Hundreds of millions of pounds have already been spent on the ‘Rwanda plan,’ which has dominated newspaper headlines for the last two years. But UK PM Rishi Sunak has today, on May 23rd, made it quite clear that, save for some kind of political miracle, not one single illegal migrant will ever be deported to the East African state.
Sunak said that the first flight to Rwanda, which is intended to deter further migrants from illegally crossing the Channel to Britain, won’t take off until after the general election—that is, if his government is reelected. But all pollsters know that the Conservatives are highly unlikely to win on July 4th. Labour has long made it clear that it would not allow any deportation flights to go ahead.
So all that money and all that talk has been for nothing. Not that this is surprising, says Migration Watch Chairman Alp Mehmet. He told The European Conservative that the plan “was only going to work if the right legislation, implemented quickly, was in place at the outset,” which it wasn’t. He added that “it wasn’t helped by the reluctance of Number 10 or the present Home Secretary to back it fully throughout.”
Sunak might hope that claiming flights will only take off under the Tories might win some pro-border voters to back his party at the election. But Robert Bates, who is research director at the Centre for Migration Control think tank, reminded this publication that the announcement “comes just days after the government U-turned on a key component of its plan to cut legal migration, with [Foreign Secretary] David Cameron doing what he does best and pushing for open borders.” Bates told The European Conservative:
There is simply nothing that the Conservative Party have done in the last four-and-a-half years which should make people feel that they can be trusted with Britain’s borders.
It would, of course, have been seen as a political win if Sunak had managed to deport even just a handful of illegal migrants before July’s national poll. But Bates noted that, while Sunak appeared to believe for some time that he “had the magic touch,” despite the fact that “the red lights have been flashing” almost from the beginning, he has now been “left humiliated and empty handed.”
As with all recent Tory failures, Labour has jumped at the chance to argue that it would do a better job in government. But Labour started this migration crisis during the disastrous Blair era. Few will be fooled into believing their lofty pronouncements now.
