Priti Patel’s ambition to send asylum seekers as far away from the UK mainland as she can has a history. Two years ago, the home secretary looked at shipping Channel migrants to processing centres from north Africa to the South Atlantic. Those ideas eventually bit the dust, on grounds that included the scheme’s inhumanity, impracticability and eye-watering costs. But Ms Patel has never been one to let the facts get in the way of a wicked idea.
On Thursday, the home secretary announced in Kigali that, in return for £120m of development aid, Rwanda will accept the transfer of UK asylum seekers. This is a much more sweeping approach, since it apparently involves no asylum claim processing. That makes it simply an expulsion exercise, which, apart from any other objections, carries many colonial-era echoes.
