Cynically, this is probably the best result for the Tories. If the plan had been ruled lawful, they’d have had to go ahead with it and that would mean: a) we’d see how little impact it actually had on the backlog of asylum claims; b) we’d start to hear about appalling treatment of refugees in Rwanda and c) they’d somehow make a mess of it because they are at heart incompetent.
Instead, they get to blame their failure on interfering leftie lawyers, unelected judges and foreign courts. This is meat and drink to them. It is their happy place. Sunak has lost no time in coming out swinging against all three of the above “enemies of the people”. The party Deputy Chair, Lee Anderson, went one better and said they should just fly the planes to Rwanda in defiance of the law. Because if there’s one ting the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has always stood four-square against, it’s the rule of law.
According to the Guardian / Home Secretary Cleverly, the Rwanda flights will still go ahead:
Ministers are “absolutely determined” to get a removal flight to Rwanda off before the next election, and will finish drafting a legally binding treaty with the country “within days”, the home secretary, James Cleverly, has said, after the policy was ruled unlawful.
Why is this so important to the government? Typically governments around the world will promise (whether they actually mean it or not) to e.g. improve access to health care, improve education, improve standard of living, etc. The tories, now having left the world’s biggest trading bloc, now seem laser-focused on… shipping desperate asylum-seekers attempting to make a better lives for themselves and their families while contributing to their host country’s economy and society, to Rwanda at great cost to the taxpayer and no benefit to anyone.
What’s the actual goal or policy behind it, beyond “the cruelty is the point”? If it’s about not hosting asylum-seekers, they could simply deny asylum to more applicants, surely?
Ah, but the aforementioned lefty lawyers/activist judges/tofu-eating wokerati/blob would tie up that many more cases in appeals.
Somehow the idea that it might just be more cost-effective to employ more assessors, simplify procedures and get decisions right in the first place doesn’t seem to have any traction. Because “taking control” of the immigration system doesn’t mean that sort of control, so much as just keeping numbers down to levels arbitrarily decided as the most the community can accept.
And pro-cruelty (ex-)members of government, of course, eg. Braverman and Patel. But if that’s really it, I don’t understand how they’re so incompetent about it. AIUI the push to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda has been going on for years but keeps getting stalled in courts, for fairly obvious reasons.
But if I was a cruel empathy-free far-right Britain First scheming pillock tory (but I repeat myself), I would think I’d be able to dream up a more successful solution, if the end goal is to (1) be cruel (2) get rid of asylum-seekers (3) grab the pro-cruelty vote. For example, turning back all boats and damn the consequences; denying asylum immediately to anyone crossing from France as they ought to have sought asylum in the first safe country they entered; and processing asylum claims faster (with a lean towards “no” in all but extreme cases). Or simply shipping off all asylum seekers to camps on, say, the Falklands or South Georgia as it’s still UK territory, something like Austtralia does with Nauru I believe? That ought to get the same level of cruelty and similar levels of “deterrence” (if it works at all) with less of the incompetence or legal barriers.
PatrickLondon
Ah, but the aforementioned lefty lawyers/activist judges/tofu-eating wokerati/blob would tie up more cases in appeals.
As opposed to tying up the whole Rwanda scheme in courts for years, and now potentially tying it up in the Lords.
I get it, sort of, but I don’t get why they willingly look incompetent on a core issue, when it seems like they could annoy “the left” just as much with a more workable alternative.
I’m not so sure. If British authoritarians are anything like American ones, I think their first goal is riling up their base. If they successfully shipped off the Africans when they first tried, it’d be in the news and then forgotten. But by trying and failing and trying again and again, they keep themselves and their goals in the news. That’s a win for them.
The Tories have failed miserably on all of these issues and have no credibility on any of them. The point of the Rwanda obsession is that it serves as a distraction from these things. The Tories can’t deliver competence or honesty but they can deliver performative cruelty. It’s a “dead cat” tactic - it delights the (hopefully small) base that values or admires cruelty, and it distracts the public discourse from issues that actually matter to the (hopefully larger) base that prioritizes competence, honesty, good policy, good administration, etc.
I think you are giving the whole government far too much credit. Sunak himself has ties to contracts which in any normal world, would be linked to insider trading (BP Deal and Nanny company, and these are just the obvious ones). I have absolutely no doubt that the backbenches practice insider trading based on advance warning on government policies. The billions in dodgy PPE to “Tory Donors”, left uninvestigated shows exactly how blatant and careless they are.
Cameron is just “one of the boys” who’s done it, and the press and tory voters seem uninterested or forgetful on the subject.
Rumblings are current on about letters to the 1922 committee on Sunak. There is apparently a line. International laughing stock was fine with Brexit for a third of the party, but becoming International Pariahs dropping from the European Court of Human Rights seems a step too far. I’m sure, as usual, they’ll be bought out.
However, they usual buy out of positions in the government doesn’t work, given they can’t work in private sector for 18 months after they leave the government, and many don’t expect to survive the next election. So normal rules do not apply (the rules which managed to force through a whole rack of shameful policies under Johnson and Sunak). That’s why Cameron is in there, BTW, they can’t get anyone else.
