Fanning flames with latest harebrained plan

Boris Johnson gestured at a model plane sat on the Tarmac at Lydd Airport.

It’s hard to know what he was saying. Perhaps: “I wonder how many asylum seekers we could cram into that? Haha!”

He’d been whisked into Kent to announce the government’s latest hare-brained immigration scheme. The difference this time? It will happen.

At least according to Johnson and Priti Patel. So it won’t.

Previously a wave machine and a volcano in the the Atlantic were mooted. In fact, almost the only thing the government hasn’t suggested is widely considered to be the only workable solution: safe routes.

Despite the PM’s bluster about people using proper channels, of the 3,187 Iranians who came in the 18 months to last autumn (the largest group) one got in through the official route.

Maybe they were all cheats? Well last year two thirds of all arrivals were judged to be genuine, so that’s highly unlikely.

Still, voters care about this stuff, right? Not really. Polling shows it’s not even a top 10 issue.

At the end of a week in which the government has been told flying asylum seekers to Rwanda will break the law, the Archbishop of

Canterbury used his

Easter Sunday address to say it was “ungodly”.

Labour’s response was to call Johnson’s bluff; a “desperate attempt to distract”, said Keir Starmer.

In a strange way that’s a worse scenario, one which would require Number 10 to use desperate people as pawns in a political game, dousing the flames of a ferocious immigration debate with copious amounts of petrol.

‘Still, voters care about this stuff, right? Not really. Polling shows it’s not even a top 10 issue’