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Dear John,

It’s over. After an extended game of ping-pong between the Commons and the Lords, the Rwanda Bill will soon be signed into law. Rishi Sunak will try to paint this as a significant win when campaigning at the next election. But the public knows, in reality, it’s an embarrassing and costly mess.

The government's plan to send some asylum seekers who arrive on small boats to Rwanda never really made much sense as a practical policy. The only way it even remotely makes sense is as a political trick. The government is spending millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money to create a flashy headline for the next election campaign.

The Rwanda scheme is a perfect example of how broken our politics has become.

Instead of using common sense and taking concrete steps to deal with the asylum issue, desperate members of Team Sunak are resorting to coded language and empty gestures to score political points. In truth, the Rwanda scheme is all about symbolism over substance, and it won't do anything to fix the problems in our asylum system. It’s a potent symbol of Britain’s broken politics: dog-whistles and symbols instead of common sense and action.

Here are five clues that Sunak's Rwanda plan is just a cynical political ploy:
1. It’s still subject to multiple legal challenges. While Parliamentary battles have concluded, the legal ones are just getting started. According to the Institute for Government ([link removed]) , there are several potential legal routes that “lefty lawyers” might take to shut the law down (in part or in full). Most of these challenges hinge on rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, which explains why Sunak and the Conservatives are so hostile to it.
2. The whole bill is built on an Orwellian re-write of reality. Section 2 of the bill declares Rwanda an objectively safe country now and forever. This is not something legislation is supposed to do. Sunak's use of legislation to impose his world view on everyone else is as absurd as passing a bill declaring that birds aren't real. Simply asserting something doesn't make it true, no matter how forcefully or how often it is stated. More worryingly, this sets a deeply troubling precedent for future administrations to unilaterally proclaim their own distorted versions of reality, untethered from facts or reason. Allowing governments to redefine truth on a whim takes us down a short path to unchecked power and wholesale erosion of democratic norms.
3. Comparable schemes have failed in the past. In the 2010s, the Israeli government quietly implemented a similar scheme ([link removed]) to voluntarily send African asylum seekers to Rwanda and Uganda. While that scheme wasn’t compulsory (making it slightly different than Sunak’s), it was ultimately considered a failure. None of the deportees stayed in Rwanda and it was seen as a boon to human trafficking operations in the region. So much for “stopping the criminal gangs”.
4. The government won’t tell us what airlines they’re using. UN experts have warned air travel companies and regulators not to be “complicit ([link removed]) ” in human rights abuses. The government's refusal to name companies involved in deporting migrants to Rwanda, even when pressed by journalists, suggests they fear public backlash and boycotts.
5. Sunak is lying about the plan’s popularity. In his Downing Street speech on Monday, Sunak accused a "loud minority" of attempting to derail the government's Rwanda plan at all costs. This claim, however, flies in the face of public opinion. The truth is that a significant majority of the British people supported the reasonable amendments ([link removed]) proposed by the House of Lords to improve the legislation. Sunak's rhetoric reveals that he is the one pandering to a small but vocal fringe of xenophobic extremists, rather than listening to the measured concerns expressed by much of the nation.

Millions of people in this country are facing genuine hardships and uncertainties in their daily lives. They lie awake at night, anxious about paying their mortgages or rent while keeping food on the table. Communities yearn for safety and stability. The nation longs for a brighter, more secure future.

Yet in the face of these pressing concerns, our government has chosen to prioritise a fringe agenda pushed by a tiny, radical minority. The Rwanda scheme epitomises this utter disconnect between the priorities of those currently in power and the lived realities of ordinary people.

This fiasco lays bare the painful truth: our democracy is broken. It is failing to serve the interests and needs of the very people it is meant to represent. The next government will inherit the monumental task of rebuilding our democratic institutions and safeguarding against such egregious abuses of public trust.

But the situation is not hopeless. Bold plans to repair our tattered social fabric and restore power to the people are ready and waiting. The opportunity will soon come to turn these ambitious visions into concrete realities. Together, we can forge a future where no government ever again dares to ignore the people or neglect its duty to the nation.

All the best,

The Open Britain Team
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