‘Stop! Think Fraud’ – perhaps the government should take its own advice

‘Stop! Think Fraud’ – perhaps the government should take its own advice

Feb 14, 2024 | Bylines, News

The government has gained another ‘X’ community note for its ‘Stop! Think Fraud’ campaign – if only it had been more careful itself, writes Bremain Chair Sue Wilson MBE for Yorkshire Bylines. 

The Home Office has launched a campaign with the slogan ‘Stop! Think Fraud’ aimed at helping the public “spot fraud” and protect themselves from its “devastating impacts”. According to the government website, the campaign is backed by “leading counter fraud experts uniting under one voice to provide consistent, clear and robust advice”.

On the one hand, it’s comforting to hear that our government is prepared to listen to experts once more. But it rather raises the question, where were these experts when questions were being asked of government ministers regarding questionable PPE contracts?

 

The ‘Stop! Think Fraud’ campaign

Of all recorded crimes committed in England and Wales, fraud accounts for 40% of the total, with an estimated 3.2 million offences each year, according to government statistics. The cost of that fraud is estimated at £6.8bn in England and Wales alone. While that’s not an insignificant figure, and deserves some government attention, it’s small fry compared to the £100bn hit to UK exports revealed in the latest analysis of Brexit damage. But don’t hold your breath waiting for a government campaign designed at fixing that problem.

The government anticipates that its anti-fraud campaign “will be seen by 95% of adults in the UK” over the coming weeks thanks to blanket coverage on radio, TV, social media and billboards. Home Secretary James Cleverly said the “bold” fraud strategy will continue to “deliver for the British people”. A bold, new strategy? Perhaps. A tired old idiom? Most definitely.

Security Minister Tom Tugendhat added, “This new campaign will share the details we all need to defend ourselves and our friends”. Perhaps, in some future anti-crime campaign, he’ll be suggesting a similar approach to defending ourselves against muggers or burglars. Sounds, to me, rather like ‘you’re on your own!’

Fraud in the name of Covid

In Cleverly’s video, he claims fraud has been cut by 13% in England and Wales over the last year. Within 24 hours, that claim had already been challenged on social media as “misleading”, as the police had reported a 15% increase in fraud.  Not only that, but the rate of fraud has increased by 128% when compared with September 2013.

As for the government themselves, perhaps they could also focus on issues much closer to home, such as the long-running National Crime Agency investigation into allegations of fraud and bribery faced by Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband.

The prime minister himself has also been under scrutiny in regard to his actions during the pandemic. In June 2023, a report revealed that government losses to fraud had quadrupled, under the then chancellor Rishi Sunak, from £5.5bn to £21bn, according to the Commons Public Accounts Committee.

HM Revenue and Customs – the direct responsibility of Sunak – suffered enormously due to this rise in fraud, thanks to £97bn being spent on the pandemic furlough scheme, the bounce back loan scheme and the disastrous ‘Eat out to Help Out’ scheme. While some efforts have been made to recover the £4.9bn lost to fraud and error from the bounce back loan scheme alone, only limited amounts have been recovered to date. Judging by recent events, Sunak’s judgment has not improved with advancement. Neither has his knowledge of balancing the books, it would seem.

Last year, a National Audit Office report revealed the staggering increase – almost fourfold – in public money being lost to fraud since the beginning of the pandemic – money that is unlikely to ever be fully recovered. Not only is that money long gone, but the government is keeping very quiet on the subject. While the wrongdoings of some government colleagues seemingly go unpunished, the general public are facing ever tougher sentences for much lesser crimes.

“Nobody is immune from fraud”, the government campaign tells us. Some in high places are, it would seem, a little more immune than others.

Stop! Think Fraud

In Cleverly’s promotional video he promises to “not let fraudsters in”, encourages us to “protect ourselves” and advises us to “take a minute to stop and think fraud”. Sound advice! Let’s make sure to repeat it often in the run-up to the election.

Liz Truss and her Popular Conservatives are just another populist con

Liz Truss and her Popular Conservatives are just another populist con

Feb 13, 2024 | Bylines, News

The launch of the splinter group the Popular Conservatives last week was met with derision. But their mission is both tired and dangerous. Bremain Vice Chair Lisa Burton writes for Bylines Cymru.

