Rishi Sunak has linked his premiership to a commitment to curbing the rise in irregular immigration into the UK. It has ended up becoming his political nightmare. The authoritarian and heavy-handed drift, bordering on international legality, that his deportation plan to Rwanda has entailed has not even satisfied the hardline conservative wing, who consider him weak and imperfect, and demand that Sunak go further.
About 60 deputies tories This Tuesday, they supported amendments to the law presented at the beginning of December, which declared the African country a safe place and reduced the legal avenues for immigrants to appeal their deportation in court, to make it even tougher. One of the amendments prevented immigrants from being able to prevent their transfer to Rwanda, with the sole exception that their physical condition did not allow them to fly. The other demanded that any precautionary decision by the European Court of Human Rights that sought to block one of those flights be automatically rejected.
In the hours before the vote, the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, who always chooses the most delicate moments to settle his outstanding scores with Sunak – he accuses him of being one of the main causes of his political fall -, expressed his support for the rebels on The law should be as robust as possible, and it would be appropriate to [por parte del Gobierno] accept the amendments,” Johnson wrote.
The rebel MPs try to sweeten their mutiny with speeches of good intentions and praise for the purpose pursued by Sunak. Their excuses are legal. They allege that the law approved in first reading at the beginning of December, and still in parliamentary process, leaves many loopholes that can be taken advantage of by irregular immigrants, “leftist lawyers” – in the words of Robert Jenrick, former Secretary of State for Immigration and one of the rebel leaders—and humanitarian organizations with the aim of paralyzing the deportations for months with resources, either before British or international justice.
The penultimate battle
The Sunak Government, which has had the support of the Labor opposition, has managed to get the House of Commons to reject the amendments of the tories rebels But the humiliation has been evident: 60 votes, when Downing Street had made it clear that it imposed voting discipline, is a lot of dissent. To make matters worse, two of the rebels held key positions, as vice-presidents, in the leadership of the Conservative Party, and have presented Sunak with his resignation as soon as he supported the amendments, aware that they would be removed from their position after perpetrating the disobedience.
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The tone of the letter from Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith, however, made it clear that they did not want the blood to reach the river: “Prime Minister, you promised to do everything in your power to stop the arrival of boats [con inmigrantes que cruzan el canal de la Mancha]. He has been clear and firm about his Rwanda plan, and has made it clear that he will not allow a foreign court to block those flights. “You have one hundred percent of our support and that of the voters of our constituencies,” they stated in their resignation text.
Sunak, however, still cannot breathe easy. With the amendments rejected, the original text of the law will be voted on again in the House of Commons this Wednesday. If the 60 rebels abstained, or about 30 of them voted against – the Labor opposition has already anticipated their rejection – the Rwanda plan would not go ahead, and the prime minister would have been defeated in a vote that many would interpret as a motion trustworthy.
Sunak's secret trick, paradoxically, is polls that predict an unmitigated defeat for the Conservatives. Unlike the rebellions that Theresa May suffered around Brexit, in which the mutineers knew that they could place Johnson in Downing Street, on this occasion, there is no replacement, nor would the British citizens consent to another replacement that did not go through the polls. .
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