Lawyers prepare for legal battles on behalf of individual asylum seekers challenging removal to east Africa
Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill will become law after peers eventually backed down on amending it, opening the way for legal battles over the potential removal of dozens of people seeking asylum.
After a marathon battle of “ping pong” over the key legislation between the Commons and the Lords, the bill finally passed when opposition and crossbench peers gave way on Monday night.
The bill is expected to be granted royal assent on Tuesday. Home Office sources said they have already identified a group of asylum seekers with weak legal claims to remain in the UK who will be part of the first tranche to be sent to east Africa in July.
Sunak has put the bill, which would deport asylum seekers who arrive in the UK by irregular means to Kigali, at the centre of his attempts to stop small boats crossing the Channel.
Just to fill in the background here, this wacko policy was introduced by Boris Johnson at some point in order to score some political points in one 24hr news cycle or another. Since then it’s been championed by two of the most far-right Home Secretaries in the history of the office, with Braverman making it a wedge issue for the Tory party. Earlier this year, Sunak needed the support of the far right of his party, and he promised this bill to get that support. So, even though the law is “batshit” according to the current Home Secretary (yes that’s real) we are going ahead with it purely because it’s the only way to keep this government together for as long as possible. That is a maximum of eight months until the last possible moment they are forced to call an election.
To summarise: the UK government is breaking international law and subverting its own Supreme Court, along with any number of democratic processes, in order to push through a cruel, ludicrous and counterproductively expensive law just in order to hold on to power for weight months.
To summarise the summary: FUCK the Tories.
I’ve seen it suggested that he might call an election sooner than later, to avoid the possibility of this failing (more so than it already has), but there have also been several other times when it’s seemed like there might be an election and nothing happened. Seems like Sunak is just waiting/hoping for something he can tout as a win and try to go into an election on the back of it, presumably in an attempt to minimise the losses. The budget certainly didn’t do it for them, and I can’t see this broadly unpopular ‘win’ being it either, but really what else is there that he can point to at this stage?
The current policy at this point seems to be hope something happens that makes the public see them in a good light.
They had hoped that labor would get themselves a bit of a mess about anti-Semitism over Israel. That hasn’t really worked because their own party has shot them in the foot on that one, by calling protesters radicals. They really are their own worst enemies.
And it probably won’t hold them together anyway. The far right have shown in the past that they are completely incapable of being satiated. Short of bringing back hangings for people whose faces don’t fit they won’t be happy.
A competent prime minister would have told them to go spin on it. Since what they going to do, break up the party, the conservatives are doomed anyway.