What a feast of delusion and desperation we witnessed at the launch of yet another Conservative splinter group last week. The Popular Conservatives, or PopCon, is another attempt by people formerly known as Conservatives to force their America-adapted, far-right populist, totalitarian ideas on the country, this time under the banner of ‘popular Conservatism’. There’s nothing popular or conservative about them.

The record holder for the shortest premiership in UK history was the star of the show. Liz Truss arrived to rapturous applause. Her fiscal policies and uncosted tax cuts almost crashed our economy, forcing the Bank of England to take emergency measures to save pensions. She cost the country billions and caused interest rate rises that have so far cost homeowners over £300bn in higher mortgage payments.

Yet Truss reaps rich rewards and is invited to speak at events as if she’s an economics guru. It would be unthinkable at any other time, but these are no ordinary times. Failing spectacularly seems to be the Conservative brand now. And it is failing our country.

 

The true secret Conservatives

Truss said “Britain is full of secret Conservatives – people who agree with us but don’t want to admit it.” The Conservative Foundation website states that the “Conservative Party has always stood for personal liberty, democracy, and the rule of law.” But your personal liberty to stand up for the environment, LGBTQ+ rights, human rights, international law, and the right to asylum doesn’t exist in their vision of Britain. Democracy and the rule of law are seen as nothing but irritants holding Conservatives back by the capacity to hold them to account.

You don’t have to look hard for evidence that today’s Conservative Party is nothing like it was. Look at the crackdown on the fundamental right to protest through the Public Order Bill, which has been criticised globally. Witness their attacks on the independence of the Electoral Commission, which experts warn is part of an alarming trend of watering down and undermining trust in British democracy.

See also voter gerrymandering, or attacks on British institutions, lawyers, civil servants, celebrities, ‘experts’, unions, and our world-renowned judiciary. And, of course, breaking international law over the doomed Rwanda policy. Such actions are blatantly totalitarian in nature and have nothing to do with ‘popular conservatism’.

When Truss refers to “secret conservatives”, she means those who support these attacks on our institutions. Those who think foreigners, minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone ‘different’ (from them) should be tolerated only as long as they stay in their box and don’t make a fuss. She appeals to the worst impulses in us.

Modern McCarthyism

You don’t need to be a racist, bigot, or xenophobe, though all would find a natural home here. Sadly, many who fall for this narrative have been made to feel angry or fearful. They feel they and their communities have been left behind and that politicians put others in society before them. This part, at least, is genuine: those who attended PopCon do only care about a tiny section of society. The con is making the masses believe it’s them, when all the evidence suggests they only care about themselves and those at the top of the food chain.

They don’t admit they are socialists or communists anymore. It’s all about taking power away from people and families and giving power to the state. The problem is the Conservatives had tried to appease these people. We have tried to triangulate. For years and years and years – it goes back two decades – Conservatives have not taken on the leftwing extremists.

Liz Truss

In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy ran a campaign of political repression and persecution of leftwing people, spreading fear and hysteria regarding alleged communist and Soviet influence on American institutions. Lives and reputations were ruined, and people were wrongly imprisoned. It was a dangerous and shameful era with enduring repercussions, and is often cited as an example of how unfounded fears can compromise or destroy civil liberties.

The primary targets for persecution were government employees, prominent figures in the entertainment industry, academics, leftwing politicians, and labour union activists. Sound familiar?

The true net zero zealots

In addition to Truss’ comments above, we’ve heard other ‘Conservatives’ talk of the “blob”, the “wokerati”, “metropolitan elites”. It’s nothing new, just different terminology. Such a shame we human beings forget our history, and that our nature leaves us open to manipulation by ‘fear of the other’ or things we don’t understand. It’s the root cause of many of the world’s ills. Just think how many governments currently use ‘others’ to create a climate of fear.

Populists say they represent the people, the will of the people, the common folk, or the silent majority. “Hardworking families”. This is the biggest and most necessary con of all. They themselves are the elites they loudly rally against.

