'PM Sunak is ignoring the real will of the people by sticking to Rwanda plan'

20 January 2024 , 20:14

1080     0

Rishi Sunak and Lee Anderson (Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Rishi Sunak asked this week: “Will they get on board and do the right thing?”

The Prime Minister was talking about the members of the House of Lords and flights to Rwanda – which takes on a more sinister tone if you read it again. Is his latest scheme to relocate the Upper Chamber to Kigali?

Very ominous. One Labour Lord I spoke to said: “I suppose the weather would be better but it would make attendance allowance a touch harder to claim.” Indeed. Alas, there are no plans to relocate. Not the Lords, anyway.

Mr Sunak was speaking after the latest unedifying spectacle in the prolonged death throes of this floundering Government. Nothing encapsulated the charade more than everyone’s favourite TV presenter/politician/man of principle, former Tory Party Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson.

Mr Anderson was so committed to opposing the bill – which would see migrants flown to East Africa – that he quit his role over it. But then he just abstained instead when he saw Labour MPs “giggling and laughing” at him as he went to vote.

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

PM sticks to fright plan

Quite something, to be so principled that some schoolboy stuff puts you off everything you stand for. And quite the indictment of our current politics. (Incidentally, after he resigned some colleagues from Nottingham went into Ashfield to take the temperature. “He’s just embarrassing,” said one local. “If you go into any pub around here, it’s full of Lee Andersons.” Little tip: Avoid that pub.)

Anyways, despite the threats of rebellion from the least rebellious group ever assembled, the bill is on its way to the Lords, who are already in fighting mood. No one knows if it will make it through but it’s in for a bumpy ride. Turbulent, I suppose, if we’re talking flights.

The PM’s plaintive press conference, urging peers to get a move on, hasn’t gone down well – described variously as “vacuous” and weird. Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, said it was “bizarre”, adding: “I don’t think he has a clue how the Lords works. We will stick to our normal processes.”

Expect some prolonged needle. The Lords will try to debate it sensibly. But Mr Sunak has already framed any delay as holding up the “will of the people”. Very dangerous phrase that, vox populi, as Boris Johnson would say. The will of the people is a general election.

Meantime, thousands of jobs are going at Tata Steel in Wales and the PM is, as of Friday morning, “not available to take a call on Tata”.

This is the day it was revealed the Home Office has hired a hangar and dummy plane to practise put­­ting migrants on Rwanda flights. God knows the point, or even the cost. What we can say is it’s not, by any stretch, the will of the people.

Keir Mudie