The Nuremberg Defence

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Some lawyers are saying that any civil servants who assist the government in breaching international law (in this case, by ignoring injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights) will be personally liable for their actions. The PM has responded by saying that “civil servants will be expected to follow ministerial guidance” – even if that guidance is known to be unlawful. Presumably, he thinks that the civil servants, should they subsequently find themselves up before a judge somewhere or other, will use the defence that they were ‘only following orders’. The civil servants involved would be well advised to do a little research on what has become known as the ‘Nuremberg Defence’ before relying on it. History is not on the side of those who try it.

Notwithstanding Sunak’s talk of flights within 8 – 10 weeks, and even if they’re telling the truth (which, based on experience, seems unlikely) about having lined up an airport, some charter planes, sufficient trained security guards and a load of courts and judges, the chances of any actually taking off before an autumn election, let alone deterring anyone, still look pretty slim. Supposing that they do manage it, while Sunak seems to believe that film of planes taking off will excite his diminishing target group of voters it’s reasonable to wonder whether film of handcuffed refugees being forcibly carried onto aeroplanes will appeal to quite so many. No matter how hard they try (and they will) to prevent such footage becoming public, it’s doubtful that their efforts will be successful for long, or that the public reaction will be quite as positive as he hopes. Telling us that those involved are ‘only following orders’ isn’t likely to help.

More of a pong than a ping

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In his unwise and inexplicable desperation to get on with demonstrating how stupid and unworkable his Rwanda policy is, Sunak has been blaming the Labour Party for his failure to get the measure through the House of Lords, despite the fact that, of the 790 members of the Lords, only 173 sit as Labour peers, whilst there are actually 278 Tories. As Sunak has demonstrated on previous occasions, his grasp of basic arithmetic is somewhat shaky at best. Faced with two three-digit numbers, he struggles to work out which is the higher – he probably can’t even count his accumulated millions, what with that number containing even more digits.

His argument that an appointed house should not attempt to subvert the will of an elected house has a degree of merit. Or, rather, it would have were it not for the fact that Sunak’s party has historically obstructed attempts at Lords reform, preferring (for reasons which escape me, although they might not be unrelated to the fact that, as a general rule, there is a natural Tory majority in the Lords, to say nothing of peerages being a convenient way of rewarding large donors) to keep the status quo. No-one who is so committed to retaining an unelected house as part of the UK parliamentary system can honestly complain if it very occasionally exercises the limited powers which it possesses. But then, I suppose the word ‘honestly’ is the most important part of that sentence. The process of shuttling the legislation back and fore between the two chambers is known as parliamentary ping pong, where the ‘ping’ part refers to the transmission of the document, and the ‘pong’ part presumably refers to the stench of hypocrisy.

Tonight, the process of pinging the legislation between the two chambers will resume, with the PM – after deliberately deciding to delay votes which could have taken place last week – making it clear that parliamentarians in both houses will be expected to stay on the premises to continue voting until the Lords back down, as everyone supposes they eventually will. In anticipation of his expected victory, Sunak is apparently holding a press conference this morning to warn peers that they must now yield to his will, although one of his ministers has said that he will also spell out quite how he intends to implement the legislation once it is passed. If getting the legislation accepted by both houses of parliament has been a fraught experience for the PM, trying to implement it looks like being even fraughter (and if there isn’t such a word, there certainly should be). With an election likely to be held in October, there’s only six months before he is turfed out. The chances of a single plane taking off in the meantime currently look remote. And the chances of it deterring anybody look even remoter.

Isn't this what they wanted?

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The government’s ‘plan’ to send thousands of asylum-seekers to Rwanda has hit another snag as it has been revealed that those houses which were being built to receive them, and which sundry Home Secretaries have visited at not insignificant public expense to inspect, have now largely been sold off to Rwandans. There is, surely, something more than a little droll about Rwanda following exactly the policy which so many supporters of the Rwanda scheme have been urging: housing ‘our own people’ before making homes available to asylum-seekers. Getting the UK to pay for it is, from a Rwandan perspective, something of a bonus.

