Good morning. Every time the government’s beleaguered Rwanda policy returns to the top of the political agenda, it seems a little more abstracted from the human stories that really lie at the centre of it. Tomorrow, Rishi Sunak will bring his deportation plan for a vote in the House of Commons, and the headlines today largely reflect the question of whether he can survive the war between his party’s backbench factions. Meanwhile, the 175,000 people who were awaiting a decision on their asylum applications at the end of June are rarely more than a statistic.
This year’s Guardian and Observer charity appeal is intended as a corrective to that imbalance. The three charity partners – Refugee Councils of Britain, Refugees at Home, and Naccom (the No Accommodation Network) – are driven by “the principle of offering protection to refugees, and supporting them to rebuild their lives in safety”, our editor Katharine Viner wrote on Friday. In a political climate of overwhelming hostility, where cartoon murals at a children’s asylum centre are painted over on a minister’s orders and the Home Office has instructed that bedroom TVs on a barge housing 500 men remain unplugged, that principle is more important than ever.
