It has been two years since Boris Johnson first proposed sending asylum seekers arriving in the UK to be sent to Rwanda to have their claims processed.
Since then the government has spent £240m trying to get the scheme off the ground, argued – and lost – its case to send migrants to Kigali in the highest court in the land and seen since the 1 April 2022 more than 76,000 people have arrived in the UK on small boats.
That all makes Wednesday a big moment for a government well and truly on the ropes when it comes to illegal migration.
Politics latest: Tories’ Rwanda bill defeated four times in Lords
If the Safety of Rwanda Bill finally passes through both Houses of Parliament, the prime minister will have prevailed in driving through the emergency legislation he announced last November in the face of significant opposition from some on his own side and peers in the House of Lords.
The legislation will have deemed Rwanda a safe country and disapplies sections of human rights laws. It will, the prime minister insists, finally allow London to send asylum seekers who arrived illegally in the UK to Kigali.
Even now, no-one is taking anything for granted in government.
As one senior figure involved in the legislation told me last night: “We don’t know yet whether it will pass through ping pong [where the legislation is bounced back and forth between the House of Commons and House of Lords] and get royal assent [where the monarch formally approves an act of the legislature].
“We’re not taking anything for granted given the games the Lords have been playing over the last few weeks.”
But, after what has been a ceaseless stream of criticism of the prime minister from his own party in recent months, this will undoubtedly be a moment to savour should the bill finally pass.
Faced with big rebellions from his restive backbenchers over his Rwanda plan, the defection of his former deputy party chair Lee Anderson to rival Reform, the odd public call for his…
