Since the government unveiled a deal with the Rwandan government to deport asylum seekers there, almost two months ago, the chorus of dismay it prompted has only grown louder. The first flight is supposed to go in a week. It is not too late for ministers to abandon their cruel scheme and, regardless of Boris Johnson’s fate, this is what should happen.
The 1951 refugee convention has set the standard for the way that governments should deal with people fleeing persecution in other countries for more than 70 years. Mr Johnson is far from the first prime minister to show disdain for these rules and for the lawyers whose job it is to fight for them. But he and his home secretary, Priti Patel, have surpassed their predecessors in the opportunistic way that they have approached this issue, by reducing a complex set of problems to the criminal acts of people smugglers. Mercifully the “turnaround tactic” of pushing small boats back into French waters was withdrawn before a judicial review.
