So Farewell Then Rwanda Plan

This week is shaping up to be a very bad week for the Tories and their hangers-on in our free and fearless press, but a very good one for those who would rather Rishi Sunak and the rest of his less than talented cabal either shape up and stop fighting pointless culture wars, or ship out.

What is not being admitted by The Blue Team and its coterie of client journalists is that the current swathe of what Supermac called “events, dear boy, events” is opening up cracks in the Tory edifice which are slowly but inexorably breaking the party apart. Today’s addition to those “events” is, like Monday’s sacking of a Home Secretary, down to the cult of SUELLA and the inevitably messy end of the terminally inept Braverman reign.

And one part of that reign was the supremely cruel plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, where they would be “processed”, then not allowed to return to the UK. The one and only flight carrying those effectively deported eventually left with none of them on board. The Gammonati, their dog-whistlers in the press, and Ms Braverman, were incandescent with rage.

The Appeal Court then found against the Rwanda Plan. And so it came to pass that it arrived at the Supreme Court. As the BBC explained, “The legal case against the policy hinges on the principle of ‘non-refoulement’ - that a person seeking asylum should not be returned to their country of origin if doing so would put them at risk of harm - which is established under both UK and international human rights law”. And the verdict handed down today?

“The government had said its plan to deport asylum seekers to east Africa and ban them from returning was needed to deter illegal small boat crossings. But the Supreme Court ruled it is possible the Rwandan government would send refugees back to the country they had fled in the first place”. Do go on.

“It said the policy breaches human rights laws by potentially leaving the people sent there open to that risk … The Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Appeal decision, and said there are ‘substantial grounds’ to believe people deported to Rwanda could then be sent to places they would be unsafe by the Rwandan government”. Yes, it’s Human Rights again.

So what does the press-generated personality cult of RISHI make of the failed idea from the press-generated personality cult of SUELLA? “This was not the outcome we wanted, but we have spent the last few months planning for all eventualities and we remain completely committed to stopping the boats”. Sadly, SUELLA already let slip that there is no Plan B. But do go on.

“Illegal migration destroys lives and costs British taxpayers millions of pounds a year. We need to end it and we will do whatever it takes to do so. Because when people know that if they come here illegally, they won’t get to stay then they will stop coming altogether, and we will stop the boats”. Says Ron Hopeful, holed up in the Downing Street bunker.

Unfortunately, Sunak cannot stop the meltdown on the right of his party, typified by his deputy chairman. 30p Lee, as Aubrey Allegretti of the Times has noted, “says ministers should go ahead and ‘put planes in the air’ to Rwanda anyway. When I asked if he was suggesting ignoring the Supreme Court ruling, the Tory deputy chairman said govt should ‘ignore the laws and send them straight back’”. Them. People who are not white. Again.

Next stop demanding we leave the ECHR, is it? But, as Tom Larkin of Sky News has reported, the judgment contains this caution: “It is therefore not only the European Convention on Human Rights which is relevant to this was, as is sometimes thought”. Leaving the ECHR would be ineffective.

And there was more. “There are other international treaties which also prohibit the return of asylum seekers to their countries of origin without a proper examination of their claims”. Sunak should sack Anderson as he sacked Ms Braverman. The words of Margaret Thatcher explain why.

“The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty when it’s inconvenient, if government does that, then so will the governed, and then nothing is safe - not home, not liberty, not life itself”. Today’s Tories are falling apart through their own idiocy. Sad, really.

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