This ought to have been clear at the outset – and to many it was. No one who has studied Rwanda is in doubt about its continuing problems as a destination of this kind. The United Nations and
Human Rights Watch are among the organisations that have drawn attention to the human rights and criminal justice violations there. Rwanda’s
similar deal with Israel collapsed because Rwanda did not carry out its promise not to return asylum seekers to unsafe countries. The UN high commission for refugees gave evidence on this that was hard to ignore. The supreme court grasped all this, as the majority in the court of appeal had also done. But the UK government never really wanted to know.
The same is almost true of the pretence that withdrawing from the ECHR, or the annulment of the UK Human Rights Act, would magically permit the UK to put the Rwanda policy into practice. The supreme court could hardly have been clearer that this would not change the legal grounds that would apply in future cases. But this is an article of dogma for parts of the Tory party. Again, they are not listening.
The supreme court went out of its way to say it was concerned only with the law and not with politics. That claim is honestly and sincerely made. But the judgment has devastating political consequences. From first to last, the Rwanda policy has been a piece of performance politics, a pretend answer to the genuine problem of the small boats and the awful backlog in asylum cases. The judges, a shining light of sanity in what is currently a mad political world, have now called it out. They have stood up for the law, as they should. If only ministers would do the same. But that would be fantasy too.
Martin Kettle@the Guardian
It seems the Tories can't stop trying to put square pegs in round holes.
