The Rwanda plan remains doomed to fail

Editorial: The central tenet of Rishi Sunak’s blueprint for stopping illegal immigrants from crossing the Channel passed its third reading in the Commons – but at a terrible political cost to the prime minister. It will be for historians to establish why he wrecked his reputation trying to make it a success

(Dave Brown)

Most premiers find their time in office defined by a few broad, historical brush strokes. For Chamberlain, appeasement; for Churchill, it was obviously the finest hour; for Eden, Suez; for Callaghan, the winter of discontent; for Blair, it was Iraq; for Johnson, Partygate and Brexit; with Truss, it was the disastrous mini-Budget.

For Rishi Sunak, it will assuredly not be the Windsor Framework, nor the halving of inflation. Rather, his epitaph seems destined to be “Rwanda”, a fairly obscure African country at the centre of a convoluted saga of a relatively small number of refugees who never quite made it to Kigali. In a word, failure.

It is bizarre, but highly appropriate, because, for whatever reason, Mr Sunak has made the Rwanda plan his own personal cause, to the virtual exclusion of all else. Historians may be able to make better sense of it than those living through it now. It is politics viewed from the wrong end of the telescope.

The Rwanda plan was, after all, never in reality much more than a gimmick dreamt up by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, and the then home secretary, Priti Patel. They were under pressure to try and show they were in control of the borders and doing something, anything, to “stop the boats” – though that fateful slogan was adopted by Mr Sunak himself.

The Rwanda plan was, unfortunately, based on a fatal misunderstanding of the workings of the Australian policy of refugee offshoring and its transferability to the UK. But Mr Sunak adopted it all the same.

Those sympathetic to Mr Sunak’s plight argue that this supposed supreme technocrat, equipped with what David Cameron calls “a huge brain”, has been pushed into the Rwanda plan by the militant right of his party. After all, Mr Sunak raised valid and, as it turns out, prophetic doubts about the initiative when he was Mr Johnson’s chancellor.

It seems out of character for such a man to become so obsessed with one small aspect of migration policy. As the home secretary, James Cleverly, who lacks the prime minister’s fancy schooling but possesses better political instincts, says, Rwanda is not everything, and anyway, he remarked privately, it’s a bit batty, or cruder words to that effect. Mr Cleverly, a man with ambitions, has not been seen much in public during the recent parliamentary hand-to-hand combat.

Yet the disturbing possibility arises that Mr Sunak may actually believe in the policy; or he resents being thwarted by the Supreme Court so much that he has become fixated on making it an unlikely success. Perhaps all these elements are at work – and we should never forget he is a man of the right, an original Leaver and a Thatcherite. Either way, he has certainly expended obscene amounts of money, ministerial time and his own modest political capital in trying to make it a success.

He could have declared, after the Supreme Court said the policy was unlawful, that he would put the plan in the next manifesto in order to win a direct mandate from the people to enforce it. He might also have thrown in a vague commitment to weaken the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It would have made no difference to the boats anyway, and he could have focussed his government on the cost of living and public services, rather than Rwanda and Albania.

The Rwanda plan remains doomed to fail. The bill, having endured its rough passage through the Commons, now goes on its way to the House of Lords, where, ironically enough, it will be tortured mercilessly.

Their lordships have every right to do so. Neither the Rwanda plan, nor anything like it, appeared in the Conservative manifesto in 2019, and neither the broad commitment to reduce migration that was in the manifesto, nor the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum, amount to a democratic mandate on Rwanda that the Lords would have to bow to.

The upper chamber is stuffed with distinguished lawyers, and the latest Rwanda bill is so badly drafted, with long, inappropriately political clauses, and legally problematic, it seems almost designed to wind them up and invite improvement.

Divisions within the governing party will also encourage the Lords to make it more workable, but, no different to before, the House of Commons can’t simply legislate international law away. The government has no majority in the Lords at the best of times; the delays could be interminable.

Even if the bill becomes an act of parliament, it will still be open to judicial review and some individual challenges under the ECHR. Civil servants might object to breaking international law, even if the civil service code is amended to allow them to do so. If it becomes clear that the plan indeed breaches international law, the Rwandan government could cancel it.

It is also the case that those making the crossing across the Channel won’t be deterred by the minuscule risk of deportation, even if one token planeload of refugees ever makes the journey; the Rwandans cannot cope with more than a couple of hundred.

Indeed, if the Rwanda plan ever did become a real deterrent, it would not be a deterrent to making the crossing, but merely a deterrent to getting caught. Rather than surrendering to the authorities, the migrants might well land clandestinely, melting into the countryside and the shadow economy. We shall see in the summer.

The image the country has formed of the events of recent days won’t be obscured by the details of Rule 39 orders, the complex manoeuvres of ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick, nor the legal concept of refoulment. What they see is an extension of what they have become familiar with for some months now: a governing party that is so divided, it cannot run the country efficiently, and a prime minister whose authority has been shredded by his own blunders and fixation on Rwanda.

Why, Rishi, why?