The twentieth film of the James Bond franchise, and the last one starring Pierce Brosnan, was titled Die Another Day. It is the same thing that the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak can say after surviving yesterday a rebellion on the immigration issue of the ultra-right Eurosceptic Tory, which aims to take the Conservative Party on the same path, or very similar, that Donald Trump the republicans of the United States. The law to send immigrants to Rwanda was approved as written, without amendments, with the entire opposition against (320 to 276).
Bond is indestructible, even if he spends a year in a North Korean prison or all the forces of evil conspire against him, but Sunak is not, and in fact he fears that the months are numbered, exactly the ones left until a general election originally planned for the fall. What will come next is a war of succession between the conservatives of the center and the radicals of the right, the moderates and those who want to be a replica not only of Trump, but of Vox, Le Pen, Wilders or Meloni.
What happened yesterday in the House of Commons was a prequel to the coming battle for the Tory soul, right out of a 007 epic. The Conservatives, who are sticking their heads over the edge, believe that their future sustainability involves exploiting the anti-immigration sentiments of the working classes, who do not see what foreigners contribute in terms of labor, pensions and economic growth, but regret the competition they represent in the distribution of State subsidies, and the pressure additional for public services (education, health, housing…) punished by a long decade of austerity.
The Eurosceptic far-right, the same one that became numb to a hard and uncompromising Brexit, collared Sunak to tighten the law that establishes the sending of illegal immigrants to Rwanda and the processing of applications there asylum, a plan that will cost the UK 500 million euros, more than if the country absorbed their presence and even kept them for nothing in a top five-star hotel. And this, without any guarantee that any plane will take off for Kigali.
The rebels lobbied with the help of the right-wing press to make individual immigrant appeals almost impossible, and for London to shirk its obligations under international law and the Refugee Convention. In the end, they had to settle for a single concession, an express instruction to civil servants (non-political positions) to ignore the interim provisions of the European Court of Human Rights blocking the sending of undocumented people to Rwanda and to follow the orders of ministers. But it will be seen, when the time comes, what role the British Supreme Court itself adopts, which has described the African nation as an “unsafe country” for asylum seekers. The fact that the Government has dictated by law that it is, does not mean that justice must accept it as it is. It is not a judicialization of politics, but a politicization of the judicial power, also an attack against the traditional division of powers.
The Tory right, even if in the end it threw in the towel on yesterday’s skirmish and allowed the approval of the law as drafted by Sunak, has decided. If the conservative defeat in the elections is confirmed, it will fly the anti-immigration flag, for the reduction of taxes and the cut (even bigger) of the welfare state, of skepticism about climate change and globalization, the defense of the colonial legacy and the rejection of the culture of diversity and inclusion. And with this ultra platform he aims to gain control of the party.
The greatest victory, wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War, is that which does not require a battle. But that of the conservatives to find their soul will be inevitable, after five prime ministers since 2010, two referendums (Scotland and Brexit), four leadership struggles and experiments with authoritarianism, populism, liberalism social, anarcho-capitalism and technocratic elitism, raising and lowering taxes like a yo-yo, expanding and shrinking the State, moving away from Europe, flirting with grandiloquent globalism and the small English nationalism.
Rishi Sunak is no Agent 007 and has survived, but only to die another day.
