STEPHEN GLOVER: The obsession with Rwanda is out of all proportion to the effect it will actually have on small boats

You may find this hard to believe. Only one per cent of voters believe that Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill will stop the boats, according to a poll conducted by YouGov earlier this week.

One per cent! I’m pretty sure that around four or five per cent of people believe Elvis Presley is still alive, and probably a similar number are certain that the moon is made of cheese.

That a mere one per cent of respondents are confident that the Bill will put an end to the small boats crossing the Channel is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Government’s flagship policy, about which politicians have been agonising over the past few days.

I’m afraid the tiny handful of optimists are misguided. The Rwanda Bill won’t stop the small boats. 

If it gets through the Commons and the Lords, it’ll probably make little difference to the number of illegal migrants turning up on our shores. This will be the case even if the Tory Right succeeds in strengthening the Bill’s provisions.

You may find this hard to believe. Only one per cent of voters believe that Rishi Sunak’s (pictured) Rwanda Bill will stop the boats, according to a poll conducted by YouGov earlier this week

That a mere one per cent of respondents are confident that the Bill will put an end to the small boats crossing the Channel is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Government’s flagship policy, about which politicians have been agonising over the past few days (file image)

Am I being unfair? I don’t think so. For all the drama of recent days – Rishi Sunak inviting Tory Right-wing rebels to No 10 for bacon sandwiches at the crack of dawn on Tuesday; talk of replacing him and even of an immediate election – I doubt the Government believes in its heart that its Bill will have a decisive impact.

Rwanda has become totemic. A piece of political machismo. A controversy, wildly out of proportion to its real importance that is enabling One Nation Tories and their more Right-wing colleagues to let off steam and grumble and threaten – as if life as we know it will come to an end unless we immediately do exactly what they say.

READ MORE: ‘Brexit all over again’: Fears of Tory implosion as Rishi Sunak faces final PMQs of 2023 with factions ALREADY gearing up for fresh Rwanda law showdown in the New Year

The truth is that vast amounts of time and energy have been expended on a policy which, according to Sir James Eadie KC, the Government’s leading counsel in the recent Supreme Court case, would in the immediate future lead to only hundreds of illegal migrants being packed off to Rwanda.

Note that there are some 130,000 migrants waiting to have their cases considered at the moment – and more are coming all the time. 

So even if the Government’s own predictions about the number of people likely to be sent to Rwanda are on the pessimistic side, it’s going to take a long time to make significant inroads into the figures.

The theory, which may be believed by some ministers, is that once would-be migrants see that some of their ilk are being flown off to Rwanda, they will think twice before crossing the Channel. In other words, deterrence will work.

But will it? Will reports of just hundreds of migrants being put on aeroplanes deter thousands more from coming here? Your guess is as good as mine – or the Government’s.

I suspect that if only hundreds – or even a few thousands – are being deported, prospective illegal migrants will know that they are still much more likely to end up in a hotel, or maybe a detention centre, in this country rather than in Kigali, capital of Rwanda.

The theory, which may be believed by some ministers, is that once would-be migrants see that some of their ilk are being flown off to Rwanda, they will think twice before crossing the Channel. In other words, deterrence will work (file image)

I suspect that if only hundreds – or even a few thousands – are being deported, prospective illegal migrants will know that they are still much more likely to end up in a hotel, or maybe a detention centre, in this country rather than in Kigali, capital of Rwanda (pictured: a hotel expected to be used for migrants in Rwanda)

And, of course, it’s perfectly possible that the Rwanda Bill will never see the light of day, either because the Lords tear it to shreds because they deem it too draconian, or because Right-wing Tories scupper it in the belief that it isn’t draconian enough.

Remarks by the new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, suggest that some in the Government may not have very high hopes of its Rwanda policy. 

Shortly after succeeding the combustible Suella Braverman – who seemingly did believe, and still does, that the policy can work – he struck a more realistic note.

READ MORE: The government can say Rwanda is a safe country ‘with confidence’ and the Supreme Court’s objections to the asylum scheme have been addressed, Home Office document claims

This is what he said: ‘My frustration is that we have allowed the narrative to be created that this was the be-all and end-all . . . The mission is to stop the boats. That’s the promise to the British people. Never lose sight of the mission . . . There are multiple methods. Don’t fixate on the methods. Focus on the mission.’

Wise words. He has also been accused of describing the Rwanda policy as ‘bats***’ -the implication being that what there is doesn’t amount to much. When asked about this by LBC’s Nick Ferrari yesterday morning, he replied: ‘That’s been an accusation. I certainly don’t remember.’ Not an outright denial, then.

Mr Cleverly strikes me as a down-to-earth, sensible chap, who can see that sending illegal migrants to a country 4,000 miles away isn’t a silver bullet. Other, and better, measures will be needed. 

How depressing that leaked documents show that the Home Office believes small-boats arrivals could continue for up to a decade.

The Tory Right are surely misguided in making the Rwanda Bill a make-or-break issue. I’m thinking of MPs such as the pugnacious Mark Francois of the European Research Group, one of five factions on the Tory Right. Some of these MPs delight in being dubbed the ‘five families’ as though they are Mafia clans. God help us.

Not that these Right-wing MPs are mistaken in believing that illegal immigration and -to my mind even more important – legal immigration (about 16 times greater last year) must be urgently brought down. 

Remarks by the new Home Secretary, James Cleverly (pictured), suggest that some in the Government may not have very high hopes of its Rwanda policy

How depressing that leaked documents show that the Home Office believes small-boats arrivals could continue for up to a decade (file image)

They are absolutely right about that. But they are wrong to invest so much importance in the single, flawed Rwandan scheme.

In fact, the Government has already had some success on other fronts, which it should have trumpeted more than it has. Illegal immigration is down by about a third this year, largely because of a deal with Albania that has almost eliminated illegal migration from that country.

Does Rishi share Mr Cleverly’s realism? He’s an intelligent man, and I suspect he does. 

READ MORE: Rwanda will be able to veto any migrants it receives from the UK if the scheme gets off the ground, the country’s government confirms

The trouble is that he has chosen stopping the small boats as one of the five pledges by which he wants to be judged, and has allowed himself to be increasingly identified with the ill-conceived Rwanda policy he inherited from Boris Johnson and the then Home Secretary, Priti Patel.

So Mr Sunak has found himself in recent days desperately defending his prime ministership over the issue before pulling off a surprisingly comfortable victory in the Commons on Tuesday evening.

Granted, some of his critics are motivated by a dislike of him as much as they are by a desire to make Rwanda work. His tribulations are by no means over. The rebels will be back in the New Year, when they may well be much more destructive.

Of course the PM can’t drop Rwanda now. That would be political suicide. But he must see that this policy alone isn’t going to be enough. 

I still don’t understand why the Government hasn’t given more thought to building an austere but humane detention centre on a remote British territory to which illegal migrants could be sent for processing, where legal challenges by lawyers would be less effective.

Let’s hope the Prime Minister succeeds in getting a flight or two to Rwanda off the ground in the spring. It would be a minor political triumph, though largely a symbolic one. Reducing immigration, illegal as well as legal, is going to take much more thought than this Government has so far given.

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