Inside Politics: Ghost plane

Flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda under threat despite court of appeal decision and UK faces legal action over Brexit protocol bill, writes Matt Mathers

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The first plane taking asylum seekers to Rwanda today is under threat amid a series of legal challenges. And the government is now facing the prospect of new legal action from the European Union as early as Friday, after publishing its draft legislation on Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol.

Inside the bubble

Chief politics commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for:

Cabinet meets this morning. Across the road in the Palace of Westminster, Lord Geidt, the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministers’ interests, will appear before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee at 10am. After cabinet, Boris Johnson will attend a remembrance service to mark the 40th anniversary of the Falklands war. The Commons sits at 11.30am, starting with health and social care questions. Main business of the day will be two opposition debates on subjects chosen by Labour.

Daily Briefing

Rwanda plan

The first flight taking failed asylum seekers and migrants to Rwanda is due to go ahead after the court of appeal yesterday blocked a last-ditch bid by activists to stop it. But will the plane ever actually get off the tarmac? Although the overall legal challenge has failed, scores of individual cases have been successful, meaning that there are now less than 10 (it could be as low as seven) people scheduled to be on it – down from around 130 originally planned to be sent to Africa.

Lawyers and campaigners have been working around the clock on the cases of those remaining on the flight, and the BBC reports this morning that at least three more people are preparing legal challenges before the plane is due to take off later today. Ministers and officials have taken a hard line on the Rwanda policy, which has so far failed to act as a deterrent to people trying to cross the Channel, with one source telling the Daily Mail yesterday that the government was prepared to charter a private plane even if there was just one person on it.

The government has repeatedly claimed that the policy will save UK taxpayers money. It would be incredibly difficult for ministers to justify sending a plane some 4,0000 miles across the world with just one person on board, particularly during a worsening cost of living crisis. Outrage over the controversy has worsened. Some 23 Church of England bishops have written a scathing letter to The Times, describing the Rwanda plan as an “immoral policy” that “shames Britain”. That is about as excoriating as it gets.

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, out on the broadcast round earlier insisted that the plane would take off. The foreign secretary could not say how much the flight would cost but was adamant that it was value for money. She told Sky News it was key to establish the policy to “break the model of the people traffickers”, adding “we want to stop these costs both in monetary cost but also in human misery”.

“It is value for money,” she said.

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Brexit wars

The government published its draft legislation on Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol yesterday as it seeks to take unilateral action to override parts of the deal it agreed with the EU.

As expected, the proposals were at the harder end of the spectrum, with a pledge to remove the role of the European Court of Justice from Northern Ireland – in line with reports that the European Research Group of Tory backbenchers had helped to draft the bill.

Despite ministers repeatedly claiming that the bill would not break international law, the government did not cite one distinguished lawyer in the overview of legal advice it published yesterday.

The long-awaited legislation provoked a furious reaction in both Brussels and Dublin, with Irish premier Micheal Martin saying it was “very regrettable for a country like the UK to renege on an international treaty”.

And the government is now facing the prospect of new legal action from the European Union as early as Friday. And a majority of members of the Northern Ireland assembly – including all Sinn Fein, SDLP and Alliance members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) – signed a joint letter to the prime minister urging him to abandon his “reckless” rewrite of the protocol, which the government believes will ease the disruption to trade with mainland Britain following Brexit.

The DUP, meanwhile, whose concerns the bill is supposed to address, said the move was an important step but refused to commit to re-entering power-sharing until concrete action is taken by the government.

On the record

“What it does is it creates unnecessary barriers on trade east-west. What we can do is fix that – it’s not a big deal.”

PM on Brexit protocol legislation.

From the Twitterati

“Johnson is in many ways the yo-yo dieter of British politics, slimming down his messaging and getting in shape for elections that matter most. And despite the dreadful past week for the Tories, he’s still ahead of @Keir_Starmer in some polls on ‘best PM’ rating.

i politics commentator Paul Waugh on Johnson’s leadership polling.

Essential reading

• Marie Le Conte, The Independent: There’s a common thread for most of the malaise in Britain – Brexit
• Tom Peck, The Independent: When will the bottom of the barrel be scraped no further? Only the Tory party can decide
• Katy Balls, The Guardian: This battle is not about the EU or even Northern Ireland – it’s Johnson fighting his own MPs
• William Neuman, The Atlantic: A measure of American decline

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