Handcuffed and surrounded, faces pixelated for the video as if they were dangerous criminals, one by one they were bundled into vans. Doors slammed. Keys clicked in locks. The crude political message from this disturbing eve of election video, showing men and women being rounded up for deportation to Rwanda, couldn’t have been clearer – despite Whitehall rules precluding partisan activities so close to polling day.
But hey, what’s a row over election purdah, given the amount of souls sold to get this far? All that matters to this government now is getting someone on a plane to Kigali in front of the TV cameras, a tunnel vision that has so far spectacularly failed to woo back lost voters, while costing the country years of parliamentary and legal wrangling, roughly half a billion pounds, and now yet another rift with friends and allies.
This week it emerged that while the Rwanda bill may have forced several hundred clandestine asylum seekers to leave the country, they haven’t actually gone to Rwanda: instead, they’ve fled across the Northern Irish border into Ireland to avoid deportation. Despite years of Tory ministers grumbling that the French don’t do enough to stop migrants reaching Britain, Rishi Sunak is now refusing demands to take anyone back from Ireland.
That people who risk everything to reach Europe may then risk everything to stay should have surprised nobody. The Home Office must have guessed that once the Rwanda bill finally became law, its targets wouldn’t all meekly wait around to be rounded up, just as it must now realise that arresting migrants who dutifully attend their Home Office appointments (as happened this week) may only encourage others to stop complying and disappear. Stiff resistance is also likely in the courts and also on the streets, judging by the hundreds of protesters who blocked attempts yesterday to move migrants from a south London hotel to the controversial Bibby Stockholm barge.
Which made it all the more surreal to have heard the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, claim on Wednesday that really the plan was working brilliantly. If people were frightened enough to abscond to Ireland, she told the BBC, that proved the threat of going to Rwanda was a real deterrent. How this squared with the argument she herself had just made for Rwanda being a delightful holiday and/or gap year destination, she couldn’t say; but more strikingly, she seemed oblivious to how astonishingly high-handed that sounds in Dublin.
It was a perfect illustration of this government’s obsession with proving itself right over Rwanda at any cost, even as reality keeps on proving it wrong. That day 711 migrants reportedly sailed across from France, the highest number on a single day this year, confirming that summery weather predicts Channel traffic much more reliably than anything politicians say.
Meanwhile, Sunak’s other main strategy for stopping the boats, a ban on people who cross the Channel claiming asylum no matter how genuine their case, has not only failed as a deterrent but risks trapping an estimated 94,000 people in taxpayer-supported limbo: unable to settle here, but with nowhere safe to send them.
Thankfully, Keir Starmer this week denied reports that a Labour government might temporarily continue with the Rwanda scheme at least until it has its own preferred arrangements in place, insisting that he was “not going to be scheduling flights to Rwanda”. He’s also committed to working with rather than against our neighbours on a shared challenge that is increasingly preoccupying the entire EU. But a certain haziness lingers over some of Labour’s plans, too.
Can it really secure deals quickly to return migrants to safe European countries, as it has promised, on terms acceptable to Britain? If not, then Starmer’s promise to implement a “plan to stop the boats on day one” may end up being as much of a millstone round his neck as Sunak’s, even assuming that it’s one of those phrases – like saving the NHS, taking back control and winning the war on drugs – meant more figuratively than literally.
In reality, probably the best Labour can hope for is that processing both asylum claims and removals or returns speedily, alongside cracking down on smuggling, will be enough to ease public concern about Channel crossings, if not conclusively to stop them happening. It’s not a cheap, quick or foolproof strategy. But it beats the hollow, performative cruelty of rounding up a few dozen poor souls for the cameras in the run-up to polling day. They can’t legally be detained for more than a few weeks and they therefore look likely to be quietly freed in June – with a warning that when the flights are actually ready, the vans will return to collect them. If, that is, they’re still waiting patiently to be found.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
