Simon Clarke is a former Levelling-Up Secretary, and is MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.
I visited a small business in Guisborough on Thursday, whose owner was celebrating 50 years in business. Gordon told me what his father had told him when he first started out: “You haven’t got a name to make. You have a name to lose.”
Those words are much on my mind this week. For it is devastatingly clear that the Conservative Party has lost its good name among the very voters who put their trust in us in 2019 – that extraordinary coalition of northern and Midlands Leave-voting towns together with our traditional southern and eastern shire base, which offered the chance of a political realignment for a generation.
Anyone who has seen the 14,000 sample Daily Telegraph/YouGov poll – the largest such undertaken for five years – should be in no doubt. On our current trajectory, the Conservative Party is heading for absolute obliteration later this year, winning almost exactly the same number of seats as John Major in 1997, and gifting Labour control of our country for years to come.
There are many reasons why we have suffered electorally over recent years. I continue to believe removing Boris Johnson was an act of collective madness. I also believe strongly that action to lower the burden of tax and to show that we will govern as Conservatives is vital.
But the principal reason for our collapsing electoral base, and the damaging surge in votes for Reform UK, is because nobody believes we can stop illegal immigration.
We need to stop the small boat crossings that are making a mockery of our borders. Rishi Sunak is absolutely right about that, I believe it passionately myself and I hear it from my constituents every week on the doorsteps of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.
Sending people who come here illegally to Rwanda is the best way to do this.
There’s lots more we are doing, including work with European law enforcement agencies, which means crossings are down by a third on 2022, but the single best way to stop the crossings at source is if we can send the clear message that coming here illegally won’t mean you get to stay here.
So this week, I will be supporting a series of amendments to the legislation the Prime Minister has brought forward in response to the court judgements that have so far prevented this from happening. And if they aren’t accepted, I will be unable to support his bill. Why?
Because although the new law would be the toughest ever, it is all too probable it still won’t work.
There are two main reasons for this. The former Immigration Minister Rob Jenrick, who resigned late last year when he saw the legislation, explains:
“As currently drafted, every single small boat arrival will be able to concoct a personal reason for why Rwanda is unsafe for them and they can’t be removed. This will lead to individuals being taken off flights, the courts being overwhelmed and the operational collapse of the policy, with illegal arrivals being released on bail from detention as the backlog of hearings grow.“
As night follows day, the Strasbourg Court will again issue interim judgments of the sort that grounded the first attempted Rwanda flight in the summer of 2022. Currently, ministers are only permitted to ignore such measures in a very limited set of circumstances and the highly contested legal advice ministers are bound by is that even to exercise such power would be a breach of international law. In practice, I know the instances this will be used are vanishingly rare, if ever, and so the policy will fail upon first contact with reality.”
That’s why I have joined Rob and over 50 Conservative MPs in tabling a series of amendments to close these loopholes.
We need to significantly limit the scope for these personal claims against removal and we need to make it clear ministers will disregard injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights.
We will vote on these amendments today and tomorrow this week.
My test for my actions this week is very simple. It’s not “is it the toughest legislation ever?” It’s certainly not “is this as far as Rishi Sunak is prepared to go?” It’s “will this legislation work?”
Unless it will, I do not see how I can give it my support. I believe passionately in our national sovereignty, and at the heart of that must be whether the United Kingdom can control its own borders.
We have tried twice before to pass laws to enact the Rwanda policy. I do not believe the public should have to suffer a third failure in 2024.
At the moment, the Government’s own assessment is that the bill as drafted has only a 50/50 chance of success. For me, that’s simply not good enough.
There are no guarantees in politics, as in life, but I owe it to the people who send me to Westminster, who have put their trust in me to act as I know they wish to be represented, to be able to look them in the eye and say that I sincerely believe our new law will work.
If our amendments are rejected, and I can’t do that, then I can’t vote for it.
I don’t know yet how this week will unfold. All outcomes are possible and I hope sincerely that the Government will accept improvements to the legislation.
But if things go wrong, there are a number of us who have shown before, just as we did on Theresa May’s soft Brexit legislation, that we won’t hesitate to act on principle to actually get things done.