Giggling as a deterrent

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What’s in a word? In one of the most powerful and memorable political speeches of my lifetime – perhaps of all time – a true giant of politics told us, “I have a dream”. Today, in perhaps the most forgettable of a series of eminently unmemorable press conferences, a tetchy and soon-to-be-forgotten politician told us, multiple times, “I have a plan”. Articulating the detail of the plan, beyond putting the entire effort of the government machine into sending a tiny number of people to Rwanda whether doing so is lawful or not, has, once again, eluded him. His ‘plan’, such as it is, is so badly flawed that it would never have passed were it not for the support of those who went to such lengths to make it clear that they already know that it will fail.

He now fears that the unelected House of Lords, an institution which has always been known as a bastion of traditional conservatism which is why the Tory Party has long resisted reform (even if they're not all Conservatives in the party political sense), might actually act in accordance with those traditional values and defend the rule of law. The result is that he has been reduced to begging those conservatives to follow him by ditching all that they have previously believed and capitulating to the lawless right of his party. He seems blissfully unaware of the fact that at least some of those ‘loyal’ MPs who did not rebel over the last two days of debate voted for the final bill with a degree of confidence that it would be well and truly mauled by their lordships with no need for said MPs to put their own heads above the parapet. Cowardice comes in many forms.

Yesterday’s events also revealed that there is a secret weapon which can deter at least some of the extreme right-wingers who have so successfully cowed Sunak into submission. Giggling. It seems that one of the self-styled leaders of the revolt backed down at the last moment because Labour MPs were giggling and taking the mick as the over-hyped rebellion turned into an impressive demonstration of the willingness of Tories to vote in favour of that which they had so vigorously opposed just hours previously. The only question is ‘who’s weapon is it?’. Whilst Starmer’s ridicule of Sunak earlier in the afternoon proved to be effective against the PM, Labour’s fit of the giggles seems to have worked to Sunak’s advantage. Perhaps he should ask Starmer to organise more of the same the next time the certifiable tendency of his party - a much more accurate description than the rather grandiose and self-important, 'five families' - threatens a revolt.

Market forces are failing to date

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It is axiomatic for Conservatives that ‘the markets’ can and will solve problems – it’s just a question of matching buyers and sellers. It’s an axiom which is coming under some pressure in relation to the Rwanda scheme. Those who own the aeroplanes are concerned about reputational damage if they become involved and the Home Office has so far failed to locate any planes which can be made available. It’s not because there aren’t any, it’s rather that the ‘sellers’ of aeroplane services aren’t willing to provide those services to the ‘buyers’, for reasons which (in the Holy Grail of capitalist economics) are a distortion of the market because they have nothing to do with money. For the purists, money is the only driver in economics.

Perhaps capitalist economics will reassert itself if the buyer is prepared to offer such a high price that the sellers will ‘take the money and run’. Turning reputational damage into filthy lucre would hardly be a first. It may even be something that a certain Conservative peer might be able to assist with. She has no planes of course, but a lack of capacity to produce useable PPE proved not to be a bar either. And Chris Grayling managed to contract ferry companies with no ships, so there’s plenty of precedent. If the pile of filthy lucre is high enough, capitalism decrees that someone should eventually respond. But if the market does indeed fail, fall back plans seem to consist of hiring a plane in unbranded livery and hoping no-one will find out who owns it (probability: close to zero) or using RAF planes rather than commercial ones.

The Rwanda scheme isn’t the first occasion on which a government has rushed into a plan with a lack of detailed planning and preparation, and it won’t be the last. But it’s certainly shaping up to be one of the worst debacles in recent times. But then, the initial announcement was never intended to be taken seriously; it was always a Johnson-style plan to divert attention in the short term from his own behaviour. Sunak could have scrapped it within days of taking office (Johnson really wouldn’t have cared, although he might have huffed and puffed a bit just for show); how and why Sunak decided to double down on a half-baked plan which was never going to work is something which is likely to become an essay question for future students of the decline and fall of the Conservative Party.

Identifying the right hero

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Whether Christmas is the religious celebration as some wish to see it, or some sort of re-purposed celebration of the winter solstice as others choose to see it, is a matter of opinion, albeit often strongly-held. As a question of historical fact, since no-one really knows exactly when Christ was born, choosing an existing pre-Christian feast as the time to celebrate that birth was a shrewd piece of marketing for those seeking to convert the population to the new religion.

