Rwanda row threatens to splinter Tories in Brexit-style divide
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A Conservative Party whose two flanks are bitterly opposed and threatening rebellion. A Tory prime minister trying to thread the needle with a critical piece of legislation.
Star chambers summoned to pass judgment. Mutterings of the leadership consequences of failure. And all the while, a Nigel Farage-linked party is hoovering up Conservative votes.
No wonder Rishi Sunak’s woes trying to keep the Tories united over immigration this week sent shivers up the spines of those by Theresa May’s side as she tried to pass a Brexit deal.
Lord Barwell said: “It feels very late 2018, early 2019.” As Mrs May’s chief of staff he was in the trenches for those parliamentary battles over what terms the UK should leave the European Union.
“It feels like the party is back in that ungovernable space, that unleadable space. You’ve got these two wings of the party and it’s very difficult to see where the landing zone is.”
Mrs May’s fate is known – she failed to pass a Brexit agreement and paid with the end of her premiership. That of Mr Sunak’s is less clear, as scores of his MPs think over their options this week.
Reignited Tory divisions
The Brexit comparison may not be a perfect match. There has been no referendum backing the Rwanda deportation scheme, the issue that has reignited Tory feuding this week.
The debate has not been entrenched in Tory politics for decades as the schism of the Europe question had been. Fewer MPs have built their political careers around the issue.
And yet the question of how hard this Tory Government should go to drive down the numbers of both legal and illegal migration is emerging as a defining question for the party.
It has put Tory divisions back at the top of the news bulletins and elevated mutterings about whether Mr Sunak really is the best person to lead the party into the next general election.
The ‘hardcore’ option
Downing Street’s “immigration week” was designed to get Mr Sunak on the front foot with a hat-trick of announcements on successive days, each drawn up at speed in recent weeks.
Monday brought a package of measures to bring down net migration which went further than had been expected, a move to address annual net migration recently peaking at 745,000.
The plan, including raising the work visa salary threshold and limiting how many relatives a foreign social care worker can bring, was estimated to reduce yearly immigration by around 300,000.
Next came a new treaty with Rwanda, with James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, flying out to Kigali for a deal that made clear no asylum-seeker sent there by the UK would then be sent home to their country of origin.
But it was what came on Wednesday, the second part of the Government’s push to address the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Rwanda scheme was unlawful, that triggered the worst Tory splits.
So-called “emergency” legislation was unveiled, a Bill just 12 pages long, which was designed to protect the scheme from legal challenge so flights carrying asylum-seekers could get back in the air.
There had been weeks of behind the scenes negotiations between Downing Street, the Home Office and various Tory factions about what exactly the proposed law would say.
In the end, to No 10’s mind, they picked a “hardcore” option. Rwanda would unilaterally be declared a safe country, meaning the UK courts would have to effectively accept as much.
The Human Rights Act would be disapplied in Rwanda deportation cases. It was also made clear that UK ministers could ignore European court injunctions on the matter.
An ‘emotional’ departure
The problem for the Prime Minister was twofold. Tory centrists feared it had gone too far; Tory migration hardliners that it did not go far enough. The latter tensions reared their head first.
Shortly after a bruising Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Mr Sunak met with Robert Jenrick alone in his parliamentary office behind the Speaker’s chair.
As immigration minister, Mr Jenrick had been the Prime Minister’s point person on the issue for more than a year, an ally put in the post to check then home secretary Suella Braverman.
Mr Jenrick was a political friend of Mr Sunak. They had co-written an influential article, along with fellow Tory Oliver Dowden, endorsing Boris Johnson for the party leadership in the 2019 contest.
But now Mr Jenrick made clear he did not believe the legislation was strong enough to get Rwandan flights going again and could not take it through the House of Commons.
His pleas were heartfelt, sources close to both men admit. A Sunak ally said Mr Jenrick became “emotional”. A Jenrick ally said a better description would be “obviously upset”.
Both sides agree on another point: There was discussion about Mr Jenrick being moved to another government role in return for him not resigning, though no position was explicitly named.
A Jenrick ally said he was assured a promotion and a new Cabinet role. A Sunak ally said there were no specifics on what the position would be, rejecting the idea a promotion was promised.
The differences get even more pronounced when it comes to why Mr Jenrick decided to walk out, just weeks after Mrs Braverman was sacked.
Mr Jenrick, dealing with the specifics of migration laws and how to reduce the small boat crossings carrying migrants across the Channel, hardened his views in the job.
He has told others he now sees the benefits of leaving the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), having realised how such requirements thwart steps to tackle the crossings.
It was policy differences that forced him out, said one who talked about the decision to quit with Mr Jenrick before it was announced: “It may be old fashioned these days to have a resignation on a conviction matter, but that’s what happened.”
Figures close to the Prime Minister question whether Mr Jenrick was bruised at having been overlooked for the home secretary role when Mrs Braverman left.
Where’s Robert?