We were right then and we were right now. The public is absolutely exhausted of politicians who are only prepared to offer half measures, and to see our country limp along in a stupor of inaction and failure.
Enough. We either amend this bill so that it will work, or we face utter disaster when it becomes clear over the months ahead that it does not deliver. Many of us will not stand idly by and let that happen.
Simon Clarke is a former Levelling-Up Secretary, and is MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.
I visited a small business in Guisborough on Thursday, whose owner was celebrating 50 years in business. Gordon told me what his father had told him when he first started out: “You haven’t got a name to make. You have a name to lose.”
Those words are much on my mind this week. For it is devastatingly clear that the Conservative Party has lost its good name among the very voters who put their trust in us in 2019 – that extraordinary coalition of northern and Midlands Leave-voting towns together with our traditional southern and eastern shire base, which offered the chance of a political realignment for a generation.
Anyone who has seen the 14,000 sample Daily Telegraph/YouGov poll – the largest such undertaken for five years – should be in no doubt. On our current trajectory, the Conservative Party is heading for absolute obliteration later this year, winning almost exactly the same number of seats as John Major in 1997, and gifting Labour control of our country for years to come.
There are many reasons why we have suffered electorally over recent years. I continue to believe removing Boris Johnson was an act of collective madness. I also believe strongly that action to lower the burden of tax and to show that we will govern as Conservatives is vital.
But the principal reason for our collapsing electoral base, and the damaging surge in votes for Reform UK, is because nobody believes we can stop illegal immigration.
We need to stop the small boat crossings that are making a mockery of our borders. Rishi Sunak is absolutely right about that, I believe it passionately myself and I hear it from my constituents every week on the doorsteps of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.
Sending people who come here illegally to Rwanda is the best way to do this.
There’s lots more we are doing, including work with European law enforcement agencies, which means crossings are down by a third on 2022, but the single best way to stop the crossings at source is if we can send the clear message that coming here illegally won’t mean you get to stay here.
So this week, I will be supporting a series of amendments to the legislation the Prime Minister has brought forward in response to the court judgements that have so far prevented this from happening. And if they aren’t accepted, I will be unable to support his bill. Why?
Because although the new law would be the toughest ever, it is all too probable it still won’t work.
There are two main reasons for this. The former Immigration Minister Rob Jenrick, who resigned late last year when he saw the legislation, explains:
That’s why I have joined Rob and over 50 Conservative MPs in tabling a series of amendments to close these loopholes.
We need to significantly limit the scope for these personal claims against removal and we need to make it clear ministers will disregard injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights.
We will vote on these amendments today and tomorrow this week.
My test for my actions this week is very simple. It’s not “is it the toughest legislation ever?” It’s certainly not “is this as far as Rishi Sunak is prepared to go?” It’s “will this legislation work?”
Unless it will, I do not see how I can give it my support. I believe passionately in our national sovereignty, and at the heart of that must be whether the United Kingdom can control its own borders.
We have tried twice before to pass laws to enact the Rwanda policy. I do not believe the public should have to suffer a third failure in 2024.
At the moment, the Government’s own assessment is that the bill as drafted has only a 50/50 chance of success. For me, that’s simply not good enough.
There are no guarantees in politics, as in life, but I owe it to the people who send me to Westminster, who have put their trust in me to act as I know they wish to be represented, to be able to look them in the eye and say that I sincerely believe our new law will work.
If our amendments are rejected, and I can’t do that, then I can’t vote for it.
I don’t know yet how this week will unfold. All outcomes are possible and I hope sincerely that the Government will accept improvements to the legislation.
But if things go wrong, there are a number of us who have shown before, just as we did on Theresa May’s soft Brexit legislation, that we won’t hesitate to act on principle to actually get things done.
We were right then and we were right now. The public is absolutely exhausted of politicians who are only prepared to offer half measures, and to see our country limp along in a stupor of inaction and failure.
Enough. We either amend this bill so that it will work, or we face utter disaster when it becomes clear over the months ahead that it does not deliver. Many of us will not stand idly by and let that happen.