Suella’s Ascension Island plan doesn’t go far enough

There is nothing new under the sun. The idea of opening an asylum processing centre on the British overseas territory of Ascension Island has been knocking around for 20 years, but reports in today’s papers suggest it is suddenly all the rage again. Ministers are scrambling to find a ‘plan B’ in case the Supreme Court confirms the Appeal Court’s controversial view that the long-delayed Rwanda policy is unlawful.

Way back in 2005, the Conservatives made a commitment in their manifesto that ‘asylum seekers’ applications will be processed outside Britain’. In the run up to that year’s election, Mark Reckless, then a researcher at Conservative Central Office, conducted a scoping exercise to identify a site for overseas processing. Ascension Island came out top of his list. But it turned out that the answer to Michael Howard’s question to the electorate ‘are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ was ‘no’. The Tories lost the election, and the policy was later ditched by David Cameron.