“Of course, I would rigorously scrutinise any proposal that crossed my desk,” Sunak adds. “But ultimately we funded the proposal. The proof is in my actions.”
The longer Number Ten fails to declare, the more cheerfully Labour will pile in – preparing to frame the Prime Minister as a bottler if he waits until after the Budget to rule out a May poll.
Conservatism is not some doctrine deduced from some authoritative text by a great thinker or leader of the past. What comes first for Conservatives is not the theory, but the practice.
In comparison to the Rwanda scheme, the arguments for such cards are stronger and the arguments against it weaker.
Our deputy editor and the former leader of the Liberal Democrats discuss the merits of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s intervention against the Rwanda scheme.
A note of caution: whilst many of them did actively abstain out of opposition to the Bill, some will have missed the vote for other reasons.
Killing the Bill at Second Reading would have meant no opportunity for emergency press conferences and Star Chamber findings at Committee and Report.
With both Labour and the Conservatives committed in practice to importing hundreds of thousands of people a year, there is scope for a minor party to harness deep public concern about the status quo.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill passes its second reading with a majority of 44 – but Conservative rebels have threatened to vote against it at third reading.
Simply put, the volume of migration in the 20th Century was at a level communities could absorb and the economy required. Migrants like my grandparents willingly integrated into British society and shared its values.
If Conservative MPs don’t want one, they should vote for the Bill, hoping that it can be strengthened in Committee and Report.
The only means by which individuals should be able to avoid removal, is by demonstrating to Home Office officials, that they have entered the country legally, are under 18, or are medically unfit to fly.
We have become a party for whom the grotesque is the primary mode of communication. Just to reiterate, I’m not talking about policy or principle here, but a predilection for the odd and off-putting in presentation.
The odds are that the Government will win tomorrow. But it’s not hard to see how it could lose by accident.
The Government can now at last claim consistency, and at least enter the next election arguing, with more of a straight face, that it has tried to deliver migration.