Rishi refuses to rule out July general election as he reels from defection
As Rwanda plan sees migrants leaving UK for Ireland...
RISHI Sunak failed to rule out a summer election yesterday as it emerged Tory rebels have drawn up plans for a 100- day ‘policy blitz’ to turn the party’s fortunes around.
At the start of one of the toughest weeks of his premiership – with a tricky set of local elections coming up on Thursday – right- wing rebels shared a roadmap for how to win an election after ousting the Prime Minister.
Mr Sunak was dealt another blow at the weekend when Dr Dan Poulter, a former Conservative minister and working medic, defected to Labour, blasting the Tories for ‘failing’ the NHS.
However, Mr Sunak refused to rule out a general election in July amid speculation that poor results in the local elections for the Tories could force his hand.
Quizzed about the date on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, he said: ‘I’m not going to say anything more than I’ve already said, I’ve been very clear about that.’
Government sources have said that they are working towards an autumn election, but acknowledge that Mr Sunak could go earlier if he has no other choice.
In the interview recorded before Dr Poulter’s defection, Mr Sunak also signalled that he could wait for economic improvements to come through – in an apparent hint at a poll later in the year.
‘I’m determined to make sure that people feel when the election comes that the future is better, that we have turned the corner,’ he said. The Prime Minister’s comments were aired after Dr Poulter faced a backlash from within the party for defecting, with his local Conservative association chairman describing him as ‘ the invisible man in North Ipswich’. Dr Poulter will take the Labour whip until the general election but will not be running again as the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich.
His decision came as Tory rebels revealed their policy blueprint which they say will ‘ show the Government is taking action and cares about what matters to the British people’.
They also claimed that ‘coronation’ conversations have taken place between MPs on the right of the party and Commons leader Penny Mordaunt.
The plan to deliver a ‘quick win’ before the election includes a polof icy to offer striking junior doctors a 10 to 12 per cent pay rise, rather than the 8.8 per cent given.
They also proposing to scrap the graduate visa route to reduce legal migration, tougher measures to stop Channel crossings, and to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2027.
The measures would be paid for by slashing the benefits bill to ensure that work pays. Those who claim benefits because depression and anxiety will be particularly targeted, the rebels said.
A Tory rebel source said: ‘ The country has had enough of broken pledges and distant plans for change or bans that they never asked for.
‘It’s a plan for 100 days to show that the Government is taking action and cares about what matters to the British people – the NHS, immigration, getting our economy going by getting people back into work quickly and making our country safer and more secure.
‘No more tinkering, dithering or managerialism – these are policies that can be introduced in a few months and then go to the country for people to make a decision.
‘We’ve got to be clear and bold in our plan and with the right messenger to have any chance of winning – otherwise it could be two or three terms of Labour.’
‘Coronation conversations’
FOR connoisseurs of hypocrisy and irony in politics, the past few days have been ones to treasure. I’m thinking of the fallout from the House of Lords’ belated acceptance of the Government’s scheme to give those arriving here illegally in ‘small boats’ a one-way ticket to Rwanda.
President Emmanuel Macron of France thundered that the scheme was a ‘betrayal of our values’.
If, by that, he means the values exemplified by the institutions of the EU, a few days later he must have been confounded to see that in the European People’s Party (EPP) manifesto for the European Parliament elections in June was a call for ‘a fundamental change in European asylum law’.
Specifically, the EPP — the largest group in the European Parliament and the party of which the Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, is a member — pledged: ‘ We want to implement the concept of safe third countries. Anyone applying for asylum in the EU could also be transferred to a safe third country and undergo the asylum process there.’
Hypocrisy
It is true that the UK Supreme Court had decreed that Rwanda was not a ‘safe third country’, because it had on occasion expelled asylum seekers it had previously accepted. So the Government then signed a treaty with Rwanda in which the African country agreed that it could only return someone it had taken from the UK back here, and to no other country.
This amended form of the original Rwanda scheme is what finally cleared all parliamentary hurdles a week ago.
The same day, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said this would give the go-ahead for the ‘relentless, continual process of permanently removing people to Rwanda, with a regular rhythm of multiple flights over the summer and beyond until the boats are stopped’.
I had always supposed that it would not be until such flights actually started, and with such regularity, that there would be the deterrent effect claimed by the Prime Minister. But it seems I was wrong.
