On it goes. The Rwanda plan has consumed two years of parliamentary time and energy. It has pitted the government against the courts and Conservative MPs against themselves. The time left to get the scheme up-and-running before the election is shrinking. The party can’t even agree on what form it should take. Last night, 63 MPs rebelled against the Rwanda bill – which declares the African country a “safe” place to send migrants, in order to address the Supreme Court’s concerns – and two deputy party chairmen resigned.
“The last thing either of us wants to do is to distract from [the plan to stop the boats],” read Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith’s resignation letter. In this respect, they failed.
The government wants the next election to be fought over tax cuts and debt. It wants to scare voters with accusations of Labour profligacy. Instead, headlines and news packages are replete with Tory sniping over whether the Rwanda plan can work. Lee Anderson’s and Brendan Clarke-Smith’s faces were plastered across the news last night. I can’t remember a week when the government’s “grid” wasn’t submerged under Conservative back-stabbing and briefing. Ask party MPs about the situation, and they will shrug then tell you about their plans for after the next election. Like Monday’s YouGov poll which showed Labour on course for victory, last night’s rebellions only told us what we already knew.
“Please don’t,” pleaded the One Nation MP Damian Green on Sky News. But few of his colleagues are listening. Message discipline eludes divided parties. If the bill does pass tonight, then what will be the story? That Rishi Sunak has passed hard-line, emergency legislation to deal with migrant crossings? Or that the Conservative Party is divided and his own MPs don’t think his plan will work?
Tory MPs have guaranteed it’s the latter. They are not acting in their own interests. The conclusion must be that they have given up retaining their seats. Or perhaps the regularity of regicide in recent years has made rebellion habitual. Others are angry at the five-year absence of achievement. Covid and Ukraine dominated, true. But even then, the promise to level up the country has been revealed as only a few billion pounds that northern towns can beg for and the cancellation of a botched plan for high-speed rail. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it is often Red Wall Tory MPs – let down on levelling up – who are leading the charge on immigration. They were marched up a hill and left stranded.
A more fundamental problem is the weary malaise that is affecting some Tory MPs. Beneath the rebels’ showmanship, many are pained by the party’s descent in the polls and, in their eyes, descent in virtue. One rueful Tory mused to me recently that there was little status any more in being an MP, little dignity. “That’s gone,” they said.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here.
[See also: Is the Tory right prepared to bring down Rishi Sunak?]
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