Without a paddle

Ben Wildsmith

As the Conservatives’ electoral prospects continue their journey towards Shit Creek, the Prime Minister’s ongoing hunt for a paddle is becoming yet more desperate.

The ‘Rwanda plan’ to deter illegal migration is the hill he has chosen to die on, and he’s too committed now to back out.

Much is made of the millions Sunak made in business. When he initially arrived in the national consciousness, it was at the height of Brexit insanity and the Johnsonian absurdities that followed.

Whilst fully complicit in all of that, it seemed to me that Sunak was a cautious, sensible presence in the maelstrom. Certainly, when he ran for the leadership, it was as a ‘details guy’.

His measured performances in those endless debates, including one in which he pretended to be friends with Andrew RT Davies, were in stark contrast to the wild-eyed demagoguery that won the day for Liz Truss.

So, after Truss’s experiment with think-tank lunacy saw the markets take away the national credit card, there seemed to be merit in turning to Sunak as a business-savvy operator who would steer a more sensible path.

Conservative politics 2024-style, however, have no truck with caution, tradition, or pragmatism.

If Sunak’s instincts were to steady the ship, those of his party were to use it as a battering ram.

Coerced

From the moment he was coerced to reappoint Suella Braverman to his cabinet, Sunak’s premiership was taken hostage.

Older readers will remember the Eurosceptic ‘bastards’ who derailed John Major’s government. It is not in the nature of people like that to be satisfied with victory, even one on the scale of Brexit.

Their recklessness and disregard for convention has, in their own minds, been vindicated by the referendum result and, as such, become the modus operandi for the party they now control. In short, if an idea doesn’t sound ‘disruptive’ then it can’t have merit.

It is from this mindset that the Rwanda plan originated. It’s worth noting that the idea is a logical fallacy.

We are told that Rwanda is a progressive nation with a thriving economy that respects human rights. At the same time, we are supposed to believe that the prospect of ending up there is so dire that refugees will stop coming to the UK altogether in fear of it.

I don’t know how Mr Sunak made his many millions but if his cognitive skills allow for that then one must suspect that luck had a hand to play.

There has always been the suspicion that the plan was never intended to be ‘operationalised’, to use Sunak-speak.

Rally support

The courts were bound to throw it out and Sunak would be able to rally support amongst ‘patriotic’ voters by feigning outrage at their interference in our ‘sovereignty’.

If gaslighting the nation in this way was his intent then he may, again, have underestimated the destructive impulses of his party.

Last night’s intimation that he would take the UK out of the European Court of Human Rights seems to be another step towards extremism and away from norms of safe governance.

With Braverman, Jenrick, and Badenoch all reportedly on manoeuvres to replace him, the Prime Minister is once again pandering to fools and knaves rather than asserting his authority over them.

Shameful

In the wreckage of UK politics that has followed Boris Johnson’s shameful tenure, Sunak’s weakness is becoming a threat to the nation. Ideas which began as publicity stunts are in danger of being actualised in an atmosphere of panic and end-of-term recklessness.

If the Prime Minister attempts to strip the UK citizenry of its legal rights in service of his own career it will mark a new low for a nation that has sunk to unimaginable depths already.

If we were to lose our recourse to law in a deregulated economy, we would be rendered serfs.  The court is the legacy of a United Kingdom that looked outwards and commanded respect around the world.

We have already lost our freedom of movement in a frenzy of xenophobic opportunism; we should become a pariah if our commitment to international law goes the same way.