Redefining the 'success' of he Rwanda policy

Tweet

 

The Irish government and the UK government seem to be saying much the same thing about an increase in the number of asylum-seekers entering the Republic from the north of Ireland – that it’s somehow to do with fear of being sent to Rwanda. Reliably enough, the extreme Unionists in the north have a rather different explanation, which is that it’s the fault of the Republic for demanding an open border with the north; there’s nothing that they’d like more than to build a nice big wall across the island. Disregarding the latter group – it is another reliable factor in politics that the unionists have very special spectacles for looking at events – that rare unity of interpretation doesn’t seem to have much basis in hard fact, being based more on anecdotal evidence from a few individuals who have made the journey.

Sunak’s celebration of it as an indicator of the ‘success’ of his Rwanda policy is based on redefining what success looks like. From the outset, he’s been saying that success is all about ‘stopping the boats’; now he seems to be saying that the policy will still be a success if the boats keep coming, as long as all the passengers promptly decamp to the Irish Republic. A train ticket from Dover to Liverpool would at least be a great deal cheaper than a charter plane to Kigali, but I probably shouldn’t put ideas into their heads. The Irish government is planning emergency legislation to allow the arrivals to be deported back to the UK, although it’s not exactly clear how that might work, given that the UK government will presumably decline to accept people under such circumstances. And even if they did, the lack of border controls means that they can immediately get onto a ferry to Belfast and then return to the Republic. There would be a certain circular irony, though, in the idea that the threat of being deported to the UK would deter people from travelling to Eire.

In the meantime, the passing of the shameful Safety of Rwanda Act has led to the news that the government is to institute a major round-up of asylum-seekers across the UK, with the aim of placing thousands into detention awaiting a flight to Kigali. They could be held in detention for months, even if the government succeeds in getting flights off the ground in 10 -12 weeks time as they hope, despite the unlikelihood in practice. Assuming each aircraft has a capacity of 200 passengers (we don’t know yet what planes are to be chartered), and that each ‘passenger’ requires at least 2 border guards to restrain them, that would be a maximum of around 66 migrants per flight (in reality, the chance of filling flights, given the legal and practical processes involved, to say nothing of the risks of transporting a large number of reluctant passengers and the capacity of Rwanda to accept them, is small). If there were to be three flights per week, that’s a maximum of 200 deportees each week. With 2200 held in detention at any one time, the ‘standard’ waiting time in a detention facility rapidly grows from the initial 10-12 weeks for the first recipients of the government’s ‘compassion’ (© Rishi Sunak) to at least 21-23 weeks – or five months plus – for the last of the first 2200 to be rounded up, and at least three months for all those later detainees who fill the places as they empty.

Sunak and those around him clearly believe that millions of people will be motivated to vote Tory by the sight of Border Force guards roaming the streets, swooping on people, forcibly carting them off, and then placing them in detention centres for months where they are denied full legal representation, before forcibly carrying them in handcuffs onto planes to send them to a country which they have never visited and where they have no wish to live. It’s evocative of some of the worst aspects of past history, both in Europe in the last century and the earlier use of transportation (even those convicts transported to Australian penal colonies for trivial offences had some sort of formal trial first, however unfair that trial might have been) and is a long way removed from any understanding I’ve ever had of modern ‘British’ values. I really hope that they’re as wrong as they should be about the likely voter reaction.