How will Rishi Sunak ‘stop the boats’ now?

If Rishi Sunak’s five key pledges already looked in terrible shape at the start of the week – which they did – then today’s events have placed one of them on its deathbed.

The promise to ‘stop the boats’ was administered its last rites in the Court of Appeal this morning when Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett announced:

‘The High Court’s decision that Rwanda is a safe third country is reversed. Unless and until the deficiencies in its asylum processes are corrected, removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda will be unlawful.’

So the only country thus far identified as a destination for those many illegal arrivals to the UK who cannot be returned to their country of origin is now off-limits. The much-heralded deterrent effect of certain removal to central Africa is no more. Government policy literally has nowhere to go.

The devastating Court of Appeal ruling comes hard on the heels of a series of damaging defeats for the Government in the House of Lords last night which ripped the guts out of its flagship Illegal Migration Bill.