They don’t, as they claim, want to row back on net zero to save households money. The fossil fuels industry made average profits of $2.8bn per day over the last 50 years. Of course those companies want that to continue. They feed some of those billions-per-day into ‘think tanks’, lobbyists, and political donations to ensure it. They can afford to.

It’s well documented that the organiser and some attendees of PopCon have links to climate change denial organisations and the fossil fuels industry. Is it any wonder they hosted politicians who attacked net zero policies, and handed out leaflets calling for an end to “net zero zealotry”?

Holding Britain back

The wholesale price of electricity is set under the ‘marginal cost pricing system’ by the most expensive method needed to meet demand (usually burning gas). If your renewable unit of energy was 50% of the cost of a unit produced by gas, you’d still pay the gas price unit. It’s not a ‘green tax’ that’s keeping your energy prices high.

Renewables are cheaper; the government admits this, and there is ample evidence. Yet anti-net zero radicals would apparently prefer that the country be held to ransom by authoritarian regimes like Russia and Saudi Arabia. And to be vulnerable to volatile supply chains and prices, and the world events adding to that volatility.

A green industrial revolution is underway and is not going anywhere. It will provide highly skilled and secure jobs, boost the country’s economy, and protect the planet. Countries are racing to take advantage of and consolidate the new technologies required. Yet Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and their ilk want the UK to sit back and allow other countries to win this race; to hold Britain back. Why, and to whose benefit? Certainly not for that of this country or its citizens!

Rees-Mogg attacks the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), judges, and the “international elite”. To stop your country falling to the far right, fascism, or totalitarianism, constitutional checks and balances including domestic and international law protect the people and the nation. This is why today’s ‘Conservatives’ make such attacks.

A true Conservative would be aghast, but these are far right populists. Their very behaviour establishes that. Law and its institutions hold them back from creating a society in which total control and power lie in the hands of the few to benefit the few.

 

Populist Conservatives: a populist con

They identify an enemy, always a minority – refugees, asylum seekers, trans people, or, these days, climate change protesters – building anger and fear around such groups, which they say are dangerous to society, ‘the family’, and the country. They portray judges as enemies, and tell the public they can’t protect them because unreasonable laws prevent it and lawyers are ‘on the left’. It’s absurd, of course. The law can only be applied as it’s written, and lawyers are duty-bound to be unbiased.

A globally trading democracy can’t function as such if not bound by international agreements and laws, with a robust domestic legal system. Unless you want to be like North Korea, and maybe Rees-Mogg does?

If you think leaving the ECHR is a good idea, or want to abandon human rights because you think it’ll only affect asylum seekers, ask yourself: would Popular Conservatives stop there? Which rights are you willing to give up so a few people can be sent to Rwanda unlawfully?

Richard Murphy sums up Truss and the Popular Conservatives perfectly in his blog, Funding the Future. “This is, then, an agenda that explicitly permits the powerful with a grudge to abuse anyone they wish with impunity. And anything that gets in the way, like democratic government and the rule of law, must be vilified or abolished.”

Please, don’t help make them popular, or let them con you into believing otherwise.

Election 2024: Conservatives face backlash from British citizens living overseas

Election 2024: Conservatives face backlash from British citizens living overseas

Jan 29, 2024 | Bylines, News

Is the Conservative Party wise to hire a coordinator to drum up support from British citizens living overseas? Sue Wilson MBE, Bremain Chair, writes for Yorkshire Bylines. 

On 16 January, UK voting rights were finally restored to disenfranchised British citizens living overseas. After decades of campaigning and years of broken manifesto promises, millions of Britons outside of the UK may finally have something to thank the Conservative Party for. Or so the government might think.

No sooner had overseas Brits welcomed the news that our democratic rights had been restored than we were affronted by reports of the recruitment of an ‘overseas voter registration coordinator’. The task of the government’s new coordinator is to mobilise support from abroad in 100 key target seats, including many of those in the ‘red wall’.

What the government may have misunderstood – and not for the first time – is the sheer level of anger and frustration felt by overseas British citizens at the way we have been ignored, excluded and misrepresented, especially over Brexit.

