Why did Tory MPs trash the Rwanda Bill – and then vote for it?

There is a scene in the film Reservoir Dogs where three gangsters are pointing guns at each other and one suggests they should put down their weapons and ‘settle this with a conversation’. Instead the trio create the ultimate bloodbath by all pulling their triggers. The absence of trust can do that to people. Just look at the goings on in the Conservative parliamentary party this week.

Not content with spraying reputational ketchup over Rishi Sunak by trashing his Rwanda Bill as a mendacious con job which he must know won’t work, the Tory right has gone on to shred its own credibility by, in the main, tamely assenting to the legislation’s Third Reading.

Just as in an earlier rebellion before Christmas, most of the MPs who rubbished the Bill went along with it in the end, but not before informing Tory-leaning voters that it amounted to so much wool being pulled over their eyes.