In practice, most of us are happy to adopt a ‘live and let live’ philosophy rather than demand that others must accept our definition of the nature of the event, whichever definition we choose. That said, for historical and cultural reasons, even in an increasingly secular society, most of us are also aware of, and tend to support, the seasonal concept of ‘peace on earth and goodwill to all men’. It's an idea which is strongly associated with the Christian take on Christmas (although some of us might wish that the sentiment wasn’t confined to such a short period of the year). It’s also generally seen as a time for families to take a break and be together.

Unless, of course, we are talking about the Home Secretary. It has been revealed this week that she has cancelled all Border Force leave over Christmas, in the expectation that the Supreme Court judgement due in early December will give the green light to start flying people to Rwanda. If that is indeed the outcome, the staff will be needed to implement the decision before and during the Christmas break. It’s a strange sort of ‘goodwill to all men’ which doesn’t even apply to her staff, let alone those who they will be expected to strap forcibly into aircraft seats if her dream comes to pass.

Many of their previous statements have led me to wonder whether members of the current government really understand the ‘British’ values which they claim to espouse, because they have a curious way of showing it. In this case, I can’t help but wonder whether Braverman has read the traditional story of Christmas through her own distorted lens and somehow concluded that Herod was actually the hero.

To strive, not to succeed

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A political strategy which depends on appealing to a certain section of the electorate by demonising and persecuting an identifiable group of people faces a serious problem should the stated objective ever be achieved: it would need to find another identifiable group to persecute instead. Far better to demonstrate the effort being made to tackle the problem without ever actually succeeding. The Tories may shout “Stop the Boats”, but in reality that is the last thing they want. Take away that slogan and what do they stand for; what is their appeal to that particular section of the electorate? It might be argued that they could then claim the credit for the success, but that’s not likely to be a very long-lived benefit. No, the Tories need the boats to keep coming in order to demonstrate their strength and resolve in tackling the problem.

Whilst some of their more extreme members haven’t worked out yet that the objective is not to succeed but merely to strive and are demanding that the UK withdraw from any conventions which might stand in the way, the PM himself realises that the political advantage which he seeks lies in the battle, not the victory. Tough rhetoric coupled with draconian-sounding laws which can never be effective is the starting point, but he actually needs the international courts to stand in his way and obstruct the government. That’s an essential part of the performance. Paying Rwanda to take a few asylum-seekers (maybe, sometime, perhaps) whilst turning a blind eye to Rwandan actions which drive more people into becoming refugees is another. And then we have the ‘revelation’ that the UK is diverting money from overseas aid to pay for dealing with the refugees once they arrive in the UK. Few things could do more to ensure that the flow of refugees continues than diverting money from addressing poverty, famine, and natural disasters in the poorest countries and spending it in one of the richest.

The success of the strategy depends not on achieving the stated objective, but on being seen to forever tweak it and find others to blame for its failure. And, of course, on the gullibility of the relevant electors, aided and abetted by those sections of the media which actually give it credence. Perversely, the best hope of defeating it might be the enemy within the Tory Party, in the shape of a certain Boris Johnson. No, not in the sense of changing anything the government does; more in the sense of diverting attention away from the perpetual war against immigrants and reminding people of other aspects of modern conservatism, such as sleaze, dishonesty, entitlement and self-enrichment. If there’s one person willing to serve up a never-ending dose of diversionary news, we probably couldn’t hope for better than Johnson. I find myself almost hoping that a by-election is called and that he wins it. Second best is no by-election and the thorn remains very firmly in the side, ensuring that Sunak continues to limp along, frustrated at every turn by the latest news from the deluded inhabitants of Borisworld. Fun though it might be to watch, sadly none of it helps refugees or potential refugees, and worst of all, there are no signs that the potential alternative UK government will be any more sympathetic, or even try to be; it will merely seek to be more ‘efficient’ at dealing with the perceived ‘problem’. As ever, the poorest and most vulnerable are bit actors, whose fate is of no concern. It should be.

Maintaining the flow of people?

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It’s far from clear just how many of the UK’s unwanted migrants Rwanda is willing and able to accept. Some initial reports suggested the number was around 200 (presumably, per year) but the Home Secretary has repeatedly insisted that there is no limit and that Rwanda can take many thousands. Whether the ‘bung’ that the UK government has given the government of Rwanda will be enough in the second case is doubtful; it would be a very strange arrangement which capped the cost but not the number of people involved. If the numbers are open-ended, the cost is likely to be open-ended as well. Perhaps they’re just hoping that the issue will never arise: they seem to fondly imagine that sending a single planeload, or perhaps two, will have such a chilling effect on all those seeking to come to the UK that the flow will simply stop, however unlikely that might seem to anyone else.

