'As an election looms, the Tories are fracturing over their Rwanda plan'

09 December 2023 , 23:10

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PM Rishi Sunak (Image: ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Rishi Sunak declared this week: “Unite or die.” Very ominous thing to say to his own party and, of course, it had exactly the opposite effect. No one died but they immediately started falling out with each other. Not that they ever really stopped.

Time of year for a good row but this lot are not even waiting for the Christmas Day game of Monopoly. It was about 5pm when Mr Sunak made his “unite or die” plea at a meeting of the 1922 Committee. By just after 6pm, his Immigration Minister had resigned.

Robert Jenrick is best remembered as the bloke who ordered children’s murals to be painted over at an immigration centre so as not to make these desperate, vulnerable, frightened kids feel the slightest bit welcome. Nice bloke.

Anyways, he jacked it in over the Rwanda plan, which is not really working out. A gimmick, Labour calls it, which is spot-on. It’s cost countless millions so far, no flights have taken off and they’re not likely to, due to the amount of legal challenges that will flood in.

Just rancid red meat for the Tories. Although that’s backfired, too, as lots of them don’t like it and lots of them don’t think it goes far enough.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade

There are about five separate factions and the only things they have in common is they don’t like Mr Sunak’s Rwanda plan or Mr Sunak himself. The election is looming like never before and although, as Mr Jenrick pointed out in his resignation letter, the Tories face “oblivion” there’s a growing sense that it would almost come as a relief. Shambles is not the word.

Meantime, the country is slowly sliding into an even deeper mess. Recession is looming, there’s no sign of the anticipated recovery and the doctors are going on strike again. Merry Christmas, eh?

Elsewhere, ex-PM Boris Johnson was on TV for two days solid, getting increasingly tetchy at the Covid Inquiry, the only thing worth watching at the moment. What’s interesting is the Establishment reaction. Suddenly, bits and pieces are appearing saying the point of the inquiry is to learn some technical lessons, not examine the character of those involved.

What’s going on here is they don’t like seeing their mates dragged through the mud. Of course the character of those involved in decision-making at the highest level deserved scrutiny.

It’s important for us to know the Prime Minister’s view of Long Covid was scrawling “bollocks” on an official document, that the science was ignored, that a macho, misogynist culture was in ­operation in No 10.

Very important for us to know so those of who voted for this circus never, ever, ever do it again.

Keir Mudie