 

Conservatives faring badly at home

The latest YouGov Westminster voting intention figures (2–3 January 2024) show the Conservatives are suffering badly in the polls – languishing at only 22%, with Labour well in front on 46%. Bad enough, but the latest figures are even worse than those for the previous month, so the government’s ‘popularity’ is getting worse. The prime minister’s own ratings are faring no better either, including from within his own party.

With an election looming, the government will no doubt be aiming to pull out all the stops in an effort to turn the tide of public opinion. But based on recent failed attempts – by the prime minister especially – to claim achievements not in evidence, or to point the finger of blame at those not in power, the British public have wised up.

Perhaps the government believes that Brits living overseas will look on them more favourably since they restored our voting rights. Perhaps they believe that we don’t pay as close attention to what they’ve been up to as those living closer to Westminster. Perhaps they even believe, like many of the British public, that we’re all wealthy, retired and politically illiterate. They’d be wrong on all counts

 

British citizens living overseas: we haven’t forgotten

Four years on from Brexit, and seven and a half years after the referendum, the wounds we suffered still smart. Many were denied their democratic voting rights in the 2016 referendum. Many were denied the opportunity to vote against a Brexit government in subsequent general elections.

Yet we still had to deal with the consequences and the removal of our rights, benefits and opportunities. Those valuable EU citizenship rights – not least our freedom of movement – were ours, we were led to believe, for life. Now we, and you, have less rights and protections, and those wishing to follow in our footsteps are less able to do so.

While the anger, upset and shock of Brexit may have abated a little, the government continue to give us plenty to get mad about. Even from a distance, it’s difficult to ignore the extremist leanings of an increasingly desperate – and let’s be honest, barking mad – government. We may not live in the UK, but we are not blind or deaf, even if the government have continually treated us as though we were.

 

A rude awakening beckons

If the Conservatives seriously believed that restoring our overseas voting rights would work in their electoral favour, they may be in for a very rude awakening. Former Times correspondent, William Chislett, who has lived in Spain since 1986, told the I newspaper, “Over the last 14 years, they have broken Britain. There are 150 reasons to get them out”. He added in a tweet, “No party could be worse than the current Conservatives” – an opinion widely shared both at home and abroad.

Debbie Williams MBE, former Conservative supporter and founder of campaign group Brexpats – Hear our Voice, summed up the feeling of many as follows:

“They can try and garner all the support from UK citizens overseas but I can tell you one thing, we have long memories.”

 

Williams added, “they threw us under the Brexit bus so they’d better think again as they are going to be punished into eternity at the ballot box”.

It remains to be seen what the government might do next to influence the votes of former Conservative supporters both at home and abroad, but their options are fast running out. Their rhetoric – factual or otherwise – is no longer getting through. Everything they have tried to date has failed miserably, and they have lost the public’s trust.

Gina Miller, leader of the True & Fair Party and prospective MP for Epsom and Ewell, asked the question “what bribe will they try to entice expats to vote for them? Bribery is all they have left!”. Whatever enticement they might try, it’s not going to work because whatever they promise us now, we’re never going to believe a word of it.

Sunak delivers speech alongside Europe’s hard-right populists

Sunak delivers speech alongside Europe’s hard-right populists

Dec 26, 2023 | Bylines, News

Rishi Sunak rubs shoulders with hard-right leaders at political festival in Rome, writes Bremain Treasurer Helen Johnston for Yorkshire Bylines.

 

Rishi Sunak is clearly short on friends these days. Reinforcing ties with countries that newly-minted Lord Cameron calls Britain’s “friends, neighbours and partners” seems laudable, but is a right-wing political festival in Rome, organised by Giorgia Meloni’s hardline Brothers of Italy party, really the diplomatic place to start?

Five years ago the headline guests at the ‘Atreju’ festival were Steve Bannon, the ‘brains’ behind Donald Trump, and everybody’s favourite right-wing troublemaker, Nigel Farage. In 2019, Hungary’s Victor Orbán took centre stage at the conference.

These are all figures that are considered to lurk on the hard-right of European and international politics. Not exactly your respectable, mainstream politicians. So, what does it tell us that the prime minister of the United Kingdom is now prepared to follow in their footsteps?

