Tory rebels defy No. 10 over the Rwanda Bill

It turns out that Tory backbenchers aren’t all mouth and no trousers, as Downing Street thought. After briefing that the right of the party was all talk, Rishi Sunak’s team watched this evening as around 60 rebels repeatedly trooped through the opposite lobbies to vote to toughen up the Rwanda Bill. The breakdown of those rebellions is as follows: 68 MPs, including 60 Tories (two of which were tellers), voted in favour of Bill Cash’s amendment, which would allow the government to deport people to Rwanda even if it went against the European Convention on Human Rights and other international law, with 529 MPs voting it down. Then 58 Tory MPs backed Robert Jenrick’s amendment which would limit the ability of asylum seekers to challenge their deportation orders: that one was defeated by 525 votes.