‘Failure to launch’ seems to be a growing theme in the Johnson administration

Editorial: The actions taken under the partnership agreement with Rwanda were always going to be legally questionable but they went ahead anyway

(Dave Brown)

Failure to launch” seems to be a growing theme as the Johnson administration dithers and delays from defeat to humiliation and back again. So too with the Rwanda plan.

This time, the proximate cause was the interim ruling by an out-of-hours judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg (characters normally derided as “Euro fat cats” too busy banqueting to do any work). Minutes before the specially chartered flight was due to take off with its remaining handful of pitiful refugees on board, the plane was grounded.

Like the “Tubthumping” song by Chumbawamba, however, when Priti Patel gets knocked down she gets back up again and has already made arrangements for the next ghost flight to Kigali. There is no particular reason to believe that the new cases will be any more lawful, or that the flight (timing TBC) will take off; nor that the judicial review scheduled for next month, or indeed any final review by the ECHR, will find in the home secretary’s favour.