 

Sunak takes the platform

Speaking at the festival, Sunak used the platform to warn that “enemies” were “deliberately driving people to our shores to try and destabilise our society” and called for changes to the international framework on asylum rules. His comments have duly drawn criticism from opposition MPs, with Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson stating:

“Infighting within the Conservative party is now generating a bidding war to see who can make the most toxic contribution to the debate … instead of posturing, Rishi Sunak would do better to focus on tackling the asylum backlog that is leaving people in limbo and costing the taxpayers billions.”

Sunak is rubbing shoulders with Elon Musk, who has brought the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) into disrepute since he bought it out, and the leader of Spain’s hard-right VOX party, Santiago Abascal.

 

Who are VOX?

VOX has emerged as the main far-right party in Spain over the past few years, its popularity boosted by a backlash against Catalan independence, and a socially conservative reaction to progressive policies including women’s, gay and trans rights.

Abascal is facing calls for a police investigation following remarks in which he claimed a time would come when the Spanish people would want to see current prime minister Pedro Sánchez “strung up by his feet”. He was recently one of the instigators of mass demonstrations that spilled over into riots, protesting against Sánchez’s coalition deal with Catalan nationalist parties. At those protests, Abascal was spotted in the company of US polemicist and conspiracy theorist, Tucker Carlson, who remarkably managed to be sacked by Fox News for being too extreme, even for them.

Last week, Pedro Sánchez spoke at the European Parliament to review the Spanish presidency, which ends this month. A VOX MEP intervened to say:

“Mr Sánchez, you will go down in history. Generations of Spaniards will study in history books your narcissistic, manipulative, uncaring and morally unscrupulous conduct. Millions of Spaniards live on the poverty line, and you decided to fleece the middle classes by raising taxes and distributing European funds to public bodies to weave your web of personal favours. Millions of Europeans are unsafe on the streets, but you decided to surrender our borders to the arrival of mass immigration.” (my translation)

By the company you keep, shall you be known

Sunak’s flirting with the European hard-right has not gone unnoticed in the foreign media, and European leaders, including Spain’s new prime minister, will also surely be taking note.

When he appeared before the Lords European Affairs Committee, Cameron said he hoped that “a lot of the heat and anger has come out of the relationship [with Europe]” and he is keen to start talking with EU countries about easing certain rules and restrictions. It is difficult to see how his prime minister’s schmoozing with hard-right eurosceptic populists like Meloni and Abascal will help that process.

Minister for common sense?

Minister for common sense?

Nov 18, 2023 | Bylines, News

Esther McVey, minister for common sense: sounds ludicrous; here’s why it’s insidious writes Bremain Vice Chair Lisa Burton for Yorkshire Bylines.

For some, Rishi Sunak’s shuffle felt like a return of some common sense. Still, the appointment of Esther McVey as minister for commonsense, or even more ridiculously named, ‘Commonsense Tsar’, only proves it’s still all about nonsense.

 

Minister for common sense

Reactions to the announcement that Conservative MP Esther McVey was given a brand new shiny ministerial position as the minister for common sense were met understandably with confusion and well-deserved hilarity.

Here we have the Conservative Party who, in general, are against the so-called ‘nanny state’ and all about individual freedom and individual responsibility, yet we are now to believe that the British public needs schooling to ensure what they think of common sense is instilled in us all.

What will the position require, and what about the scope of the work? We already have a good idea because others have already laid the groundwork.

 

The Conservatives Common Sense Group

Yes, there’s a Conservative sub-group for common sense, which I wrote about here in March 2022. Set up in 2020 by Sir John Hayes, CBE MP, it has dozens of Conservative MP members. It is yet another Conservative group whose focus is on attacking liberal and compassionate thinking, challenging the government on policies like net zero and immigration. It is a significant player in the so-called ‘war on wokeness’.

They even have their own manifesto : ‘Conservative Thinking for a Post-Liberal Age’. A 136-page collection of what can only be called essays of opinion, written by some of the group’s members.

Many of their thoughts and ideas in the book are predictable. There are frequent attacks on human rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. Sir John talks of the liberal elite and intolerant “woke” dogma of Black Lives Matter, transgender rights activists, advocates of “decolonisation”, and critics of “white privilege”, describing them all as “woke warriors”. He calls Extinction Rebellion extremists and attacks institutions and multinational businesses like Starbucks and the National Trust for daring to educate its members on slavery ties to some of its properties.

