Thursday 7 December 2023

The Unhinged Rwanda Policy

The Rwanda policy is looking increasingly unhinged. An insane plan to mollify the clinically mad on the outer fringes of the Conservative Party. It's a study in gratuitous cruelty in my opinion and would be even if there was any evidence that it would actually work, which there isn't. It has been a disaster from start to finish and yesterday we saw the whole thing once again teetering on the brink. You would think after the Supreme Court ruled it unlawful on 15 November, Sunak would have grasped the chance to ditch it, but he chose to press on and now it’s become a confidence issue in his leadership.

Yesterday, the 'emergency' bill to declare Rwanda a safe country (crazy ain't it) was published with the Home Secretary having to write on the face of it that he was unable to confirm that the bill would be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights!

This in itself is stunning, but it isn’t unique. If it wasn’t quite stunning enough, the Rwandan foreign minister Vincent Biruta later released a statement that they (the Rwandan government) wouldn’t be able to go ahead with implementing the treaty if the highest standards of international law weren’t upheld.

Strange and shocking as it may be, Cleverly's words on the bill's face were perhaps the most important thing, because it was the whole purpose of the bill, rather than a regrettable legal oversight. Don’t forget that Sir Bill Cash’s Star Chamber is looking at the legislation to make absolutely certain that it doesn't comply with the ECHR and that it's ’lawyer proof’ which it may or may not be. It would almost certainly face legal challenges, even if the House of Lords agreed to it, which they almost certainly won’t. 

We are now relying on Rwanda, a country with an appalling human rights record, to keep the UK within the bounds of international law. I never thought I'd see anything like that.

Since it wasn’t in the government’s 2019 manifesto peers won’t feel under any obligation to push it through. If Sunak chooses to invoke the Parliament Act, it would still mean a 12-month delay and therefore is unlikely to become law before the next election.

If by some miracle it did, the total number of migrants it could take is 100 because that’s all the accommodation that has been built for them. So, insofar as it is supposed to act as a deterrent, asylum seekers after the first hundred needn’t fear being sent anywhere. Not much of a deterrent to the 30-40,000 coming each year is it?

It isn't even designed to work anyway. Somebody said it's like a no-deal Brexit, simply a wedge issue, a divisive tool to be used as a stick to beat the opposition and buff their own credentials as immigrant haters. And Rwanda can send just as many of their neediest refugees to Britain anyway, in a sort of spirit-crushing £140 million refugee merry-go-round that actually goes nowhere.

To add to the sense of drift and chaos, the Home Affairs minister Robert Jenrick sensationally quit yesterday afternoon, ostensibly because the bill is a watered-down version of the one he wanted and, so he says, won’t work. He described it as the triumph of hope over experience.

The former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, then launched an attack on her own government in the House of Commons and its inability to control ‘tens of thousands’ of ‘illegal migrants’ who come “pouring” into this country but have ‘social mores’ at odds with our own.

She pronounced the word ‘mores’ to rhyme with doors. As far as I know, it should rhyme with forays. I'm not sure she would pass a citizenship test. Aren't they supposed to have a good grasp of English?

It’s being suggested that Jenrick was actually miffed at not being made Home Secretary when Braverman was fired and has been looking for an excuse to quit himself. He thinks his chances of a senior role in opposition will be better after the next election.

They are sad, mad, bad, and dangerous.

Meanwhile, the father of all the chaos, Boris Alexander De Pfeffel Johnson, was appearing at the Covid inquiry, sneaking in at the crack of dawn to avoid protesters. Unfortunately, I could only watch for about an hour at the start. He looked exactly as you might have imagined, like a minor, second-rate TV celebrity totally out of his depth.

He struck me as a very stupid man trying to look clever. Plenty of blank expressions, stuttering hesitation, long pauses, a lot of circuitous bumbling incoherent waffle, hunched shoulders, and pointless hand movements to emphasise nonsense and almost total memory loss when it came to dates or anything else that made him look bad. I've seen sharper Dementia patients.  

What a dreadful old fraud you can see why people got exasperated with him.

David Campbell-Bannerman, of the Bruge Group and the Conservative Democratic Organisation, sounded delighted on Newsnight telling us that Sunak was a dud and is at serious risk of having a vote of confidence called against him. We could get another new prime minister in the next few months.

DCB wants Boris back, even after he had provided us with a perfect demonstration of why he was totally unfit to lead a scout patrol on a St George’s Day parade, let alone an entire country.  Johnson is far more Trump-like than he's given credit for. Some people look at him and see an imbecile while others see a genius. I can’t ever remember any other world leader who was seen so differently. 


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