Rishi Sunak isn’t the only one to avoid the Commons at every given opportunity. Suella Braverman also prefers to operate in the shadows. Though in her case, it’s not that she’s phobic of the Westminster scrutiny. She’s not bright enough to be that self-aware.
Rather that it’s her Home Office team who likes to find any reason to keep her away. A day trip to Dover to look for refugees. Or a visit to a derelict barge with no sanitation. That sort of thing. Her idea of tourist attractions. Suella’s Alton Towers. Anything to stop her embarrassing herself and the government with a shambolic display at the dispatch box.
It can’t be too long before Suella is reshuffled to the backbenches. The advantage to Sunak of having a rightwing simpleton in the cabinet has long since become a liability. Braverman literally had just one job. To stop the boats.
But more and more arrive and her one plan, the Rwanda policy, is in tatters after the court of appeal ruled that it was unlawful. And what’s left of the bill has been shredded both by the Lords – the government suffered 20 defeats in the upper chamber – and by a hardcore of more liberal-minded Tories. Even if it does become law before recess, most people think it’s unworkable. So it’s all a bit pointless.
Needs must, though. The government has to pretend it knows what it’s doing. Hell, it’s not as if it is doing anything else. You have to keep alert to avoid the tumbleweed in the corridors. This is a Potemkin administration. Nothing more. Existing only to look as if it is existing. It has no ideas. No plans. Just the hope that if it waits long enough then things will somehow mysteriously get better. Hold your nerve and all that.
So it was the junior Home Office minister Robert “Honest Bob” Jenrick – the go-to fixer for Tory donor pornography purveyors with planning permission problems – who was sent out to the Commons to open the debate on the Lords’ amendments to the illegal migration bill. The closest thing the department has to a grown up. I know. The idea of Honest Bob as an adult. He looks 12. Acts younger. If he were a refugee, Suella would be counting down the days till his 18th birthday so she could deport him.
Cometh the hour, cometh the halfwit. Somehow Jenrick began by trying to persuade himself that the bill was the work of the most brilliant minds in the Home Office. A terrifying thought for the rest of us, if true. Imagine if it had been done by the dimmest minds. His most compelling argument for the legislation was that none of his friends had been able to think of anything better.
It was like this. The Lords had made one or two helpful suggestions. To which the government was prepared to meet them halfway. But most of what they had proposed were wrecking amendments. If you can wreck what was already a car-wreck piece of legislation in the first place. Labour’s Dawn Butler observed that all the Lords had tried to do was make the bill compliant with international law. The SNP’s Joanna Cherry pointed out the government would have been better off creating more safe routes for refugees and working more closely with foreign governments.
Er … said Honest Bob. We’ve got to be beastly to foreigners, because that’s what some people want. Yes, he knew we actually needed more workers but he wasn’t going to go back on a promise. Even if that promise was unworkable. He wanted the bill to be a beacon. A guiding light of what not to do.
Most of all, he was all heart. The fewer Afghan women he allowed in, then the fewer there would be to mistreat. So it was actually compassionate to deport as many as possible. And he wanted to clarify things. The court had actually said that we could actually send as many people as we liked to Rwanda if Rwanda was a safe third country. Seriously. This is the calibre of the current government. Or maybe I’m missing something.
Honest Bob ploughed on, encouraged by the likes of John Hayes and Paul Bristow who sounded as though they had never met a foreigner they didn’t want to deport. Children and victims of trafficking might be allowed to stay a bit longer, but only if local authorities could find somewhere to put them up. So they would be better off in Rwanda. And it was vital that children be put up in age-appropriate accommodation. Which is why he had had all the Mickey Mouse murals painted over. He seemed to think foreigners became hugely distressed at Disney iconography.
The longer he went on – and he was on his feet for more than an hour – the more confused Jenrick became. Mostly he wanted to save refugees from themselves. They weren’t welcome here so they were better off not coming. Besides most were probably murderers and rapists. Or would become murderers and rapists in a few years time. And to think there is a Tory MP who has been accused of rape and hasn’t even had the whip suspended. Some might call that double standards. I guess it’s different when a suspected rapist is one of your own.
Theresa May pointed out that the government was planning to treat every victim of modern slavery as a criminal. Honest Bob nodded. Yup. That was the whole point of it. He doesn’t miss a trick. May went on to say that the government was proposing to throw out amendments that would oblige it to behave in ways Jenrick had said it wanted to. The minister looked confused. Perhaps he had had his fingers crossed when he had said that. Or maybe he was just keeping his options open.
Whatever. Honest Bob was in a world of his own. Enjoying his status as the brains of the Home Office. He certainly wasn’t the moral compass. No one is. The department’s conscience has long since gone missing. There would be no backing down to the Lords. Better an unworkable bill – one that wouldn’t stop the boats – than accepting an amendment from the Blob. This was the will of the people. Fail. Fail again. Fail better.
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