Far from “chaos” and a “significant and embarrassing blow for Boris Johnson”, I think this government’s plan is proceeding just as they would like (Rwanda asylum flight cancelled after 11th-hour ECHR intervention, 14 June). Immigration doesn’t bother them, but voters’ perception of it does. So now the whole issue can be blamed on European courts and “lefty lawyers”.
Drawing on the vast reserves of white British racism, the Tories can now re-enter their favourite role as victim and beat the racist drum. For them, this will hopefully drown out Partygate, the cost of living crisis, Northern Ireland and all other Brexit-related economic chaos. Look forward to another snappy three-word slogan (“Get migrants out”?). Despite protests from bishops and anyone else with a conscience, it will probably work.
Tom Lerwill
Oswestry, Shropshire
• Our outrage about the government’s Rwanda asylum policy is just playing into the hands of ministers, who want to be seen to be doing something determined, regardless of the consequences. Even if individual legal challenges are somehow circumvented, the plan will still not work. Such deportations will only act as a deterrent if they happen at scale – 25,000 asylum seekers a year, let’s say, half of those likely to claim asylum. Even if there were 100 on each flight (unlikely), that’s 250 flights a year. This could only be implemented by the UK government with very large private sector involvement that is unlikely to be forthcoming.
What is also likely are suicides among those in detention, as we have seen in the Australian scheme, and many more fatalities at sea, as boats will come at night, over longer routes, seeking to avoid UK border forces. This would eventually shame the government into thinking again, but the human cost would be terrible. So let’s just dismantle the business plan, if one exists at all.
John Morrison
Author, The Cost of Survival: The Trafficking of Refugees to the UK
• In the deluge of outraged reaction across the nation to the government’s obscenely desperate race to get even just one person on Tuesday’s flight to Rwanda, at whatever moral and financial cost, the revelations of your secret Home Office staffer are of crucial significance (We are the civil servants who put up ‘Go home Paddington’ notices in revolt, 13 June).
When the very people who operate the government’s policies start to jib at their cruelty, injustice, possible illegality and blatant discrimination (the only reason Ukrainians aren’t coming in small boats is that they have been allowed to arrive safely), perhaps there is a smidgen of hope that this might turn out to be the moment at which the hostile environment and its appalling offspring, the nationality and borders bill, started to come unstuck.
We must loudly encourage this brave defiance – it may be the beat of the butterfly’s wings that could finally bring down the whole brutal edifice of this government’s morally bereft asylum policy.
Felicity Laurence
Hastings, East Sussex
• This Humpty Dumpty government is able to believe two contradictory propositions. One, that Rwanda offers asylum seekers the opportunity to rebuild their lives in a supportive environment. Two, that being sent there is so awful that they will be put off trying to reach the UK, putting traffickers out of business.
John Ling
Harrow, London
• Liz Truss said a near-empty flight to Rwanda would still be “value for money”. Behind this statement stands the government’s position on human life, as a monetary commodity. It is incompetent and indifferent. A lethal combination.
Rosie Clinton
Newcastle upon Tyne
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