The Hypocrisy of Rwanda

A £290m handshake

It is hard to believe that even this most pig-headed government persists with the Rwanda Agreement. The fact that the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office has been called to explain the recklessness and escalating cost of the operation to the Accounts Committee suggests that the game's a bogey. 

If expulsion to Rwanda is a deterrent to asylum seekers making boat crossings then it implies that the fear of being sent to Rwanda is greater than a life-threatening crossing of the channel. However, the government intends to declare Rwanda a safe country so, ipso facto, it will no longer be a deterrent. The UK government has spent the last few years figuring out how to square the circle on many issues. It has failed miserably on almost all of them. Just examine the Tory political slogans in recent General Elections and the EU Referendum.

2015 Strong Leadership, A Clear Economic Plan, A Brighter and More Secure Future

2016  Let's Take Back Control

2017 Forward Together, Strong and Stable

2019 Get Brexit Done, Unleash Britain's Potential

They have been pointless, the only soundbite that has a ring of truth is from the other 2019 Conservative General Election playbook: Britain Deserves Better.

So why have the government committed to spending £290m to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda? 'Stop the Boats' is yet another dysfunctional soundbite looking for a realistic solution. Certainly not the Rwanda Agreement which is only to provide 100 places initially. Really, that's a cost of £2.9m per person and then there are the annual living costs to pay! 47,000 asylum seekers were living in hotels in March 2023, and the agreement would take 0.021% of them. Is the Rwanda Agreement sheer incompetence, crass stupidity or misplaced populist propaganda? Even the good citizens of Petersfield, one of England's strongest Tory voting constituencies, could only muster one person in the sizeable audience on Question Time to support the policy. He explained his reasoning as "nothing else seems to have worked". He could have been describing the last 13 years of government policy promises. 

Rishi Sunak gave an impromptu defence of his policy on Thursday following the resignation of his Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrik. He finished every sentence with the word 'right' as if that settled the argument but in truth a filler word from a filler PM. He must know that his time is up, there is hardly time to deport any asylum seekers to Rwanda before the next election. And Keir Starmer is more likely to go there as an Arsenal supporter than to implement the scheme. Rather than funding injustice for asylum seekers surely it would be better to allocate the £290m for the injustice to families of the 26,800 people who were given contaminated blood transfusions and are still waiting for compensation. Put that question to a focus group.