You’d have thought the Tories would have wanted to give their illegal migration bill – insert your own gags – a good send-off for its second reading. But Rishi Sunak chose to be 8,000 miles away in San Diego. Far away from the scene of the crime. And the government also insisted on two ministerial statements – one of them hardly pressing – to delay the debate until late in the day. Almost as if they wanted it over and done with. As it was the government benches were half empty. Most of the saner Tories had decided to give it a swerve. Not brave enough to speak out in the chamber.
The debate started with a point of order from Labour’s Clive Lewis. The bill came with its own health warning that there was a less that 50/50 chance of the government surviving a legal challenge. So why waste parliament’s time? Surely it would be better to let the courts battle this one out first. Suella Braverman disagreed. Labour hadn’t understood. This wasn’t how it worked. What was going to happen was that the UK was going to kick asylum seekers out regardless of international law. A cunning plan to turn us into a rogue state.
“The British people aren’t xenophobic,” the home secretary said. Though she was very much hoping she could persuade them to be.
We’ve been accused of inflammatory rhetoric, added Braverman. Er yes … guilty as charged. By now the home secretary was looking surprised. Bewildered, even.
Now Suella became lachrymose. Some people had made outrageous slurs about her. Indeed they had. Some of her own MPs had said she was a competent, humane home secretary.
Tory Richard Graham tried to defend her only to precipitate a pile on from the SNP. Theresa May was the only quizzical voice on the Conservative benches. How did Suella square deporting everyone regardless with our duty to screen refugees properly before sending them to Rwanda? Suella merely shrugged. It was full-on delusional. And the people aren’t as nasty as her. The Tories are still 20 points behind in the polls.
Earlier on, the foreign secretary made a statement on the integrated review refresh. Or rather, he merely repeated everything that had been briefed earlier. Only at much greater length. James Cleverly is not a man to use one word where several will do. His real tragedy is that he has no sense of his limitations. He thinks he is a player. A mover and a shaker. Tory MPs merely look on in embarrassment.
Cleverly began as he finished. With waffle. Two years on from the last integrated review, he just wanted to clarify a few things. No one could have predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine. Er … It had literally done just that in 2014 and no one had really batted an eyelid. But no matter.
Then Cleverly moved on to the details. Such as they were. We would be increasing the defence budget by £5bn. Though as £3bn was already promised to the nuclear programme and £1.9bn to replacing our diminishing weapons stockpile, that would leave the armed forces fighting over the remaining £100m.
Labour had no real issues with any of this – David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, may not be so incoherent as Cleverly but he also loves the sound of his own voice and so he took an age to say next to nothing. The deputy speaker was even desperately trying to get him to shut up.
Most of the criticism came from the Tory ranks. Some were upset China had not been named as more of a military threat to the UK. The language had been beefed up a little, they argued, but not enough. We were just asking for trouble by not taking China seriously.
Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the select defence committee, won’t be happy until the UK spends every penny it has on defence. Cleverly merely observed that Ben Wallace had had plenty of time to moan about his budget during the defence questions that had taken place earlier. And because he’d said nothing then he must be happy. Besides which, the government was definitely going to increase military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2025. There again, he was also under the impression that the Tories would still be in power then. Maybe he knows something we don’t. Actually, scrub that ...
