December 13, 2023 - 7:00am
Rishi Sunak and his Rwanda bill have survived. After a few days of cajoling and coaxing, the bill passed its second reading by a margin of 313 to 269.
But the joy in Downing Street should be muted. The rebels are expecting a deal and will want the bill toughened up by the next stage. Any concessions to them, however, may make it hard to keep the Tory Left on side. The bill is also likely to be defeated in the House of Lords. It’s unclear, then, what will become of the Rwanda plan.
The Prime Minister has made Rwanda one of his flagship promises. His first attempt was booted back by the Supreme Court, forcing him into this beefed-up bill. For Tory rebels on the Right, though, it wasn’t beefed up enough, with Robert Jenrick resigning as a minister over it.
The other problem for the Government is that impending electoral defeat dulls some of the incentives that can be dangled to rebels. In a year or so there will be no Government jobs for the party, so there is no carrot. Many MPs know it’s the end of the line for them, and they don’t need to think long term. Others will be trying to impress future leaders, rather than this one.
The last year of this parliament will be a tough slog for Sunak, and Rwanda will be at the centre of it. He’s promised something that is hard to deliver, with different parts of his party pulling in different directions. Theresa May was ripped apart trying to do the same over Brexit. The question is whether Sunak will be able to keep it together until an election before the same fate befalls him.
Within his own party, it’s hard to see how he proceeds without the Rwanda bill becoming law. It is the red meat that the PM has offered the overlapping groups on the Right. Many of these MPs already dislike him for his role in ousting Boris Johnson and see concern about immigration as central to their own politics and that of their constituents. They will not let Sunak wriggle out of the promises he has made to placate them. When the bill comes back for a third reading in the New Year, they will expect some serious movement from the PM.
If they don’t buy it, he will be in a jam. Playing hardball, forcing a three-line whip and making it a confidence issue could topple the Government. Many of his internal opponents might prefer to go kamikaze than compromise. Neglecting them could also trigger a plot to oust him, which, with polling numbers still plunging, could rapidly gain momentum. It’s worth remembering that only around a third of Tory MPs backed Sunak in the 2023 leadership elections.
Even then, he will be frustrated in the Lords. As it is not a manifesto pledge, the peers can vote it down. There is not enough time to use the Parliament Acts to force the bill through. So the PM will be left to fume at the Upper Chamber, but unable to drive the bill into law — all his negotiations are likely to be for nought, except perhaps giving him a trigger to hang an election campaign off.
But while he may want an “immigration election”, the public is not so single-minded. Economic issues and the NHS outweigh illegal immigration in many voters’ minds. The Tories are on the back foot on both. While the PM desperately attempts to placate backbenchers on this, voters are worrying about other things. Going to the ballot box, they won’t care what he has offered the rebels, only that they feel poorer and think that he, and his party, has failed. Though Sunak has passed yesterday’s challenge, it has only bought him time, not salvation.
John Oxley is a corporate strategist and political commentator. His Substack is Joxley Writes.
Mr_John_Oxley
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Subscribe“But while he may want an immigration election, the public is not so single minded”
Oh, but Tory voters are, and rightly so, and particularly in red wall seats.
I’m not the first to point out that the emphasis on illegal immigration is a tactic to divert attention away from the stupendous level of legal migration. The former, although exasperating, is almost a bagatelle beside the latter.
Sunak’s robust performance at the Covid Inquiry – all the more impressive given the difficult week he was having – was a reminder that as bad as the Tories have been, the alternative is worse. In every respect where they have disappointed, the opposition demanded more damaging policies. It is self indulgent fantasy to imagine that, notwithstanding the rapid radicalisation of the electorate, as older Conservatives die off and are replaced by young Labour voters, the destruction of the Tories will result in a purer yet electable right wing alternative. This could be the last government ever to the right of Keir Starmer.
I was surprised yesterday that more voices did not come out directly in favour of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and cutting another key cord attaching the UK to European law.
Brexit is unfinished and leaving the ECHR should be the defining issue for a new leadership preparing the Tory party for a general election next year. As things stand, Rishi Sunak is destined to lose a landslide to Labour, whose former voters in the Red Wall will return to the fold.
Brexit is unfinished because too many MPs and much of the senior Civil Service don’t want it to be finished. But dragging their feet has resulted in a number issues getting to be too ‘heavy’ to kick further down the road.
It would be a hoot if the Conservative Manifesto for the next General Election majored on ‘Get Brexit Really Done’, but that would be too radical for the parliamentary Party. Unless it is smuggled in as a number of smaller proposals… Nope. Still unlikely.
Given this aims to tackle the tens of thousands that cross via small boats, but the vast majority of the 1.2 million foreigners that arrived last year arrived legally, it is obvious to anyone with a double digit IQ this is all a distraction. The Tories are doomed.
If one just reads UnHerd you would think the next election will just be about Immigration and Transgender issues. Always the danger of residing entirely in a ‘comforting space’ with a regular diet of likeminded opinions and articles.
One remarkable thing about much of UnHerd is the lack of Articles on how we might resolve some fundamentals like health and social care that affect us all. Criticising the NHS is fine but at some point one has to suggest some plausible alternatives and a well considered reform agenda. Ditto how does the UnHerd community engage with the crisis in Social care when kept largely ignorant by the Editors and Article Author focus. Or is it just too difficult?
There is a bit more occasionally on how we might address cost of living and create a fairer division of national wealth but it’s usually limp and underwhelming. This doesn’t mean the suggestions must be more Centrist or Left, but we could do with some that actually have an ounce of proper thought.
