Sunak's Stop the Boats policy is all at sea

Once again the judiciary brings the government to heel and the civil war in the Tory party just got hotter

Boris Johnson’s immediate response to the ruling by Britain’s Supreme Court that Rwanda is not a safe country to send asylum seekers to is: get Parliament to declare that Rwanda is safe. Abracadabra. Just like that as the late, great comedian Tommy Cooper would say.

Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, it seems is also taken with the preposterous idea that an Act of Parliament in Britain will make a small country in Africa safer. Westminster law won’t change the facts in Rwanda.

But it’s not really a laughing matter. The flow of asylum seekers and refugees around the globe is a huge problem not least for the tide of humanity trying to find shelter and somewhere they can call home from war, prejudice and instability.

It’s also an acute political problem for the liberal West. The sight of refugees in small boats trying to cross the Channel or the Aegean or the Mediterranean (and all-too-often dying in the attempt) has turbo-charged the wave of populism that has washed over Europe. It is a gift to far right.

Politicians like Victor Orban in Hungary, Giorgia Meloni in Italy and the aforesaid Johnson in the UK feed off these tragic odysseys which they characterise as invasions. Their stock-in-trade is wedge politics. Immigration or the fear of immigration played a big part in Brexit.

(The irony, of course, is that Brexit is actually what started the small boats crisis. Before Brexit all EU countries had what is known as a return agreement with each other. Under this immigrants could be returned to the first safe country they had entered.

When the UK left the EU this arrangement fell away opening the door to people smuggling gangs. There were no small boats in 2017 ( the year after Britain voted to leave the EU) or before. In 2022 over 45,000 people crossed the channel in dinghies.) Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leadser, will try and resurrect this if he wins power.

As it is the Supreme Court ruling leaves the government’s policy in pieces. This judgement by Britain’s senior justices is about as damning and as comprehensive as can be.

Here are the guts of the court’s unanimous decision:

"There is a legal rule that refugees must not be returned to their countries of origin, either directly or indirectly, if their life or freedom would be threatened in that country."

This is known technically as "refoulement".

"The legal test which has to be applied in this case is whether there are substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at real risk of refoulement. The Court of Appeal concluded that there were such grounds. We are unanimously of the view that they are entitled to reach that conclusion."

Rwanda, in other words, is not a safe place. Sending asylum seekers there would expose them to a regime with a poor human rights record, inadequate protection and a high risk of being sent back to the country from which they fled.

This is hardly surprising. Paul Kagame, in effect Rwanda’s President-for-life, has a blemished human rights record. He has been a spy, a warlord and, following the Rwandan genocide, vice-president and president.

He’s bright and has transformed Rwanda from a Third World backwater to a prospective middle-income country or so he claims. Kagame is a PR agency’s dream and Rwanda the darling of the development community.

But there is a darker side to Kagame the strongman. Opposition is largely suppressed. This includes multiple reports of extra-judicial killings. His political opponents claim the country’s economic figures are massaged and that it is much poorer than the official statistics suggest.

Which perhaps explains why the British government forked out £140m for Rwanda to host a few thousand refugees.

Stopping the small boats is one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s five pledges to turn things around. There’s very little, if anything, he can do to rescue it before the general election. It was a flagship policy and it’s holed below the waterline.

Sunak has responded by saying that Britain is working on a ‘ new treaty’ with Rwanda to address the concerns voiced by the Supreme Court. But how can it? A treaty, which admittedly has greater force than an agreement, is still a voluntary agreement between two sides.

If asylum seekers sent to Rwanda are treated in a way that breaks undertakings in such a treaty how can Britain possibly enforce these?

Supporters of the sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who pinned her colours to this particular mast with gusto, will cry betrayal. Judges are (again) being branded enemies of the people by among others the Daily Mail.

This may not play as well as the Mail thinks. People want to believe in something. Disillusioned to the back teeth by politicians, voters it seems retain a high respect for an independent judiciary. They see these constitutional elders as a reasonably fixed point in a turbulent world.

A recent YouGov poll carried out for University College London’s Constitution Unit suggests that popular support for a strong judiciary playing an effective role in governing Britain remains high.

There’s no way flights with asylum seekers on board bound for Kigale will now take off before the next election. The right will call this a defeat that sinks any hope of a Tory recovery in the so-called Red Wall working class seats of the Midlands and the North.

Letters of no confidence in the Prime Minister are trickling into the Chief Whip’s office. Just days after sacking his Home Secretary in an attempt to appear strong, Sunak looks even weaker.

Lee Anderson. the Tory party’s deputy chairman, suggests the ruling is ignored. Well he would. Right wing MPs are meeting to plan (plot might be a better word) a way forward. The slogan take back control is a dead duck.

The civil war in the Tory party just got hotter.

Withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights (EHCR), a tactic favoured by the far right, would simply make matters worse. It would undermine the Northern Ireland peace agreement ( in which the EHCR is enshrined) provoking another row with Europe.

It also runs contrary to Sunak’s reset attempt as a slightly more centrist and responsible administration. Neither James Cleverley, the new Home Secretary, nor David Cameron the former Prime Minister and his successor as Foreign Secretary, would approve.

Would-be immigrants trying to get to Britain, whether in small boats or the back of lorries, is a real problem. It requires a patient, coordinated international approach which, granted, is hard work.

But if the Tories are serious about tackling it they need to start dealing with the world as it is and not as they would like to imagine it.