Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he is not giving up on deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda and suggested he would be willing to change British laws to make it happen, as he tried to stave off a furious backlash on the right of his Conservative Party after the Supreme Court ruled his plan was illegal.
Sunak told lawmakers he is “unwavering” in his commitment to stop migrants arriving in small boats across the English Channel. In a tense session of Parliament hours after the highest court quashed his Rwanda plan, the premier said ministers are working on a new treaty with the east African nation to address the judges’ concerns. He later told reporters that would be backed by emergency legislation in Parliament to asset that the Rwanda plan is “safe.”
“It will ensure that people cannot further delay flights by bringing systemic challenges in our domestic courts and stop our policy being repeatedly blocked,” he said in a televised press conference. He also echoed his suggestion from the House of Commons earlier, that he is prepared to “revisit” the UK’s international relationships if they prevent the plan, without giving details.
Sunak is facing a moment of maximum political danger. The court’s decision to block the cornerstone of his pledge to “stop the boats” — one of five he’s asked voters to judge him by ahead of a general election expected next year — plays directly into the febrile Tory mood since he fired Suella Braverman on Monday. The former home secretary, a darling among party populists, had raised the stakes ahead of the Rwanda ruling by unleashed a stream of invective against Sunak and warning he had no “credible Plan B” if the government lost.
The problem for Sunak as he tries to quell the anger is that it’s far from clear a new treaty with Rwanda will satisfy the courts, or that his MPs will be bought off by an unspecified promise to change UK laws if it doesn’t. A primary concern set out by the Supreme Court was that asylum seekers processed in Rwanda risked being sent back to their home countries — known as “refoulement.”
Given how emphatic the judgment was, it’s an “uphill battle” for the government to persuade the courts, said Joelle Grogan, legal expert and head of research at UK in a Changing Europe. It will also take huge investment for the UK to boost Rwanda’s asylum processing capacity and that will not happen in the short- or medium-term, she said.
Home Secretary James Cleverly later told the Commons the treaty aims to guarantee that people Britain sends to Rwanda could not be re-deported to countries other than the UK. Yet it’s not clear that even then, courts would rule in favor of the government if deportees appeal, while time is running out for the government to show progress before the election.
Downing Street had been hoping for a more mixed Supreme Court verdict to make it easier to resolve, according to interviews with six people familiar with the internal deliberations over the case. Given the ruling was more damning than hoped, any attempt to deport people to Rwanda under a treaty would still be open to legal challenge, they said.
A former home office official put the odds of a Rwanda flight before the election at less than 10%. Another government official said Sunak’s gambit would not work, and that the prime minister was trying to buy time.
But time appears in short supply as right-wing Tories plot their next moves.
“We should just put the planes in the air now and force them to go to Rwanda,” Lee Anderson, brought in by Sunak as deputy party chairman to mollify the populist fringe, told Bloomberg. “The government should ignore the law and send them back now. These people are intruders and should be sent back.”
One Tory Member of Parliament told Bloomberg privately they would be submitting a letter of no-confidence in Sunak’s leadership to Graham Brady, who chairs the party’s backbench committee which oversees leadership elections. A small group of Tory MPs met this week, deciding to submit no confidence letters in Sunak, and attempt to coordinate further letters from colleagues, people familiar with the meeting said.
Andrea Jenkyns, who has already submitted a letter of no-confidence in Sunak, told GB News around six colleagues are preparing to join her. Under party rules, 53 Tory MPs must send a letter to Brady to prompt a confidence vote in Sunak.
Some Tory MPs are also calling on Sunak to push through new domestic human rights legislation to override the UK’s international obligations, at the same time as the government works on the new Rwanda treaty.
The immediate source of their anger is the thousands of immigrants who have crossed the channel from France in recent years. Home Office and Border Force data show 26,699 people arrived in small boats in the first ten months of the year, down a third on last year but still the second-highest figure ever.
Trailing the opposition Labour Party by about 20 points in opinion polls, the Tories see tackling immigration as a classic wedge issue. Their view is bolstered by a recent YouGov poll showing 48% of voters support the Rwanda plan, compared with 35% who don’t.
Yet for some Tory MPs, the argument goes beyond immigration into a broader question of sovereignty, and is intertwined with the old arguments over Brexit.
“This feels absolutely existential for our party,” Tory MP Danny Kruger told Bloomberg. “If the prime minister won’t step up there is no reason for the public to ever trust us again.”
Former Cabinet minister Simon Clarke told Sky News that if Sunak refuses to pass a law ignoring the European Convention on Human Rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention, it would be a “confidence issue in his judgment as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party.”
Kruger and another Tory, Bill Cash, said Britain should now leave the ECHR — something that’s also being pushed by Braverman. While the UK court case is a separate issue, it’s linked because the Strasbourg court which oversees the convention has previously blocked the government’s Rwanda deportation flights.
All of which risks pushing Sunak into uncomfortable political territory. If he attempts to satisfy the right by taking Britain out of the the ECHR and other international obligations, he risks antagonizing the centrists in his party, because the convention is woven into the UK’s 1998 Human Rights Act and the peace deal for Northern Ireland known as the Good Friday Agreement.
“We are not going to put forward proposals simply to manufacture an unnecessary row for political gain,” Cleverly told Parliament, adding that the court ruling does not make it “necessary” to leave the ECHR.
But Sunak’s team faces a battle to persuade his MPs of that. Asked about the growing right-wing anger during a regular briefing with reporters, his press secretary said she would urge MPs to wait until the prime minister’s press conference later Wednesday before reaching any conclusions.
--With assistance from Emily Ashton, Joe Mayes and Eamon Akil Farhat.
(Updates with Sunak’s comment in third paragraph.)
Author: Kitty Donaldson, Alex Wickham, Ellen Milligan and Alex Morales