An empty plane stranded on the runway might be a metaphor for the whole of Boris Johnson’s government, but it is also the literal outcome of Priti Patel’s refugee policy. The effort to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing was thwarted by a challenge in the European court of human rights.
The government has said it is determined to press ahead with a plan that costs tens of millions of pounds with no feasible prospect of achieving its ostensible goal – deterrence of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.
The Conservative response has been to rail against foreign incursions into national sovereignty. That was predictable, not least because obstruction by lawyers was factored into the policy’s design. Mr Johnson and Ms Patel anticipated that the Rwanda deal would provoke liberal outrage, which could then be the pretext for a culture war assault on familiar targets: the judiciary, “Europe” (conflating the ECHR with the EU, although they are separate institutions) and human rights. Downing Street has not ruled out abandoning cooperation with the Strasbourg court – an act that would put Britain in the company of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Mr Johnson believes that the advantage in defying liberal sensibilities on migration outweighs the cost to his government in pursuing a spendthrift policy that doesn’t work. The correct part of the calculation is that many voters will resent the idea of a European court telling an elected national government what it can and cannot do. The lesson of recent British history is clear on that.
But rhetorical point-scoring has limits if the policy fails. The railing and bluster merely advertise the prime minister’s impotence and incompetence. Mr Johnson should also not underestimate the breadth of opposition in principle to Britain outsourcing its treatment of refugees to a country 4,000 miles away, chosen because it was the first state to say yes – a decision expedited by transfers of public money to Kigali. It isn’t just human rights lawyers and leftwing activists who have a problem with a government approach that shuts down all legal routes to sanctuary and then applies punitive sanctions to all who seek it by other means.
The senior leadership of the Church of England has denounced the plan as “an immoral policy that shames Britain”. Prince Charles is reported to have described the scheme as “appalling”. There was a time when Conservatives might have regretted pursuing a path that alienates bishops and the heir to the throne, but Mr Johnson is not that kind of Tory. The prime minister has a more aggressive creed that pays no heed to venerable institutions, or laws. It revels in social division and conflict as ways to give definition to the leader. There is a wanton destructiveness about it that deters many traditional Conservatives.
The prime minister knows his asylum plan cannot work in practice, while gambling that it will be popular in theory. That is a grotesquely cynical way to approach government, and it might also be a political miscalculation. Those who cheer deportations to Rwanda may be the loudest faction in the Tory party. But there is another, quieter electorate that is repelled by the callous treatment of people in desperate need of help from a country that retains a stronger sense of decency and compassion than is represented in Mr Johnson’s cabinet.
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