Dear John,
Despite his feverish dedication to dysfunctional immigration policy, Rishi Sunak just can’t seem to win on Rwanda. Met with resistance from “lefty lawyers”, human rights organisations, the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court, and a majority of the British public, Sunak’s still desperately pushing for something that he can point to at the upcoming election.
His most recent gambit came in the Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill, the second clause of which unilaterally declares that “every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country”. No matter what the evidence before our eyes tells us, it states that law-makers and judges must all go along with the delusion.
According to the UN’s special rapporteur for judicial independence, declaring Rwanda safe “constitute[s] an interference with the independence of the judiciary and a violation of international law”. Last night, a good chunk of the House of Lords defeated Clause 2 in Parliament, with one crossbench peer declaring that:
“We are invited to adopt a fiction, to wrap it in the cloak of parliamentary sovereignty and to grant it permanent immunity from challenge. To tell an untruth and call it truth. Why would we go along with that?”
Rishi Sunak, the unelected leader of a deeply unpopular party that has all but lost touch with reality, would likely struggle to answer that question. Immigration is just one of many areas where government priorities are on another planet from the real aspirations of the public. They’re still living in Boris Johnson’s fantasy world, so dedicated to the narrative they tell themselves that they’ve abandoned all sense.
Immigration is a complex and divisive topic, the kind of issue that only functional, developed democracies can seriously contend with. Advanced democracies are able to have a rational debate, to weigh the benefits of both control and compassion, to find consensus at the right spot in the middle. If the Rwanda plan – and all of the gaslighting, delusion, and absurdity that’s come with it – is proof of anything, it’s that we’re not there yet.
But we can be. It’s not too late to fix national discourse by giving our democracy the major upgrade it so desperately needs. It’s long overdue, and we’re not going to rest until we get it.
Yours,
Open Britain Team
