The debate over the law to make it possible to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda seemed like an episode of the iconic British science fiction television series in which a human-like alien travels through time and space. Only instead of dedicating himself to saving lives and fighting oppression, the protagonist has the objective of breaking the dreams of those who have crossed half the world and gone through all kinds of adventures to arrive by boat to the United Kingdom, stretching the rope of right to the maximum. international, almost breaking it, in order to appease the extreme right of the Conservative Party. Doctor Who is Doctor Rishi (surname Sunak, the prime minister, to be exact).
The outcome will be after Christmas, when the parliamentarians return to their seats after having eaten the turkey and nougat. But yesterday the law barely survived the first examination, with 313 votes in favor and 269 against, after the whip bearers (in charge of party discipline) removed all the Tories from the steps of the plane that was going to take them. take to Dubai and the Caribbean islands.
Downing Street knew that things were so close that every last vote was going to count, and also what was at stake: Sunak’s authority before his own party and before the country, which in itself is not much (it is the second consecutive prime minister elected solely by conservative militants, and only a miracle would prevent him from losing next year’s elections). A defeat, for which only 29 deputies were needed against or fifty abstentions, would have unleashed a campaign to replace him. The most radical right even dreams of a dream ticket composed of Nigel Farage (architect of Brexit, recent bronze medal in a jungle survival reality show) and Boris Johnson (discredited for the illegal parties of the pandemic). This is the country.
Sunak’s drama is that carrying out his law to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda (a bizarre plan in itself that the Supreme Court condemned in its original version) is not an official mission, but an impossible mission. Not only because it is very doubtful that it complies with international law (it orders judges to ignore various clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights), but opposing forces pull the rope in opposite directions, without caring that it may break.
On the one hand, the more Eurosceptic and radical right, which in exchange for not overturning the law, has demanded guarantees from Sunak that he will make it even tougher, vetoing appeals to the Strasbourg Court and the possibility of judges considering particular cases in the that the asylum seeker alleges that his or her life is in danger. Everyone to Rwanda, without exception and with a one-way ticket. On the other, the (relatively) moderates of the Conservative Party, who threaten to vote against if changes are made that constitute an even more flagrant violation of international standards.
Between a rock and a hard place, trying to find an escape route through equidistance and promises that we will see if he keeps, Sunak spent the day cultivating the doubters and those he thought he could seduce, offering fifteen of them, first thing in the morning, a breakfast with smoked salmon but no diamonds at 10 Downing Street. It was about stopping the coup and surviving to fight the decisive battle later in the winter, when amendments to the legal text are presented and the final vote is held.
In this episode of Doctor Rishi, the country has traveled in time, but only four years, to 2019 and the last throes of Theresa May’s mandate, whose life was made impossible and her soft Brexit was killed by the same people who now demand to leave the European Convention on Human Rights to send migrants to Rwanda in any way possible. The contradiction is that the same Government that promised to “control the borders” and closed the doors to EU workers has opened the doors to 700,000 who entered the country legally last year, with a visa and family, fifteen times more than those who do it on a boat.
Immigration is not even the biggest concern of voters (the cost of living and the deplorable state of public health come first), and sending each asylum seeker to Rwanda would cost the State two hundred thousand euros, more than keeping it a bread and knife year at the Ritz, with an open champagne bar. Of course, without caviar…
