Closing summary
Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith resigned as deputy chairs of the Conservative party after defying Rishi Sunak by backing rightwing challenges to harden up his flagship Rwanda deportation bill.
About 60 Tory rebel MPs – including the former home secretary Suella Braverman and the former prime minister Liz Truss – backed the series of amendments tabled by the veteran Tory Sir Bill Cash and Robert Jenrick when the bill returned to the Commons on Tuesday.
Soon after Anderson and Clarke-Smith rendered their resignations, Jane Stevenson resigned as a parliamentary private secretary to Kemi Badenoch in the Department for Business and Trade. Stevenson had spoken strongly in favour of the amendments: “All of us are united in wanting a bill that works,” she said.
As the bill goes in for its third reading, the question now is how the rebel Tory MPs will vote tomorrow – there is a chance that the bill may fail yet again because some in the party feel it is not strong enough.
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The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, called the night’s events “total Tory chaos” that displayed how the prime minister is “so weak he’s lost control of [the] asylum system, border security and the whole Tory party.”
Total Tory chaos over their failing Rwanda scheme
— Yvette Cooper (@YvetteCooperMP) January 16, 2024
A scheme Rishi Sunak tried to cancel
That Home Secretary thinks is batshit
And 58 Tory MPs say won’t work
Yet taxpayer paying £400m price
PM so weak he’s lost control of asylum system, border security & the whole Tory Party
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