Amid the parliamentary theatrics surrounding the Rwanda safety bill in recent days, it has been easy to lose sight of the absurdity at its core. The Commons cannot make another country safe by declaring it so in law. The Westminster drama – backbench rebellions, frontbench resignations, frantic whipping operations – has been premised on an effort to assert something that the supreme court has already judged to be false.
That ruling should have been fatal to the government’s policy for dealing with unauthorised cross-Channel migration by deporting asylum claimants to Kigali. But Rishi Sunak was too committed to the plan, and too lacking in authority within his own party, to change course.
So Downing Street drafted legislation to make an appeal against removal on the grounds of Rwanda’s non-safety inadmissible. But the UK’s signature on international treaties prevents total elimination of refugee rights, which is why rebel Tory MPs have pushed for amendments to disregard those obligations. It is worth recapitulating that chain of events to underline how far UK politics has drifted towards routine scorn for humanitarian principles and international law.
The debate in recent months has been framed too often as a step towards fulfilment of the prime minister’s stated objective, which is to “stop the boats”. But there is no evidence that those making the journey adjust their plans in response to changing government policy. Leaked documents dating from Mr Sunak’s time at the Treasury suggest even he isn’t persuaded that there is a great deterrent effect in the Rwanda scheme.
A parliamentary battle presented by the government as a matter of border control is really a feud over British recognition of the European convention on human rights. A fringe obsession within the Conservative party, driven by a radical rightwing faction, is being played out under the camouflage of more mainstream policy concerns.
The whole process is steeped in dishonesty and misdirection. It also follows a familiar pattern. For as long as the Conservatives have been in government, the national policy agenda has been skewed by the demands that a fanatical minority of MPs make of their leaders. There was no mainstream clamour for a referendum on EU membership, but David Cameron granted one to appease his party’s Eurosceptic ultras.
The subsequent campaign and debate about how to implement the result were conducted on terms that treated the most radical Brexit stances as the median, base case. Conservative-supporting media have treated wild ideological supposition as if it were measured expertise, quoting charlatans as sages.
For more than a decade, British politics has been ratcheted rightwards. Views that were once justly deemed extreme have been normalised. And so it reaches the stage where dozens of Tory MPs are not satisfied with an already hardline bill and want to insert authoritarian clauses, sabotaging Britain’s reputation as a country that honours the rule of law.
The prime minister has not adopted the most extreme proposals put before the Commons, but he has failed to make a principled argument for keeping even the remnant of respect for international treaties and human rights preserved in the bill. That cowardice emboldens the hardliners. They might not count Mr Sunak as their ideological comrade, but they can rely on his weak leadership to continue enjoying a disproportionate and destructive purchase on British politics.
