Rwanda could still be Rishi’s saving grace

There is an old Rowan Atkinson joke about the secret to good comedy timing in which Atkinson says the word ‘timing’ at just the wrong moment. Timing is important in politics too. As Harold Macmillan observed of Anthony Eden’s brief and unhappy premiership: ‘He was trained to win the Derby in 1938. Unfortunately, he was not let out of the starting stalls until 1955.’

Timing is just as crucial when it comes to political stances, too, as it is for personnel matters. When William Hague made his controversial ‘foreign land’ speech in 2001 or when Michael Howard asked the electorate ‘are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ about immigration in 2005, much of the nation was still under the Blairite spell. As such, these were not winning gambits.

But increasingly it looks like the Rwanda removals policy is coming to the boil just in time for the very race for which it was bred: the 2024 general election.