Is Boris willing to make the Rwanda plan work?

Priti Patel’s first go at deporting migrants to Rwanda is turning before our eyes into one of those answers from the TV quiz show Pointless – when you see the on-screen counter drop remorselessly towards zero.

At the time of writing, the counter for the number of migrants to be flown out to Rwanda is down to seven – from an original list of 130. While Home Office officials continue to insist their chartered plane will take off tonight with at least some migrants on board, other parts of government do not seem so sure. So we could still be about to witness a completely pointless answer.

There is no doubt who ministers would like to see cop the blame if that happens, even if the plane takes off carrying just a handful of deportees rather than the 130 originally envisaged: ‘leftie lawyers’ who have deployed ‘every trick in the book’ to spring their clients from the flight, often on contrived human rights grounds.