DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Finally, Tories show good sense on Rwanda

In the end it wasn’t, as the Duke of Wellington supposedly said at Waterloo, a damn close-run thing.

After a day of high tension, the Government comfortably won yesterday’s Commons vote on the Rwanda Bill – by a majority of 44.

But make no mistake. When the result finally came through, the sighs of relief in Downing Street were almost audible.

For days there had been an unseemly internecine squabble among Tories threatening to rebel against Rishi Sunak’s flagship legislation to send small-boat migrants to the African nation.

The ‘moderate’ One Nation group said the law was too strict, while the European Research Group and others to the Right insisted it wasn’t strict enough to stop legal challenges from migrants facing removal.

The infighting threatened to dangerously destabilise the Prime Minister. This was a critical test of his authority. If he had lost, it could have delivered a mortal blow.

Mercifully, at the eleventh hour, common sense prevailed. The warring factions of the Tory party parked their differences in an apparent show of unity – for now at least.

For days there had been an unseemly internecine squabble among Tories threatening to rebel against Rishi Sunak’s flagship legislation to send small-boat migrants to the African nation

Both sides accept the scheme is necessary to deter migrants from crossing the Channel. And they were elected as Conservative MPs on a manifesto promise to cut illegal migration.

So they were right to give the Bill its second reading – rather than inflict a defeat that could have triggered a general election.

However, while this was as good a result as Mr Sunak could have hoped for today, the problem has only been kicked down the road until the New Year. Some MPs have warned that they will tear the Bill to shreds then if Mr Sunak does not toughen it up.

Do our democratic representatives not realise how absurd their pompous showboating and self-indulgent parlour games look to voters? This was like a horrible echo of the psychodrama over Brexit.

Is it too much to hope they might now move forward towards what should be their common goal – to see off the very real and potentially disastrous threat of a Labour government?

Keir won’t stop boats

For all the Tories have got themselves in a dreadful mess over the Rwanda Bill, at least the party has an immigration policy, unlike Sir Keir Starmer.

Touring the TV and radio studios yesterday, Labour’s leader was eager to mock the Government’s plan. In patronising tones, he dismissed it as a costly ‘gimmick’.

For all the Tories have got themselves in a dreadful mess over the Rwanda Bill, at least the party has an immigration policy, unlike Sir Keir Starmer

But while feigning outrage about illegal migration, he has been remarkably reluctant to advance any credible solutions of his own.

Indeed, his promise to scrap the Rwanda scheme if Labour wins power – even if it worked – demonstrates that he is simply not serious about tackling this problem.

Sir Keir gloats that the policy – which has so far cost the taxpayer £290million – is a ‘failure’, yet its power as a deterrent has never been put to the test.

Urged on by the open-borders cheerleaders of the Left, activist lawyers and judges ensured it was strangled before any asylum seekers could be flown to Africa.

Quivering with sanctimony, Sir Keir says Labour opposes the Rwanda plan because it is ‘against our values’. What appalling values they must be! By voting against the legislation at every opportunity, the party has tried to maintain a system that encourages the desperate to risk their lives in small boats.

The truth is, all Sir Keir’s ideas for stemming the tide of illegal migration – ‘smashing’ the trafficking gangs, liaising better with France – are either flawed or have been tried before without success.

His only original brainwave seems to be accepting thousands of refugees from the EU in return for Brussels taking back some of those entering the UK on dinghies. That is a formula for more immigration, not less.

Labour’s leader is very good at sniping from the sidelines. But, when it comes to answers, he has very little to contribute.

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