Rishi Sunak is beginning to realize that the Conservative Party has been turning into an ungovernable beast for years. The hard wing of the Tories destroyed any hint of a moderate right in their eagerness to push through Brexit and are now determined to thwart any attempt at compromise in the face of the migration crisis. The prime minister this week sought to salvage the plan to deport irregular immigrants to Rwanda, which was declared illegal by the Supreme Court last month, using a two-pronged strategy. Home Secretary James Cleverly made a quick trip to Kigali this Tuesday to negotiate a new contract with the African country’s government that will try to address concerns raised by the British justice system. The agreement included, among other things, the guarantee that Rwanda could not send deportees back to their countries of origin if their freedom or physical integrity were threatened.
At the same time, this Wednesday in the House of Commons, the British government urgently pushed through a text of legislation ensuring that Rwanda was a safe third country, and called on the various ministries and courts to ignore the provisions of the Human Rights Rights – the text that enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights in implements British law – against any claims or appeals against future deportations to the African country. “The new law makes it clear without the slightest ambiguity that Rwanda is a safe country and thus prevents the courts from independently interpreting the will of Parliament,” Cleverly assured this Wednesday when presenting the text to MPs.
Aware that his political future is at stake unless he convinces the most reactionary part of the Tories to support the new law in Parliament, Sunak has decided to appear before the media this Thursday to support the alleged to defend the strength and effectiveness of its strategy. “Our courts will no longer be able to use national or international law, including human rights law, to prevent us from deporting illegal immigrants,” Sunak defended in an intervention in which he sought to explicitly set out the level of harshness of their courts’ measures. “Any attempt [por parte de los inmigrantes irregulares] Apply for asylum: blocked. Any strategy that involves abusing current modern slavery laws. cordoned off. The mere suggestion that Rwanda is not a safe country will also be blocked.” The Prime Minister described one after another the obstacles created to prevent an immigrant from using legal means to avoid his deportation.
Not only that. Sunak sought the complicity of the hardliners in the party with the threat that sounds best to his ears: “Even with this new law there is a risk of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.” So repeat I, what I said two weeks ago: I will not allow a foreign court to block these flights. [a Ruanda]. “If the Strasbourg Court decides to intervene against the express will of our sovereign Parliament, I will do everything necessary to get the planes to take off,” threatened the Prime Minister.
The first resignation
The most reactionary wing of the Tories didn’t take the bait. Led by former home secretary Suella Braverman, she called on Sunak to remove the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights. They represent the only way to prevent the post-Ruada deportation policy from being obstructed by justice again, since the new law announced by the government does not prevent immigrants from appealing to the Strasbourg Court or to the British courts themselves. question the government’s deviation from its obligations on matters of international law.
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The first to predict the rebellion against Sunak was the previous immigration minister Robert Jenrick. As soon as the new law was announced, he submitted his resignation in a letter to Sunak in which he suggested that the new strategy was doomed to fail. “The law you propose represents a triumph of voluntariness over experience. The risks facing the country are too great for us not to take tougher measures to avoid this constant treadmill of legal remedies that threaten to paralyze the adopted plan . [las deportaciones a Ruanda] and its deterrent effect,” Jenrick wrote.
The Prime Minister met this Wednesday with a group of Conservative MPs to persuade them to support the new law. It was as far as he could go, he told them. Among other things, because the government of Rwanda itself had made it clear that it would not work with London if it turned away from such relevant international legislation as the European Convention on Human Rights. Sunak assured his party colleagues that Jenrick’s demands would have meant “destroying the entire strategy” and that there was no point in “passing a law that would have destroyed the ability to send immigrants anywhere.”
He failed to convince the most reactionary members of his party, led by former home secretary Suella Braverman, who expelled Sunak from government last month after months of controversial statements and confrontations with institutions of all kinds. “The proposed law will enable a whole range of legal rights and more litigation,” he said on the BBC this Thursday. “We are all Conservatives and I want the Prime Minister to keep his promise to stop boats arriving [con inmigrantes irregulares a bordo]. He said he would do whatever it took. And I explained to him what he had to do. “I ask you to listen to well-meaning party colleagues who want us to win the election again,” Braverman said in a tone designed to disguise his clear challenge to Sunak’s leadership.
The vote on the new law scheduled in the next few days will once again put the Conservative Party under extreme tension. The most moderate MPs have already expressed their support for the text, but there are dozens of Tory figures who are convinced that the fight against irregular immigration is an existential question for the party that must be resolved before it enters will go to the elections in a year.
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