Last week, the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin complained that 80 per cent of asylum seekers now arriving in Ireland had crossed over from the North, and that this striking statistic was the ‘Rwanda effect’.
‘They’re leaving the UK,’ he said, ‘and they are taking opportunities to come to Ireland, crossing the border to get sanctuary here and within the European Union, as opposed to the potential of being deported to Rwanda … maybe that’s the impact it [the Rwanda scheme] was designed to have.’
Oh, the irony. You see, there is no border invigilating the passage of people between the North and the Republic because the European Union — urged on by the Irish government — had insisted on this during the fraught Brexit negotiations.
The reason was that they regarded the imposition of any such border checks, even a single fixed camera, as a risk to peace, in the context of the Good Friday Agreement.
As PM, Theresa May agreed to this, despite the concern among Brexiteers that this would amount to an open back door for immigration from within the EU into the UK. Yet now it is Dublin which is ruing the consequence.
So the Irish Taoiseach, Simon Harris, has asked his Justice Minister to find a way of changing the law, to enable asylum seekers coming to Ireland from the UK to be returned. Problem is, last month the Irish High Court had ruled that the UK was itself ‘not a safe country’ to return migrants, precisely because of the Rwanda scheme.
As that great Irishman Oscar Wilde wickedly said of Dickens’ account of the death of Little Nell, you would need a heart of stone not to laugh.
Deadly
In reality, we can’t know how much of this problem for Dublin is truly the result of the Rwanda scheme: it is always tempting for them to blame ‘Brexit Britain’ rather than the EU for their own policy problems.
But The Times interviewed a Jordanian, Mohammad Tbishat, who, the paper said, had been ‘prompted to flee’ from Birmingham to Dublin, via Belfast, because he had heard about the Rwanda deportation scheme: ‘If they sent me to Rwanda that would be very bad,’ he said.
The paper also spoke to a number of would-be ‘boat people’ in Calais, including an Iranian called Armin Rezaie, who said: ‘We are looking for a better life and we thought we could get it in Britain. But if they are going to send us to Rwanda, I may stay in France.’
This is the point which always needs to be made to those who regard the Rwanda scheme as immoral. Not only is the illegally-trafficked journey, which it is designed to deter, a frequently deadly one (once again demonstrated last week with the death of five migrants during an attempt to cross the Channel), these people have already reached a safe country where their lives are not at risk: France.
Sunak’s policy is certainly more humane than that set out by the Deputy Leader of Reform UK, Ben Habib.
Last week, after the party’s Leader, Richard Tice, had denounced the Rwanda scheme as useless and said that, instead, the ‘boats’ should just be ‘turned round’ mid-Channel, I explained here how this was indeed the original Conservative plan.
However, the Boris Johnson administration came up against the Royal Navy and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, both of which insisted this idea was not only impractical but also potentially lethal. The Rwanda scheme was designed only after the ‘turn back’ idea was rejected by the Navy.
Exposed
In an interview on Talk TV, Habib elaborated on his party’s ‘turn back’ policy, arguing that if one of the dinghies was sinking, those in it should not be picked up by Royal Navy or Border Force vessels, but somehow supplied, mid-channel, with another dinghy.
And what, asked his interviewer, Julia Hartley-Brewer, if they scuppered that replacement dinghy? Should they be left to drown? Habib responded: ‘If they choose to scupper that dinghy then, yes, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions.’
It does not reflect well on Reform UK that it should advocate a policy which, on this account, would actually require the Navy or Border Force to leave people to drown when they could be rescued.
But it is the Labour Party which will be the most exposed in its opposition to the Rwanda scheme, should the flights, against the odds, take place on the scale outlined by Sunak.
Not only have Keir Starmer and his team argued that the policy will fail to act as any sort of deterrent, the Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, recently reiterated that, come what may, Labour, if elected to government, would discontinue such flights to Rwanda.
Instead, Labour says that it would find a way of getting the European Union to take back those migrants who came here illegally.
The best of luck with that. No, if the Rwanda scheme really does take off (in every sense), Labour will find that their friends in the EU will be looking to emulate Rishi Sunak’s approach.
As for British voters, I suspect the overwhelming majority won’t believe it until they see it — the planes actually going to Rwanda, that is. But the political ground is already shifting.