At long last, the Rwanda Bill is passed, and Rishi “enough is enough” Sunak is pledging to get “multiple flights a month” off the ground, deporting illegal migrants within 10-12 weeks. Maybe. Some see the snail’s pace at which the Bill crawled along as a belated acknowledgment that those like Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, who warned that it would only lead to a handful of symbolic flights, were right all along. Charter planes may be on standby (I hear they had trouble persuading airlines to take the job) and rejected asylum seekers will be notified that they are scheduled for deportation. Cue thousands of legal challenges as the human rights industry jealously guards its lucrative territory.
Whatever Sunak’s pledges, if we don’t leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), British courts will accept countless fantastical appeals against deportation to Rwanda by individuals who may present a burden, or even a danger, to the British people but whose “right to a family life” outweighs those considerations.
In 2020, British courts accepted the appeal of Ernesto Elliott, who claimed that deporting him to Jamaica would breach his rights, separating him from his UK-based family, including his son Nico. Elliott’s appalling record included 17 drug- and knife-related crimes in 17 years from 2003, shortly after he arrived in this country. Following a “compassionate” intervention by celebrities such as the supermodel Naomi Campbell and Labour MPs, Elliott’s lawyers lodged a successful last-minute challenge, citing Article 8 of the ECHR. Six months after this appalling villain was supposed to be returned to his native Jamaica, Elliott murdered 35-year-old Nathaniel Eyewu-Ago on a street in broad daylight. His son, Nico – he of the right to family life – was convicted alongside his father for the horrific killing. Aren’t human rights marvellous?
Smoke and mirrors, mirrors and smoke. While the Prime Minister was giving his “Stop the Boats” speech on Monday, new government figures were slipped out showing illegal arrivals are up 24 per cent so far this year. Despicable people smugglers are packing them high in flimsy craft in the calm spring weather leading to the tragic loss of five lives on Monday. Even if they manage to get a flight off the ground, Rwanda will presently manage to accommodate just one day’s worth of migrants from last weekend.
One particularly startling claim the PM made was that the backlog of asylum claims had been cleared. I take that to mean the “legacy backlog” which is approximately 100,000 old claims in the system. Cleared to where, exactly? Behind which sofa? They certainly haven’t left the country.
I’m told by a Home Office source that “pretty much all the cases have been granted the right to remain” to save the Government embarrassment in the run-up to the election. Official figures show that of the 129,407 initial asylum decisions received between April 15 2023 and April 14 2024, 89,365 were substantive decisions (grants or refusals), with a grant rate of 61 per cent. Apart from any other practical considerations, how is this safe? Mainly single, undocumented young men from countries with retrograde attitudes to women blithely waved through with minimal checking.
Just so you know, France’s asylum grant rate declined from 32 per cent to 25 per cent between 2016 and 2021. Britain is granting asylum to almost three times as many applicants as our nearest neighbour. Why? Because we are enfeebled by a liberal Government wearing a blue rosette and lack any sense of national self-preservation, that’s why. So spare us the “enough is enough” subterfuge.
This is one reason that I find myself in rare disagreement with my colleague Daniel Hannan about people who plan to vote for Reform UK in the general election. In his Telegraph column, Dan (Lord Hannan) attacked the manifesto promises of Richard Tice’s party for being undeliverable in the real world. He characterises the many Telegraph readers backing Reform as merely making a statement: “I am sick of politicians missing their immigration targets, of taxes going up while public services deteriorate, of woke BBC presenters sneering at the rest of us, of energy bills rising while other countries open coal-fired power stations. Whether or not the mainstream parties pay attention to my vote, at least my hands will be clean.”
Well, there is truth in that, but Hannan’s contention that “there are big differences between the two main parties” will cause hollow laughter in a country where taxes are at their highest level for 70 years and legal immigration last year came in at a deafening 745,000. What a kick in the teeth that was to voters who backed the Conservatives in 2019; people who put immigration top of the issues they care about.
Also, to claim that Sunak is “tightening the rules on family reunification and student visas” is pretty amusing when it was this Government that loosened those self-same rules in the first place causing a tsunami of new arrivals while public services are on their knees.
“Those who claim that the Tories are weak on immigration should name any administration in our history that has been tougher,” challenges Dan Hannan. I suggest any administration in our history has been tougher on immigration than this one, but I am prepared to be corrected.
Disdain for people who are eager to vote Reform is badly misplaced, I think. They are not fools; they know exactly what they’re doing. Most are formerly loyal Tories who dedicated time and energy to campaigning for the Right-wing values they cherish only to witness a Blair Without the Flair government. In her book Ten Years To Save The West, Liz Truss says that sticking up for lower taxes around the Cabinet table was regarded as an “extremist” position. Suella Braverman and Priti Patel were reviled and undermined as they tried every which way to bring down immigration.
Those who are done with the Tories and their serial betrayals understand this means a future Labour government, which will either be useless or horrendous, but whose fault is that? Not the individual men and women who supported the Conservative Party all their lives and who now long for it to burn to the ground. Out of that purging fire may yet come something that deserves our support and respect, we pray.
A figleaf flight or three to Rwanda won’t change that. Like the man said, enough is enough.
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