tory manifesto, meaning it has never been put to the electorate.
- Sunak has claimed to be ending perilous Channel crossings, which cost five lives yesterday alone. But there is no evidence the crossings will stop.
- Before they were involved, ministers including Home Secretary James Cleverly and Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell have derided the policy as “batshit”, “bullshit” and “back-of-a-fag-packet nonsense”.
The Overton Window theory suggests that the more something is discussed, the more it’s normalised. The signs are that in this case familiarity has bred contempt. Even if the flights take off, they seem unlikely to translate into votes.
Pyrrhic win. Sunak can at least approach next month’s local elections claiming to be on track to meeting his small boats pledge. But yesterday the Ministry of Justice undermined his claim that the judiciary has already identified judges and courtrooms for Rwanda-related hearings, noting the decision to deploy them had yet to be taken and that it was “central to the rule of law” that such decisions remain for the independent judiciary.
What’s more… For now Labour is saying it will repeal the new law if it wins the next election, which the psephologist John Curtice says is close to certain.
