Rishi’s pre-emptive Poirot lists the killers of the Rwanda Bill ... before it has died

When is a press conference not a press conference? The Prime Minister did his best Poirot impression and gathered the cast of Westminster hacks, loyal(ish) MPS, and people with nothing better to do on a Thursday morning to the Downing

Street press room for a grand j’accuse in the wake of the Rwanda Bill. If this is what “victory” looks like, I’d hate to be there when “defeat” happens.

The thing with gathering people together to name a guilty party is that it assumes that they have already committed the crime.

Not so with Rishi. Having won the Rwanda vote despite a rebellion by his two vice-chairmen, Brendan Clarkesmith, the diminutive MP for TV appearances, and Lee Anderson, Honourable Member for the Missing Link section in the Natural History Museum, the Prime Minister was now setting out who to blame when things inevitably go wrong.

The Bill hasn’t even been killed yet, and still the PM was listing those likely to kill it. This was pre-emptive Poirot.

The primary target of Rishi’s premature invective was that age-old villain in British politics, the House of Lords.

Blaming the second chamber for delaying legislation is the “the butler did it” of UK political whodunnit.

He made constant reference to them being appointed not elected, vague coded threats about the consequences of thwarting democracy.

But in the end, despite the bravado, he sounded a little plaintive. This was Rishi begging an ermine-clad older boy not to take his lunch money. Nothing says “confidence” like a desperate press conference begging the House of Lords to support you.

In the unlikely event that their Lordships were watching, midway through emptying their monogrammed colostomy bags, they would be pleased it wasn’t just them.

Labour also featured as a sort of supporting villain. They had “no plan” according to the PM, which would result in chaos. Compared, of course, to the order we all associate with immigration policy at the moment.

After a flourish worthy of the Belgian sleuth on a bad day – “it’s time to start ze flights, Captain Hastings” – there came the part Poirot never had to deal with: questions from the floor. Chris Mason from the BBC asked our dinky little detective if it wouldn’t just be easier to tell the Conservative Party to “put a sock in it”. A flash of hope flickered in the PM’S eyes. Or maybe it was just the ghost of John Major.

More questions ensued. More awkward mentions of infighting, the polls, Rwanda. The PM looked remarkably pained, for one who’d just passed his Bill. Perhaps calling unsympathetic journos out on their Thursday hangovers for a dénouement wasn’t such a good idea after all.

In the end, Poirishi simply echoed the same message again. “We have a plan, and the plan is working.”

No sooner had he finished his speech, the Home Office briefed that 358 migrants had successfully crossed the Channel in the last 24 hours. In this murder mystery, the most obvious victim was irony.

‘The primary target of Sunak’s premature invective was the House of Lords’

‘This was the PM begging an ermine-clad older boy not to take his lunch money’