 

What they call common sense is, in fact, ultra-conservatism

Elements of ultra-conservatism typically rely on cultural crisis; they frequently support anti-globalism and adopt stances of anti-immigration, nationalism, and sovereignty. They use populism and political polarisation with in-group and out-group practices. Their primary economic ideology is neoliberalism, while the use of conspiracy theories is also common amongst ultraconservatives.

 

You can see these ideas play out in both the manifesto and a letter written to the Telegraph, signed by Sir John and others, stating:

“Part of our mission is to ensure that institutional custodians of history and heritage tasked with safeguarding and celebrating British values are not coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the ‘woke agenda’. History must neither be sanitised nor rewritten to suit snowflake preoccupations, and a clique of powerful, privileged liberals must not be allowed to rewrite our history in their image.”

Translated: Our mission is to ensure only the history we want to be taught is taught. It should not acknowledge any acts of brutality or atrocities committed by the Empire. People calling for what has been suppressed by us to be revealed are a danger to our society, a threat to our imperial greatness and British exceptionalism. A traitorous Marxist, liberal, set out to destroy the society we made in OUR image.

 

Why has McVey been tasked with leading the government’s ‘anti-woke’ agenda?

McVey entered the House of Commons as MP for Wirral West at the 2010 general election, lost her seat in 2015, and re-entered parliament in 2017. She stood in the 2019 Conservative leadership election but finished last. She then left the Cabinet and returned to the backbenches when Boris Johnson became PM and sacked her as housing minister.

McVey has caused controversy over the years with her comments on the welfare system, defending the bedroom tax introduced by David Cameron’s government and describing the rise of foodbanks since the financial crisis as “positive”. McVey also defended sanctions imposed on benefit claimants for making minor mistakes. During the leadership election, she refused to back net zero targets for 2050, and her husband, Philip Davies, was one of only five MPs to have voted against the UK’s Climate Change Act in 2008.

In June 2021, she joined GB News, with her husband joining later. They jointly presented programmes titled Friday and Saturday Morning with Esther and Philip, which she has now had to step away from due to her new position. She also regularly writes for the Daily Express.

GB News has come under criticism for having Conservative MPs as hosts as Ofcom rules are clear: no politician can be used as an interviewer or reporter “unless editorially justified”, while Ofcom has now found McVey and GB News (who currently have 14 live investigations by Ofcom) to be in breach of impartiality rules.

GB News supports Conservative policy, populism and thinking above all others. They regularly indulge in the ‘anti-woke’ agenda, conspiracy theory, climate change denial and hard-right populism. Like the Conservative government, they are on a mission to divide and conquer us.

To distract us from their astounding failings, they set one group of people against another, attacking compassion, empathy and tolerance; therefore, they have provided McVey with the ideal training ground to continue this path. Now, unluckily for us, she gets to do it all in the name of common sense and government.

A desperate plan from a desperate prime minister

A desperate plan from a desperate prime minister

Nov 17, 2023 | Bylines, News

Sunak’s latest cunning plan is just another terrible idea that’s doomed to failure. Rather like his government, his party, and Sunak himself, writes Bremain Chair Sue Wilson MBE for Yorkshire Bylines. 

Rishi Sunak has a plan. It’s not a very cunning plan, but it is one that Baldrick would be proud of. The prime minister, in response to the largely expected Supreme Court ruling on the Rwanda deportation plan, is not a happy bunny. He has, yet again, been thwarted (who ever used that word before Brexit?), by the law. And here was him thinking that as PM, he was the one that made all the laws, and everyone had to obey him.

The Supreme Court decision

On Wednesday 15 November, the UK Supreme Court handed down its ruling in response to former home secretary Suella Braverman’s final appeal. The court unanimously dismissed the appeal – an attempt to overturn earlier rulings – and upheld the Court of Appeal’s earlier conclusion that “the Rwanda policy is unlawful”.

