Here's why passing the Rwanda bill will not save the Tories
After everything, it is unlikely the Rwanda bill will change voters minds on the Tories now, says Jonathan Saxty.
The government's Rwanda bill has been passed by the House of Lords, paving the way for flights to leave for the African country. Just not yet!
While the policy is a flagship of a Tory Party under siege over criticism of being soft on immigration, it is unlikely to curry favour with a sceptical public who view the policy as too little, too late, while failing to fix the bigger issue of mass legal immigration.
The target demographic are the just over 50,000 people who have crossed the English Channel on small boats with their cases set to be handled offshore.
Meanwhile, the plan has been criticised for being unduly harsh amid concerns about how "safe" a country Rwanda really is, with the Supreme Court also ruling against the plan.
In the end, the Lords got a government guarantee that asylum seekers who had worked with UK armed forces would not be deported. With Royal Assent imminent, the first flights are unlikely to leave until the summer at the earliest.
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The reality is therefore that this is very unlikely to win over enough voters to turn the ride for the Tories and would an incoming Labour government even keep the plan in place?
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper argued that while "dangerous small boat crossings undermine our border security", in fact "the extortionately expensive and failing Rwanda scheme, which only covers 1% of those arriving in the UK, is making things worse by distracting Ministers from the serious work that must be done."
Speaking of costs, Ms Cooper warned that "half a billion pounds of British taxpayers’ money is being sent to Rwanda for just 300 asylum seekers to go, costing an eye-watering £2 million per person." Instead, Ms Cooper said Labour "would put the Rwanda money into strengthening our border security".
Costs aside - and soaring immigration to boot - it would take over three years to remove all relevant asylum seekers, and that assumes a tripling of the current level of removals.
We can see why the plan has been called a gimmick, especially given the 12 day notice period and the right to appeal, which could hold things up even more although the new law tells judges to ignore a range of human rights safeguards.
Of course there is the European Court of Human Rights, although ministers could ostensibly ignore the body if it was appealed to assuming the government was willing to break an international law Britain already signed up to.
One cannot help but wonder then if the Rwanda plan - a sticking plaster on a wound if ever these was one - is designed to have the appearance of a solution rather than actually being one.
The numbers involved are a drop in the ocean and this government has presided over record-breaking immigration much to the anger of their core voters. Rwanda will not save the Tories and is likely to be toast once Sir Keir gets into Number Ten.
