Rishi Sunak’s ‘art of the deal’ will be sorely tested over Rwanda

Editorial: In spite of his recent negotiating successes, the prime minister has his work cut out to integrate Britain’s asylum policy with that of the EU

It makes a change from the curiously parochial and simplistic approach that his home secretary, Suella Braverman, brings to the challenge (Getty/PA)

Although in style and outlook Rishi Sunak could never be mistaken for Donald Trump, the prime minister also seems a keen practitioner of the “art of the deal”. In recent months he has managed to reinvent the troublesome Northern Ireland protocol as the Windsor Framework, reset Anglo-French relations at the first summit in five years, and secure at least a partial settlement of the strikes in the public sector.

Now, however, he has set himself another, even more ambitious task – to achieve an informal, practical adjustment to the way the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) operates, and a pan-European agreement on the management of the global migrant crisis. This is an important moment of recognition that migration is not purely (or even mostly) an issue in British politics.

Making his case at the meeting in Iceland of the Council of Europe, which oversees the European Convention on Human Rights and its court, Mr Sunak subtly outlined the shape of another deal, or at least of its modus operandi. If the ECHR agrees to relax its Rule 39, which permits provisional judgments against deportations of refugees ordered by the British government, then the UK will try to be more constructive on the causes of, and solutions to, this global crisis.

It certainly makes a change from the curiously parochial and simplistic approach that his home secretary, Suella Braverman, brings to the challenge. Perhaps he is indeed, as his critics imply, too weak to sack her for her unhelpful and outlandish remarks, but as prime minister he can pursue his own initiatives instead.

The initial response from the council and the court has been discouraging, however. Chairing the conference, Iceland’s foreign minister said that the Council of Europe summit in Reykjavik would not be used to reform the rules covering the kind of orders that prevented the first deportation flight from taking off from Heathrow for Rwanda last year.

The prime minister appealed to the ECHR’s president, Siofra O’Leary, directly on Tuesday, but Iceland’s foreign minister, Thordis Gylfadottir, suggested that the council was not keen on reform, and her sceptical attitude is likely to be mirrored by Ms O’Leary. Apart from the other weighty issues on the council’s agenda, such as AI and the war in Ukraine, the other 45 European member states that belong to the body might also start asking whether they too could have the same dispensation as the British.

As in the (entirely separate) European Union, the British habit of trying to “cherry-pick” the rules it likes and ignore the ones it finds irksome is unpopular.

The prime minister is right to set his sights high, however. Given that withdrawal from the ECHR is unthinkable, even for this government, and the fact that the Illegal Migration Bill is incompatible with the council’s position, the only logical option is to seek to reform the ECHR – and to do that requires a long, if not interminable, international negotiation.

Moreover, even if Rule 39 remains in place for the time being, Mr Sunak can also usefully pursue his wider agenda and push for a trans-European strategy to share the work needed to offer a new life to refugees.

The wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine, the on-off crises in Hong Kong, and the civil war in Sudan demonstrate how quickly such humanitarian emergencies can arise – and how it is in the interests of all European nations to combat the people-smugglers. As Mr Sunak says: “Every single point on each route used by people-traffickers to smuggle people across our continent represents another community struggling to deal with the human cost of this barbaric enterprise. It is very clear that our current international system is not working, and our communities and the world’s most vulnerable people are paying the price.”

Because of wars – some provoked or exacerbated by the West, by Russia, or by regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia – along with economic dislocation, population pressures and the climate crisis, the migrant crisis is a global phenomenon, and it requires close international cooperation. The refugees who risk their lives to make their way across the English Channel began their long, arduous journey far away. So do those who make their way to the US-Mexico border, or to Australia. They have traversed deserts, seas and oceans to try to secure a better life, be they fleeing persecution, torture, conscription or destitution. At least the prime minister now acknowledges these facts.

Where Mr Sunak is wrong is in his focus on the people-traffickers at the expense of considering more safe and secure routes for refugees fleeing wars and other threats to life and limb. His government is operating a number of special schemes, for Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan, though in practice their implementation has been flawed, as The Independent’s campaign for one Afghan war hero has highlighted.

Mr Sunak has also talked about working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on creating more such safe and secure routes. However, no such routes have been established. The signs are that, even when they are, their impact will be small and limited – and the numbers accepted will be much more modest than those welcomed historically by other nations, such as Jordan or Germany (from Syria) or Poland (from Ukraine).

Nor is there yet much sign of the faster processing of existing claims, which would reduce the incentive to try to get to the UK and remain in residence here while a claim makes its leisurely progress through the system.

Meanwhile, Mr Sunak still affects to believe that the flawed and inhumane Rwanda scheme, and an armada of barges, can accommodate the flow of asylum seekers. Mr Sunak is sometimes good at taking political initiatives, but his work in getting a deal and making the asylum system function at a European level has only just begun.