Rwanda

In the end, the German state of Thuringia did not fall into the hands of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The party won the most votes in the recent election but was unable to form a coalition, meaning that Björn Höcke will not be the state’s minister-president. This is ideal for him: he can cry foul, claim to represent the true voice of Germany and point to a conspiracy to keep him out of power. His incendiary strain of politics proved more popular than the more moderate version of the AfD in Saxony, which held elections the same day. These will all be lessons taken into consideration ahead of

Keir Starmer is advertising for someone to head his newly created Border Security Command. The salary is higher than his own: the person in charge of stopping the boats would earn between £140,000 and £200,000. According to the ad, the job of patrolling the English Channel can be done remotely from any one of 12 cities, including Edinburgh and Belfast. It will require coordination with the Home Office, parts of the navy and even MI5. Never mind that this goes on already, with no discernible effect. The key requirement for the job, it would seem, is to be the fall guy, someone ready to take the blame for a policy

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said, ‘We can now move on to the next phase of our economic plan and turn our attention to cutting taxes,’ having seen a reduction in inflation. Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed suit in the Autumn Statement, cutting personal taxes. The government was to make changes to long-term benefits. The minimum wage, known officially as the National Living Wage, currently £10.42 an hour for those over the age of 23, will rise to £11.44 an hour for those over 21 from next April. The government also drew attention to £8.3 billion allocated to mending potholes, money purportedly saved from the curtailment

In its simple and comprehensible judgment, the Supreme Court has dealt a crushing blow to the Home Office’s Rwanda policy this morning.   The court upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal that the policy was unlawful. It reached that view because it believed there were substantial grounds to think that asylum claims would not be properly determined by the Rwandan authorities. That would mean that asylum seekers might be returned to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened, or where they would be subject to a risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.   The plan now looks dead in the water This would be

When the Prime Minister first assembled his cabinet, the most controversial appointment was Suella Braverman as Home Secretary. She had only just left the role under Liz Truss after she admitted sending an official document from a personal email account. But when Truss fell, Braverman called for Rishi Sunak rather than a Boris Johnson restoration. She was back in the Home Office after less than a week. ‘It’s either stop the boats or leave the ECHR,’ says one senior Tory Some suspected a grubby deal between the two, but Sunak had plenty of reasons to want Braverman back. While critics accuse her of harbouring unsubtle leadership ambitions, her place in

Last night’s abrupt order from the European Court of Human Rights that led to the grounding of the first Rwanda deportation flight delighted progressives everywhere. They will of course say – rather in the fashion of twentieth-century home secretaries calmly refusing to reprieve a condemned murderer – that the law is merely taking its course, and that we should be proud that the rule of law has been upheld. This sounds comforting. It is also wrong-headed. The Rwanda debacle in fact raises very serious questions about the legitimacy of the Strasbourg judges and their interference with national administrations. To remind you of the background, concerted lawfare in the English courts

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

A very big week is in store for the government’s strategy to tackle illegal immigration with all eyes on the planned first air transfer of irregular migrants to Rwanda, due to take place on Tuesday. Whether the flight takes off at all and how many migrants will be on board is yet to be seen. But the policy has already attracted strong adverse commentary from leading lights in Britain’s unelected establishment, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the heir to the throne. But another struggle over the enforcement of immigration law is being waged at ground level, with the springing up of networks of local activists seeking to prevent immigration