A long-brewing civil war within the Conservative Party over immigration broke out on Wednesday as ousted Home Secretary Suella Braverman warned that the party is facing “electoral oblivion” while warning that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s legislative attempt to save the plan to send illegal migrants to centres in Rwanda is doomed to fail.
Update 19:45 — Immigration minister resigns
Robert Jenrick the Immigration Minister has quit the government over the Rwanda bill, saying it does not go far enough, reports the Daily Telegraph. Per their report, he wanted a far more robust bill that would have included clauses to prevent the process once again being bogged down in endless legal challenges. One of those changes, a “notwithstanding” clause, would have used the legislative power of Parliament to opt that law out of the European Convention on Human Rights, meaning foreign judges could not move to block British policy.
It is unusual for a cabinet minister to resign on a point of principle in UK politics, and this comes just hours after Suella Braverman’s fiery warning about the pending disaster awaiting the Conservatives suggests — if only slightly — a rebellion may be brewing.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – NOVEMBER 28, 2023: Minister of State (Minister for Immigration) in the Home Office Robert Jenrick leaves 10 Downing Street after attending the weekly Cabinet meeting in London, United Kingdom on November 28, 2023. (Photo credit should read Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
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Suella Braverman took to the floor of the House of Commons on Wednesday evening to lambast her former boss and the government she previously served for failing to deliver on promises to take back control of the United Kingdom’s borders.
The former Home Secretary and self-professed immigration hardliner, who was ousted from her post last month after criticising the mass uprising of anti-Israel protests in Britain, urged the government to act quickly on immigration or face being whipped out by the left-wing Labour Party in next year’s general election.
“It is now or never. The Conservative Party faces electoral oblivion in a matter of months if we introduce yet another Bill destined to fail,” Braverman told her fellow MPs. “Do we fight for sovereignty or let our party die? I refuse to sit by and allow the trust that millions of people have put in us be discarded like an inconvenient detail.”
Shortly after Braverman’s scathing remarks, Sunak’s government published proposed legislation that would supposedly shield the planned sending of illegal migrants to have their asylum claims offshore in the East African nation of Rwanda.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill would seek to prevent legal challenges under Britain’s Human Rights Act of 1998 and at the European Court of Human Rights from preventing migrant removal flights from finally setting off before the next election.
Prime Minister Sunak said that the bill would ensure that the Rwanda scheme “cannot be stopped” by activist lawyers or the European court, which Britain is still bound by despite leaving the EU as it is technically a separate institution, although deeply linked to the bloc. Last Summer, the ECHR controversially stepped in at the last minute to prevent a migrant flight from taking off from Britain to Rwanda.
The scheme was then mired in challenges for over a year within the UK and was finally struck down last month as unlawful by the Supreme Court, claiming that the country was not safe for refugees as once in Rwanda they may be deported again. Despite this, the government signed another deal with Kigali this week, reportedly agreeing to send another £15 million, on top of the £140 million already committed to the project, even though not a single migrant has been sent to Rwanda yet.
The new deal was inked on the expectation of the legal fixes proposed on Wednesday, with current Home Secretary James Cleverly claiming that the bill would “address all the issues” raised by the Supreme Court. Yet, his predecessor does not appear to be convinced that this is the case.
Speaking to the Daily Mail following the publication of the bill, a source close to Braverman said: “This bill doesn’t come close to meeting Suella’s tests.
“The Prime Minister has kept the ability for every single illegal migrant to make individual human rights claims against their removal and to then appeal those claims if they don’t succeed at first. It is fatally flawed.
“It will be bogged down in the courts for months and months. And it won’t stop the boats. It is a further betrayal of Tory voters and the decent patriotic majority who want to see this insanity brought to an end.”
Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, an ally of Braverman’s, is reportedly seeking to bolster the legislation to entirely remove the right of judicial review for migrants challenging their removal to Rwanda as well as “notwithstanding clauses” that would allow the government ministers to ignore both the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on asylum cases.
However, it is unclear if such language in the bill would be legal given Britain’s status as a member of the ECHR or whether it would require the UK to finally leave the Europan institution to accomplish the goal. Braverman argued on Wednesday again for leaving the ECHR, saying that the current legal framework is “producing insanities”.