Recent prime ministers have been all too obviously thrilled by the adrenaline rush of the flak jacket and international conflict. One or two others have preferred the more cerebral challenge of the British constitution’s Rubik’s-cube intricacies. Neither of these, though, has ever seemed like an issue that floats Rishi Sunak’s boat. Instead, this prime minister has always appeared far more interested in new technology, economic theory and mastering the detail, rather than national security policy or political checks and balances.
Yet now, at the start of 2024, Sunak finds himself out of his managerialist comfort zone. Instead, he is increasingly reliant on defiant public postures on both military action and the constitution. In the former case he has taken on the improbable mantle of a warrior leading a bombing campaign against Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. In the latter, equally awkwardly, he is now casting himself as a populist hammer of the House of Lords in the pursuit of his Rwanda policy.
Both are stances without vision. Both are thrust on Sunak by other failures. Both tell us more about the floundering nature of his prime ministership, which a handful of second-order politicians such as David Frost and Simon Clarke seem determined to terminate, than about any flowering.
It will be useful to keep this in mind next week when the so-called safety of Rwanda bill reaches the House of Lords. The bill, which gives the government the power to deport refugees and migrants to Rwanda, has struggled to get through the House of Commons in the face of rightwing opposition. It now faces an equally tough passage through the upper chamber, starting on Monday with its second reading. Anyone who believes that the parliamentary climax of the Rwanda issue has already been reached may have another think coming.
The bill will be in the Lords for at least a month. It would be surprising if it were not significantly amended during February’s committee stage. After all, the Lords have already defeated the government on a closely connected issue this week. On Monday, peers voted by a majority of 43 for an all-party motion, moved by the former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith, not to ratify the UK-Rwanda treaty (on which the Rwanda safety bill is based) until the treaty’s new protections, many of which are a response to the supreme court’s verdict last year, have been properly implemented. If this is also the mood when the Lords debates amendments to the bill, then further government defeats will surely follow.
The government’s line is already clear. In his press conference after his nail-biting Commons victory last week, Sunak said “only one question” was any longer at stake. Would the appointed House of Lords “try and frustrate the will of the people as expressed by the elected house?”. The Home Office minister Lord Sharpe took this line in the debate on the Goldsmith motion this week. So, on social media, did Nigel Farage, who demanded the sacking of all peers after the government was defeated. Prepare to hear plenty more of it in the weeks to come.
Sunak is right that the willingness of the Lords to challenge the Rwanda bill is a real question. But it is not the only one, and certainly not in the terms he is posing it. Yes, the unelected nature of the upper house is an obvious affront to Britain’s status as a democracy. But the affront is hardly new.
What is more, the last five Conservative governments have done precisely nothing to change it. On the contrary, they have made the affront worse. David Cameron, now a notable beneficiary of the system himself, pulled the rug from under the Lords reform when he was prime minister in 2012. The issue has been off the Conservative agenda ever since. Its abandonment paved the way for the many ennoblement abuses committed in the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss eras.
Sunak could have taken a stand against those corruptions. He did not do so. It is therefore a bit rich for him to rail against the appointed upper house when he himself is currently doing the appointing. Since 2010, Britain’s five Conservative prime ministers have created more than 200 new Tory life peerages.
And the rate of these appointments is rising. Sunak has been prime minister for a mere 15 months, yet he is already on the verge of surpassing the number of Tory peers that the more modest Theresa May appointed in three years. He also knows, if the Conservatives lose the election, that even more of his former MPs, advisers and donors will soon be lobbying him for their ermine in his dissolution list.
The case for reforming the UK’s upper chamber is very strong. But that is not the case Sunak is making. There are other big constitutional issues at stake in the Rwanda bill too. They include the government’s attempt to exclude domestic and European courts from the law, and the importance of adherence to international treaties and conventions. There is also the issue highlighted by Goldsmith’s motion this week. If parliament has no effective rights over our treaties, then the will of the people that Sunak is invoking counts for little.
In its desperation to send some refugees to central Africa before the next election, the government and the Commons have brushed all these principles to one side. The Lords should not do the same. The upper chamber in its present form should be history. But hold your nose a little longer. While it exists, it is entitled to do its job, to do it properly, and to be supported for its efforts.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
