During the early 1970s, Edward Heath tried to reform the trade unions. He failed. There wasn’t enough support for his plan in either the country or his party. During the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher tried again. She succeeded.
Now it may be that the new iteration of the Government’s illegal migration plan sails through the Commons more or less intact; then gets through the Lords, is then upheld in principle and effect by the courts – and that flights to Rwanda then take off before a late general election next autumn or winter.
But the more one thinks about it, the more one comes to suspect that the Rwanda plan, like Heath’s reforms, may be ahead of its time. Illegal immigration into Europe is rising. So are votes for populists. Something has to give. And it will surely be the matrix of refugee-related conventions and obligations created three quarters of a century ago for a different world.
Tony Blair sought to offshore some UK asylum claims in Tanzania. Israel tried a variant of the Rwanda plan. So did Denmark. Germany is exploring an offshore processing arrangement. When Boris Johnson first introduced the Rwanda scheme – “anyone entering the UK illegally…may now be relocated to Rwanda,” he said last year – he was getting ahead of the game.
“I’m not known for being tough on immigration, but we must give the Rwanda plan a chance,” Ken Clarke has written – and he was right. No-one has come up with a remotely credible alternative. Processing applications abroad would see new queues, since there is a mass of potential demand for entry, without actually stopping the boats.
EU countries are unwilling or unready or both to do deals on returns with each other – let alone with a non-member state. The policy that dare not speak its name, even among most of Britain’s noisy and influential pro-migration lobby, is effectively to abandon border control. The voters wouldn’t put up with it for a moment. As for Labour, Sir Keir Starmer has no policy, other than opportunistic oppostion.
However, the country may not yet be prepared, if the polls are right, to abandon the European Court of Human Rights. Suella Braverman’s Commons statement yesterday, in which she argued that the ECtHR empowers terrorists, rapists, murderers and paedophiles, gave a flavour of the debate to come.
But parts of the Conservative left, for understandable reasons, are unwilling to abandon the Court – even in the limited form of the notwithstanding clauses that the former Home Secretary wanted attached to the second of what will be three Government illegal migrartion Bills.
So Rishi Sunak has now sought to make the best sense that he can of the legacy that Johnson has left him. Tomorrow, Henry Hill will examine the Prime Minister’s new Bill in detail on this site. But this morning, it’s clear that what’s acceptable to, say, Victoria Prentis, the Attorney General, isn’t acceptable to Robert Jenrick, the Minister who was poised, until yesterday evening, to take the Bill through the Commons.
His resignation is the wound to Sunak that Braverman’s sacking was not. With the Prime Minister and Oliver Dowden, Jenrick was the last of three Johnson-backing musketeers – the ultimate loyalist and a Tory moderate. Some of the Prime Minister’s supporters claim that he is now driven by resentment at not being appointed to succeed Braverman last month.
However, Jenrick has been floating leaving the jurisdiction of the Court for some time. His departure has given the new Rwanda scheme a very difficult start. In particular, he will push back against one of the Government’s strongest arguments for its plan – namely, that the Rwandan Government would have pulled the plug on agreement had the scheme sought further to defy the Court or the Convention.
Much now depends on whether the New Conservatives and the European Research Group and the Common Sense Group – I confess to not always knowing the difference between the three – now follow suit. Inevitably, Bill Cash’s fabled Star Chamber will now galvanise into renewed life.
The danger for Sunak is that his new plan – which defies the Court up to a point, has been declared incompatible with the Human Rights Act, and contains some notwithstanding clauses – comes to be treated by the Spartans, or their successors, like Theresa May’s Chequers deal. Or that Labour’s front bench and Tory rebels gang up over amendments in the Commons, as they once did over John Major’s Maastricht Bill.
However, let’s assume for the moment that this doesn’t happen. Even so, it is very difficult to see the Bill passing the Lords, and there isn’t enough time left for the Government to deploy the Parliament Act. Ministers claim that the new measures will give the courts no opportunity to defy the will of the nation’s elected representatives. But we may never get to know one way or the other.
All this would be difficult enough for the Government at the best of times. But these aren’t those. The Conservatives are 19 points adrift of Labour in Politico’s poll of polls. The Conservative Party Conference, a reshuffle and the Autumn Statement have passed without them ticking up. That leaves only the Budget as a setpiece before the electoral clock stops ticking.
Some Conservative MPs says that Sir Graham Brady, like Santa Claus, is receiving a steady flow of seasonal letters. Those tempted to send one should lie down until the feeling goes away. But it would be surprising were many not, at the least, looking ahead to life after the next election – including the further number likely, in the New Year, to announce that they’re standing down.
If our survey is right, some seven in ten Tory activists want to leave the ECHR. These are the people who will decide the Conservative leadership election now likely to take place after the next election. Prospective party leaders, such as Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt, will be under pressure to suggest that they would go further than this scheme would do.
Then there is the jungle-enlarged shadow of Nigel Farage to consider. He now has celebrity status as well as name recognition – and the reception he got from party activists at this year’s Tory conference spooked party strategists. A Farage-plumped Reform Party would intensify the strain on the Prime Minister.
Sunak is finally correcting the pro-immigration drift of policy under three successive Tory leaders. No-one will have worked harder to master the detail of what, in relation to the Rwanda scheme, will work in practice and be acceptable to Parliament – which are not necessarily the same things.
Only a few months ago, most Conservatives would have bitten the proverbial arm off to have a Bill that contains within it, as this one does, provisions for ministers to disregard any Strasbourg rulings that seek to prevent removals to Rwanda – and that overrides the Human Rights Act.
But whether they react in the same way now or not, the Prime Minister’s options are narrowing. The most likely future now sees his new Bill held up in the Lords as he continues to insists that his Government will stop the boats. The only means of squaring the two would be a general election with illegal migration centre-stage.
Sunak is thus faced with an election he doesn’t want on an agenda he doesn’t like – in the sense that he would rather fight a campaign founded on steering the economy through tough times. And some Tory MPs will campaign to leave the ECHR altogether. The Prime Minister may find Heath’s face staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.