Another week, another crisis in the Conservative party. This time, it was prompted by the resignation of the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, who claimed that Rishi Sunak’s emergency legislation to enact his plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda was a “triumph of hope over experience”. Rival Tory factions reportedly spent the rest of the week plotting opposing amendments to the bill for when it is introduced to the Commons on Tuesday. It is the latest manifestation of the weakness of a government riven by internal division, led by a prime minister with no strategic purpose save holding his party and his premiership together.
This is a crisis of Sunak’s own making. He is an unelected prime minister with no mandate, no coherent agenda and no answer to the profound challenges facing the country, from sluggish productivity and poor growth, to the dire state of social care, to the climate crisis. Devoid of substance, and fearful of the country’s likely verdict on his party’s increasingly wretched period in office, he is determined to make reducing migration a key election battleground.