As regards the Rwanda politics – can take the Public a while to grasp what was almost certainly inevitable but it’s just another example of incompetent Policy making where the Right wing media Gallery has been more important and led folks down the garden path.
The news from the Bibby Stockholm should have brought James Cleverly to the Despatch Box to announce his resignation, but instead the Rwanda Bill was given a Second Reading by 313 votes to 269, a Government majority of 44. 37 Conservative abstentions and no Conservative votes against. None. Not even Robert Jenrick, who had resigned from the Government for the purpose.
It was all hot air. This rebellion, if it can be so described, is not going to double by Third Reading. As ever over the last 30 years, if the Conservative Right looked or sounded like normal people, then the media would ignore them. They are on television because they make good television, like those bizarrely attired X Factor contestants who could not sing a note and who were never going win.
In the spirit of the right-wing papers, which always swing behind whoever is the Conservative Leader at a General Election, the entire GB News roster of Lee Anderson, Philip Davies, Esther McVey and Jacob Rees-Mogg joined Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and Thérèse Coffey in voting with the Government. Scott Benton and Peter Bone were among the five MPs elected as Conservatives who did so despite no longer having the whip; Bone came in especially for the purpose.
Even Andrew Bridgen abstained, meaning that no one elected as a Conservative voted against this Bill. The DUP did, but they had already voted for the Labour amendment, so whatever their reasons, they would not have been those of any Conservative opponent. Had there been such a person. There was not. Since 313 is fewer than half of the House of Commons, then there would be no objection in principle to a fatal motion in the House of Lords. Fewer than half of MPs have voted for what is supposed to be this hugely popular measure, which is so urgent that it would not take effect in this Parliament.
Suella Braverman abstained, but the recent net migration figures were from when she was Home Secretary. Danny Kruger abstained, but he was Political Secretary to Boris Johnson, who abolished the requirement that vacancies in Britain be advertised first in Britain, and who wanted visa-free travel with India, the most populous country in the world. That wing of the Conservative Party supported Truss, who pretty much wanted to abolish immigration controls altogether, as is the logic of the political choice, such as all economic arrangements are, to have a “free” market. Such a market has to be in goods, services, capital, and labour, which means people. Until this is understood, then no serious debate on immigration can be conducted.
It is perfectly possible to have both a free market economy and adequate controls over immigration.
No, it is not. If you make the political choice, which is what it is, to have a “free” market, then that is what you have chosen to have. In goods. In services. In capital. And in labour, which means in people. How does it feel to understand less than Liz Truss?
That last sentence unduly harsh.
Not at all.
Well, if anyone would know how that feels, I guess it is David Lindsay.
No, harsh would have been: “How does it feel to understand less than the lettuce?”
The issuer of the last sentence clearly understands less about this subject than either of the people he has insulted
So how is it that eg Japan/pre-1980s UK allows much freer movement of goods than people (even UK now – it’s easier to import a book or ten dollars than a person). Your argument is absurdly reductionist. Some categories can allow for freer, others less free, movement.
Not with any logical consistency. Eventually, the necessity of unrestricted immigration for unrestricted everything else will catch up with you. And vice versa.
You continue to assert this. But I see no evidence of it. Do you have any?
Any two or more countries can commit themselves to treaties in which trade and movement of people may be agreed. But I’ve seen no evidence anywhere that the two must be linked.
I can see why people might wish them to be linked, and I can see why they sometimes are linked. Is that what you are getting at? If so, then fine, but that isn’t the same thing at all. And it doesn’t mean that there must be any link.
Please remind me how the NAFTA free trade agreement (USA, Canada, Mexico) works.
My understanding is that there is not a free market in labour to go with the free market in goods. How else could you have massive illegal immigration from Mexico to the USA ?
The so-called “four freedoms” of capital, goods, services and labour is not a fundamental requirement – it is an implementation decision and political viewpoint (or idealogical one in the case of the EU).
Note also that in the case of the EU there is still no free market in services (after more than 30 years of the single market). Which again suggests your statement is incorrect.
Either that, or there simply are no true free markets operating in the world today.
I’ve argued before that the EU was really a new Hanseatic League (a powerful medieval commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe).
If you think of the EU as merchant guilds and big businesses with political camouflage then many of the puzzles about the inactions/actions of the EU become clear. In which case the importation of workers is never going to receive any attention – unless and until it destabilises business plans more than it fixes.
What you say only works if you haven’t got millions of people on benefits. If everyone who could work was working and generating something positive, the country would be extremely busy and successful and then we could have proper discussions about immigration.
Like it and largely concur.
Remarkably many on the Right don’t grasp the full essence of a free market . And yet until a surge in East European migration post Lisbon Treaty never had a problem with EU free movement. So they’ve been inconsistent at best. The issue though was the volume surge post-Lisbon. The nature of a market, if one believes in free markets, is it would rebalance in time. But it probably was a legit issue to worry the volume impacting on Public services and possibly suppressing wages of the less advantaged. There were ways of managing this better under existing EU Articles but we never followed them.
Now of course, as predicted, we’ve had to recruit from non EU and it’s increased the total net migration (and also possibly the assimilation challenge). Utterly clueless thinking on behalf of the Brexit ‘bird-brains’
and Remain bird-brains ….
Dubaï, Japan, Switzerland or South Korea prove it.
Wrong assumption about the likelihood of the rebellion doubling. A huge number of MPs voted it to 2nd reading to give Sunak a chance to amend it. When he fails to do so, they they then vote against it.
Dream on.