It was always going to end in farce.
The Government’s £500k flight to Rwanda was grounded on Tuesday night after a last-minute intervention from the European Court of Human Rights.
You didn’t need a crystal ball to know this back-of-a-fag packet plan would end this way.
There are always legal challenges, we’ve been here before. And it’s right that governments are forced to comply with the law and not be allowed to ride roughshod over human rights conventions.
The ECHR won a reprieve for two Iraqis who were on the flight. The other five people due to be deported were then also removed from the flight meaning it remained on the ground.
The fact is this cruel £120million plan to dump migrants 4,000 miles away isn’t about stopping dangerous smuggler gangs or deterring people from coming to Britain. This is all about government giving the illusion that they are doing something and throwing some red meat to their ever-dwindling support base.
All this has been for “optics”, allowing the Government to appear as if it is strong on border control and immigration policy. It’s an opportunity to whip up hatred against people who risk their lives to have a chance of a better future.
And it allows them to indulge in name-calling of one of their hate targets, so-called “lefty lawyers”, and reopen the wounds on Brexit and take back control.
It’s shameful stuff. When church leaders brand your policy “immoral” and say it’s a move that “should shame us as a nation”, and the future King of England calls it “appalling” as Prince Charles is reported to have done, you know you are doing something wrong.
As is the idea that Britain could conceivably withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Instead of listening to reason, the Government has vowed to fight on, determined to send people, some of whom have fled warzones and faced torture in their home countries, to Rwanda on a one-way ticket.
What they need to do now is to admit they’ve got this wrong. Stop wasting thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on empty flights that don’t go anywhere. Scrap this plan that everyone knows is wrong and is making Britain look absurd and start working on something that is fair and human.
You know, a bit like the plan to help refugees from Ukraine perhaps?