In the meantime, the Rwandan army is making regular incursions into the Congo in support of the M23 rebels, who are laying waste to large areas of that country. To date, it appears that around 800,000 people have been driven from their homes by the fighting and are living in refugee camps. No doubt some of those will, in due course, set out on a perilous journey to reach safety, possibly even involving small boats at some point. It would be a surprise if any of them thought that Rwanda might be a ‘safe place’ to be sent in the circumstances, but that doesn’t mean that Rwanda’s authoritarian leader wouldn’t be happy to be paid to take them. And I doubt that Braverman or Sunak would think twice about sending them either, along with a cheque. As if the whole Rwanda project wasn’t distasteful enough in itself, and the people smugglers insufficiently evil, the Rwandan regime is creating more refugees which will potentially keep the people (and the money) flowing. And the UK is likely to end up funding it; treating desperate people as a commodity to be traded seems to suit all concerned. People smugglers, governments – aren’t they ultimately doing the same thing here? The main difference seems to be that the people smugglers take them somewhere that they want to go, and they travel voluntarily. It's quite something when those evil enough to take money from desperate people before sending them on a life-threatening journey can almost look benevolent compared to governments. It all tells us more about the true values of Sunak and Braverman than anything they say can ever do.

Scoring own goals

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When presented with an open goal, the usual response of a footballer is to kick the ball into it. Politics doesn’t work that way, especially for Labour leader Keir Starmer. With large swathes of the establishment, including the heir to the throne and the established church, lining up to criticise the scheme to send refugees to Rwanda as unjust, immoral and illegal, and with a number of Labour MPs leading the charge in the House of Commons, the office of the leader of the opposition manages to kick the ball towards his own net instead, by declining to say whether Labour would reverse the policy if it were in government, or even whether Starmer believes it to be morally wrong. Ultimately, it seems that fear of being seen by racist voters to be ‘soft on immigration’ ends up trumping any sense of principled policy making.

It also ends up helping to enable the disingenuous argument, as put forward by Johnson and Patel, that anyone opposing the policy of sending refugees to Rwanda is aiding and abetting the people smugglers who are placing so many vulnerable and desperate people in small boats and sending them on a risky journey across the world’s busiest shipping lane. According to their interpretation, the only way to stop people smugglers is to deter their potential ‘customers’ by convincing them that taking the risk will leave them in an even worse situation than staying where they are (although attempting to implement the policy without first jumping through all the necessary legal hoops might actually have the opposite effect when those ‘customers’ see that no-one really gets sent anywhere). The possibility of doing more to intercept and catch the smugglers themselves doesn’t seem to have even crossed their minds, probably because it might mean having to work with the French, which might amount to a tacit and very un-Brexity admission that co-operation with neighbours could be more effective than confrontation.

Patel’s claim that there is no other way of dealing with the problem than acting illegally sounds a bit like someone telling a court, “I was broke and couldn’t think of another way of getting any money, so I robbed the bank”. Whether there are practical alternatives or not depends on how the problem is defined. If the problem is defined – and it’s not unreasonable to suspect that this is the working definition being used by Patel and Johnson – as ‘how do we get massive headlines and appeal to the basest instincts of our core electors?’, then there is a degree of truth in their claim that opponents are not coming up with alternative solutions. Opponents simply aren’t defining the problem in the same way. Defining the problem as ‘what can we do about a situation where so many people are rendered so desperate by war, famine, oppression and economic inequality that they are prepared to risk their own and their children’s lives by travelling thousand of miles to a place where they can escape those things?’, would lead absolutely no-one, ever, to suggest putting some of those people on a plane and flying them from one of the world’s richest countries to one of the poorest. And that means, according to Patel, that they are not offering any alternative solutions. In the remaining neuron which serves as her logic circuit, she even has some claim to be right.

What’s unclear is which definition ‘Keith’ Starmer is using. Some of the language used by some Labour people suggests that they might actually be looking at the plight of the individuals, but Starmer’s reticence to state, straight out, that the policy is utterly unacceptable in any civilised society and would be immediately scrapped by an incoming Labour government suggests that he, too, might be more fixated on the headlines than on the people involved. Allowing the Mail and the Express to determine Labour policy shows just how far that party has fallen.