Humanity isn’t the Home Office’s strongest suit. But then, neither is communication. Last week Richard Harrington, the refugees minister, was asked by the broadcaster LBC if the government had any plans to offshore refugees to Rwanda. He replied with an unambiguous no. He had no clue where such an idea might have come from. No one in the Home Office had discussed anything like this with him. It was a non-story; scare tactics from paranoid liberals trying to discredit Priti Patel. Not that the home secretary needs any help. She never fails to discredit herself.
Cue 10 days later and Boris Johnson was at a hangar in Lydd, Kent, to announce what he tried to convince a few bored service personnel and a handful of sceptical hacks was the new outpost of Butlin’s in Kigali. A pleasure palace for refugees more than 5,000 miles away. In a country where the problem was well out of sight of British eyes. God forbid that any Brits might have to encounter desperate people fleeing war and persecution.
