The political conflict in the United Kingdom centered around the “migrant recycling” policy, is now threatening the very foundations of the ruling Tories, including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The plan to reduce the migrant influx was originally announced in April 2022 under Boris Johnson, and, after failing to ensnare Ghana in the scheme, the Tories settled on Rwanda as a destination, signing a deal in April 2023. That plan, for which the U.K. advanced Rwanda £120 million, was put on “hold” at the last minute in June by an intervention of the European Convention on Human Rights, followed quickly by the U.K. Appeals Court ruling two weeks later, which indeed declared human recycling to be in violation of British Human Rights Act. Further complicating the “optics” is that the British defense of human rights was tightly bound up with the ECHR, which Britain led the world in adopting in 1951, and enshrined into law in 1998, according to Al Jazeera. After the Appeals Court injunction in June, Sunak sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who had vocally backed the plan by calling for London to leave the ECHR.
On Nov. 15 the Supreme Court gave its final ruling, upholding the Appeals Court, saying that whereas the idea of sending migrants to a third country was allowed by law, the details of the Rwanda deal were, indeed, a violation of Britain’s Human Rights Act. This time, however, despite (or perhaps because of) the finality of the court’s ruling, the Sunak government reversed itself and sent Home Secretary James Cleverly to Rwanda on Dec. 5, where he, after dropping another £100 million on the table, signed a treaty in defiance of the Court, after getting further public assurances from Rwanda of safe treatment of the “hostages.”
A day later, on Dec. 6, the text of a proposed “Safety of Rwanda Bill” was leaked in London, exposing the Tories’ intended “end around” of both the Supreme Court and the ECHR, by arbitrarily declaring Rwanda to be a “safe” destination for migrants. Further, the bill—which was reportedly intended to be “rushed” through the House of Commons—had language asserting its legislative primacy over the Human Rights Act and even the Judiciary itself, declaring its authority over “any other provision or rule of domestic law, and any interpretation of international law by the court or tribunal,” according to Al Jazeera.
With this, London appears to have dropped the mask of “human rights” and doubled down on the imperial “human wave” policy, designed to further destroy national sovereignty.