The chaotic way in which the news tumbled out on Wednesday evening exacerbated the feeling of a government struggling to control events.
Mr Jenrick chose to keep his decision quiet until Mr Sunak had addressed the 1922 Committee and Mr Cleverly, whom he personally told he was quitting, had announced the bill to the House of Commons.
But it all leaked before either appearance was over. “Where’s Robert? Where’s Robert?” hollered opposition MPs at the Home Secretary with Mr Jenrick missing from the front bench.
That evening, an exchange of letters hinted at Mr Sunak’s personal disappointment at an ally jumping ship. He accused Mr Jenrick of a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the situation.
The jibe prompted the claim the Prime Minister was being “patronising” from one Jenrick supporter: “The idea a lawyer like Rob, who is a competent and capable guy, would not understand the policy is obviously completely laughable.”
A political tightrope
Yet it is not the breakdown in relations between men, but the Prime Minister’s difficulty pulling together both wings of his parliamentary party where the real political danger lies.
Four Tory groups are this weekend considering whether to vote for the new Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, attempt to amend it, or to actually try to vote it down.
Three are on the Right of the party: The European Research Group, the New Conservatives and the Common Sense Group. The fourth is on the moderate wing: the One Nation group.
The real influence of each is in dispute. Sometimes MPs sign up to such groups loosely. At other times they may be squarely behind their aims but decide to vote differently from the leadership.
But the combined membership of the four groups is far greater than 29, which is, in theory, the number of Tory MPs needed to force a defeat on the government.
The star chamber
Early indications are not looking good for Downing Street. The four-man “star chamber”, headed up by veteran Tory Sir Bill Cash, for the three Right-leaning groups is understood to have concerns that the Bill has weaknesses.
Meanwhile the man advising One Nation, Lord Garnier, jumped the gun by saying on Thursday that he would not vote for the Bill and likened declaring Rwanda a safe country to insisting “all dogs are cats”.
Final verdicts from both arbiters are being drafted this weekend with reveals expected on Monday, at which point Tory MPs will start declaring which way they intend to vote.
No 10 insiders remain bullish about their chances of getting the legislation through the Commons. “Let’s see when the votes are counted”, said one, projecting calm.
But signs of nerves at the centre could be found in the specifics of the parliamentary business plans published on Thursday, with realpolitik often revealed in the minutiae of the process.
The absent third reading
While the Bill’s second reading has been scheduled for Tuesday, its critical third reading, the final thumbs up, thumbs down moment from MPs, is nowhere to be seen in the Commons activity planned between now and Christmas.
Despite the supposed haste attached to passing this “emergency” piece of legislation, No 10 cannot guarantee the key final Commons vote will come before 2024.
It could buy time – rebels may choose to sit on their hands at second reading on Tuesday. But pain delayed is not necessarily pain avoided.
The Prime Minister will somehow have to reassure moderate Tories that his proposed law will not breach the ECHR, despite page one of the legislation saying this cannot be guaranteed.
Meanwhile, he must also convince his Tory immigration hardliners that it is realistically impossible to close off the path explicitly kept open in the legislation for asylum-seekers to bring individual claims if they believe they are at risk of “serious and irreversible harm” from deportation.
A matter of confidence
To date, many of those disillusioned with Mr Sunak’s premiership have argued that fellow Tory MPs will not act to remove him, since the voters would punish the party for another bout of infighting.
Yet still, speculation about confidence letters persists. Even the most hyperbolic, off-record briefings suggest just half of the 53 no confidence letters needed to force a vote in Mr Sunak’s leadership have been submitted to the 1922 Committee.
The real figure – letters are sent in private, meaning only Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chairman, knows for sure – could be much lower than that. Just a single Tory MP, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has admitted in public to submitting a letter.
‘Back me or sack me’
All the while multiple recent opinion polls have found one in 10 voters could back Reform, the Right-wing political party led by Richard Tice at the next general election, which must be held by January 2025 at the latest. Many of those people usually vote Tory while its honorary president Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader is currently in ITV’s celebrity jungle building support.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, no stranger to the dangers of Tory in fighting, having been ousted as Conservative Party leader in 2003 after losing the backbenches, has a bleak assessment.
“The reality is that we are in a more febrile state than under [Sir] John Major. John Major took us to the election,” Sir Iain said.
“We’ll have had three prime ministers in this period, which is unprecedented really. That means this infighting will carry on, because it’s not settled.
“The one way out of this, both electorally and internally, is that we decide collectively that getting those flights off to Rwanda is critical and we pass a law to achieve that.”
Sir John managed to see off his Tory critics to lead his party at the 1997 election. Sir Iain, the “quiet man” of Conservative politics, had no such luck, being ousted in 2003 before the ballot box opened.
This week at a press conference, Mr Sunak notably declined the chance to repeat the famous Major “back me or sack me” challenge to rebels.
In truth, whether he says the words or not, that may become the reality.