In their judgment the court determined there were “substantial grounds” for believing there was a real risk of claims being wrongly determined in Rwanda. This could lead to asylum seekers being subjected to human rights breaches and to being returned wrongfully to their country of origin. Lord reed concluded, “the Home Secretary’s appeal is therefore dismissed”.

Sunak’s desperate Rwanda plan

Despite recent suggestions from Braverman that there was no plan B in the event of the Supreme Court ruling against the government, Sunak seems to have other ideas. His response was immediate, which rather suggested he already suspected what the court’s decision might be. Appearing at a news conference, Sunak said he was taking “the extraordinary step of announcing emergency legislation” which would “enable parliament to confirm that our new treaty is safe”. Which, of course, it wouldn’t be.      

He went on to say that he would “not allow a foreign court, like the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), to block these flights”, rather ignoring the fact that it was highest court in the UK that made this final ruling.

“The plan in full”, according to Sunak, is to ratify a new agreement with Rwanda that will provide legal protections. Asylum seekers deported from the UK would be “protected against removal” from Rwanda by law. Whether the Rwandan government, or indeed the British one, could be trusted to respect and abide by international law is questionable, to say the least.

Sunak is, he says, “prepared to change our laws and revisit those international relationships to remove the obstacles in our way”. Should the ECHR choose “to intervene against parliament”, the PM is “prepared to do whatever is necessary to get flights off”. Sunak went on say that the British people expect the “boats to stop”, and claimed – despite all evidence to the contrary – that progress is being made.

Sunak’s speech, repeated on social media, was accompanied by a meme stating, “When I said I would stop the boats, I meant it”. His Twitter (X) thread ended with him reiterating the “need to stop the boats” and with the suggestion that the Rwanda deportation policy was “an essential part of the deterrent”. The rise this year in the numbers of desperate asylum seekers willing to risk all to cross the Channel in small boats would appear to contradict that claim.

Widespread condemnation

There has been widespread criticism of the Rwanda policy both in parliament and across social media. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said at the despatch box on Wednesday that the court ruling had exposed a “complete failure of Sunak’s flagship policy and his judgment”. Addressing the new home secretary, James Cleverly – the eighth home secretary in eight years – Cooper said the government was “wasting time, wasting money, and letting the country down”.

As Cleverly attempted to defend the policy in parliament, Cooper alleged that he had previously, in private, described the policy as “batshit”. The home secretary failed to deny the claim, and stated on TV the following day that he didn’t remember “saying anything like that”.

Green MP Caroline Lucas described the policy as “utterly inhumane, grotesquely immoral and totally unworkable”. She pleaded with Sunak for an asylum policy that would treat people with “respect and dignity”.

In response to Sunak’s statement, Jessica Simor KC described the comments as “beyond idiotic”. Simor also called on Sunak to fire Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson, for saying government should “ignore the laws and send them straight back”. Former Downing Street chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, described the government’s response as “utterly depressing”, asking what had happened to the party that he devoted 30 years of his life to.

Apart from Sunak and his cunning plan B, no doubt we can expect the Brexiters to be ranting about “illegal” immigrants, woke lawyers and the ECHR for as long (or as short) as they remain in power. But no amount of ranting will return the millions in public money paid to Rwanda and government lawyers. No amount of ranting will reduce the numbers of asylum seekers risking life and limb in small boats in dangerous waters. No amount of ranting will save the government from election defeat

 

Another empty threat

In 1950, following WW2, the ECHR was drafted to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms for the people of Europe. It protects citizens from, amongst other things, their own governments. So, it’s not hard to see why its removal might appeal to the man who thinks he’s running our country. While the government may threaten to pull out of the ECHR, it’s an empty threat. Even if it had the time available, such an action would unravel the Good Friday agreement and further alienate Britain in the eyes of the international community – just for starters.

While the country must sit back and wait for a different government with a different plan, we can only feel for those suffering as a result of the current one. With no safe asylum routes in place and a tragically slow asylum approval process, desperate people are being left in desperate situations by a desperate government.

Sunak’s latest cunning plan is just another terrible idea that’s doomed to failure. Rather like the government, the Tory party and the prime minister himself. Any court in the land would surely not hesitate to come to the same conclusion.