UK Politics

Tory rebel Robert Jenrick says he is prepared to vote against Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda billSign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailRishi Sunak is pleading with the House of Lords to back his Rwanda plan after it passed the Commons last night.In a press conference on Thursday morning, the prime minister described the bill as a “national priority” and urged the upper chamber to “do the right thing”.“There is now only one question,” he said. “Will the opposition in the appointed House of Lords try and frustrate the will of the people as expressed by the elected House?” Or will they get on board and do the right thing?”After a very short opening statement, Mr Sunak went straight on the attack against Labour, saying Keir Starmer’s party had “no plan”.He also could not guarantee that flights to Rwanda would take off before the next election, expected in the spring or autumn.Show latest update 1705589700Sunak meets Border Force staff after passing Rwanda BillRishi Sunak has met with Border Force staff after the Rwanda bill passed through the Commons.The prime minister visited workers at Gatwick Airport, where he met a sniffer dog and chatted with those present. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailOnly 10 per cent of voters under the age of 50 would vote Conservative in the next general election, according to a new poll. The YouGov survey of more than 2,000 adults found only 20 per cent said they would vote for Rishi Sunak’s party, while fewer than half (49 per cent) of those who back the Tories in 2019 intend to support the, again.But the poll lays bare just how unpopular the party is with young people, with just four per cent of those aged between 18 and 25 saying they intend to vote Conservative, and only 12 per cent of 25-49 year olds. It also shows support for the Conservatives is at its lowest level since Liz Truss’ final days as prime minister. It comes after a testing week for the prime minister, who staved off a major rebellion over his flagship Rwanda policy.Rishi Sunak has insisted his small boats plan is working despite party divisions The Rwanda bill passed its third reading on Wednesday night after days of Tory infighting, as 60 Conservatives backed rebel amendments to the government bill.Only 11 Conservative MPs voted against the government at third reading, but the highly-publicised conflict has exposed deep divisions in the Conservative party over the legislation and Mr Sunak’s leadership.Mr Sunak was also facing further criticism on Monday when the Telegraph published a YouGov survey, comissioned by a number of Tory donors led by Lord Frost, which showed the Conservatives were on track for a 1997-style electoral wipe out, set to retain as few as 169 seats.Lord Frost, who called for a new Conservative leader back in December, told the Telegraph that the only way to reverse the trend was to be “as tough as it takes” on immigration, reverse tax increases and do a U-turn on renewable energy measures.The latest survery has also revealed that right-wing party Reform UK has hit its highest ever level of support at 12 per cent, and that one in four (25 per cent) of 2019 Conservative voters now say they plan to vote for the challenger party. Reform UK leader Richard Tice has said his party will field a candidate against every Conservative MP at the next election Labour are also set to make gains, giving them a lead of 27-points – the largest since Mr Sunak became prime minister.This morning, Mr Sunak gave a press conference to assuage fears around the progress of the immigration bill and disunity in his party.He said: “The House of Commons has spoken. The Conservative party has come together. The Rwanda bill has passed. It’s now for the Lords to pass this bill too. This is an urgent national priority.”Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said has said that instead of tackling economic issues, “Rishi Sunak’s government is too busy fighting over an unworkable and expensive policy that is destined to fail.”“It just confirms how desperately out of touch and out of ideas this Conservative government is. We urgently need a general election so we can finally put an end to this cycle of Conservative chaos and get on with tackling the huge challenges facing us all,” he said. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailThe UK’s statistics watchdog has slammed Rishi Sunak for his repeated claim to have “cleared” the asylum backlog – and warned the assertion could erode trust in the government. Sir Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, also said voters may have felt “misled”.The prime minister was accused of trying to “cook the books” and a “barefaced lie” over the assertion, made despite figures showing nearly 100,000 migrants still waiting for a decision.Mr Sunak’s home secretary James Cleverly later said it was “impossible” to forecast how long it would take to deal with the outstanding cases.The government said it had met Mr Sunak’s pledge to clear all so-called legacy asylum claims – counted as those submitted before June 2022. But official statistics also confirmed that 4,500 of those cases were still ongoing.Mr Sunak also came under fire for a tweet suggesting the government had cleared the entire backlog – as figures showed a total 98,599 asylum claims still languishing in the system.And yet on January 2 Mr Sunak posted on X, formerly Twitter: “I said that this government would clear the backlog of asylum decisions by the end of 2023. That’s exactly what we’ve done.”In a letter published on Thursday, to Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael who had raised concerns with the watchdog, Sir Robert said: “The average member of the public is likely to interpret a claim to have ‘cleared a backlog’ – especially when presented without context on social media – as meaning that it has been eliminated entirely, so it is not surprising that the Government’s claim has been greeted with scepticism and that some people may feel misled when these ‘hard cases’ remain in the official estimates of the legacy backlog.” Mr Carmichael, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, said Sir Robert’s letter showed once again that Mr Sunak had not cleared the asylum backlog. “Not only is the Conservative Government celebrating something that is no achievement, they are twisting the facts – as proven by the UK Statistics Authority just today,” he added. He said: “Thousands of vulnerable people are still living in limbo as they wait for their claims to be processed. The British public deserves better than this.”Mr Chote went on to say “there may be a perfectly good case for excluding cases of this type from any commitment to eliminate the backlog over the timeframe the Government chose, but this argument was not made at the time the target was announced or when it was clarified in the letter to the Home Affairs Committee.”He added: “This episode may affect public trust when the Government sets targets and announces whether they have been met in the other policy domains. It highlights the need for ministers and advisers to think carefully about how a reasonable person would interpret a quantitative claim of the sort and to consult the statistical professionals in their department.”The statistics watchdog also said it had raised concerns with the Home Office after a press release on the backlog was published but without the accompanying data “which prevented (journalists) from being able to scrutinise the data when first reporting it.” Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock had accused the PM of promoting a “barefaced lie” that was “an insult to the public’s intelligence”.As the row grew, the claim was denounced as “false” by opposition parties, campaign groups and even Fraser Nelson, the editor of Tory bible The Spectator magazine, who likened the tweet to that of a “snake oil salesman” and urged the PM’s social media team to take the row “as a lesson learned”. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLee Anderson has said he could not vote against Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill because Labour MPs were “giggling” at him.The ex-Tory deputy chairman, who quit on Tuesday in order to rebel over the policy, said opposition MPs were “giggling and laughing and taking the mick”, adding: “I couldn’t vote no”.In an extraordinary interview with GB News, the top Tory said he had entered the “no” lobby, in order to reject Mr Sunak’s Safety of Rwanda bill. But after two or three minutes of being mocked, outspoken Mr Anderson walked out and abstained.He said: “I was going to vote no. I went into the no lobby to vote no, because I couldn’t see how I could support the bill after backing all the amendments.Conservative MP Lee Anderson stepped down as deputy Tory chairman to rebel over the Rwanda bill (Yui Mok/PA)“I got into the no lobby and I spent about two or three minutes with a colleague in there. The Labour lot were giggling and laughing and taking the mick and I couldn’t do it: In my heart of hearts, I couldn’t vote no.“So I walked out and abstained.”He quit his role as deputy Tory chairman on Tuesday night alongside Brendan Clarke-Smith, who held the same post, saying that he could not “carry on in my role when I fundamentally disagree with the bill”. “I can’t be in a position to vote for something I don’t believe in,” Mr Anderson said. His abstention came as an expected Tory rebellion fizzled out, with just 11 Tory MPs voting against the deportation bill, including former home secretary Suella Braverman and ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick.MPs passed the embattled prime minister’s controversial deportation bill by 320 votes to 276, after most Conservative rebels “wimped out” of a threatened revolt.The PM still faces a lengthy battle over the legislation in the House of Lords and the courts, however, as the government refused to say when flights to the African country might finally take off.Rishi Sunak and Lee Anderson had been close in the days before Mr Anderson resigned as Tory deputy chairman A close ally of Mr Sunak’s said it was inevitable that Tory right-wingers would “wimp out” of taking part in a revolt that could have triggered a general election, in which the party would be set to face a thumping from Labour.Mr Anderson was appointed deputy chairman of the Conservatives in February 2023 in a move Mr Sunak hoped would help the Tories remain connected to Red Wall voters who backed the party in 2019.His inability to put up with “giggling” Labour MPs is in contrast with his own propensity for making controversial comments.The ex-Tory deputy chairman has said that people who use food banks cannot cook properly, and earned the nickname “30p Lee” for suggesting people can make meals for 30p a day.And, before entering the House of Commons, Mr Anderson said “nuisance tenants” should be forced to live in tents and pick potatoes.He recently said asylum seekers arriving in the UK should be sent to the remote Scottish Orkney Islands – adding that they would be “perfect” for people fleeing persecution. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailA leading lawyer who sits in the Lords has warned that Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill is “a step toward totalitarianism”.Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said ministers were seeking to elevate themselves “to an unacceptable level above the law”.The crossbench peer, a leading critic of the Rwanda deportation plan in the House of Lords, also warned the “integrity of our legal system is under attack because of internal political quarrelling in the Conservative Party”.His intervention came the morning after Mr Sunak faced down rebels within his own party to win a showdown Commons vote on the plan to deport asylum seekers to the east African country.Lord Carlile warned that ‘the integrity of our legal system are under attack’ MPs passed the embattled PM’s controversial bill by 320 votes to 276 – with 11 Tories voting against the government.But Mr Sunak still faces a lengthy battle to get the bill into law, as the House of Lords is likely to push for significant changes or to throw the bill out altogether.Policing minister Chris Philp said the bill would be able to pass through the upper chamber “fairly fast” as it is “pretty short”.He told Times Radio: “It is a pretty short Bill, it is only about five or six substantive clauses. To give you a sense of context, the Criminal Justice Bill that I am taking through Parliament… has about 80 clauses.“So it is a pretty short bill which means it should be able to get through the House of Lords fairly fast.”But Lord Carlile told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it is the upper chamber’s role to revise legislation and protect the public from abuses of the law by ministers.He added: “I think many of us in the House of Lords believe that is exactly what has happened, that good policymaking and the integrity of our legal system are under attack because of internal political quarrelling in the Conservative Party.He said lawyers are being unfairly blamed for the hurdles the Rwanda policy has faced, adding that “lawyers on the whole do not accept that”.“What we are doing is trying to countermand meddling by politicians in the law,” he added.And Lord Carlile said: “It’s been the government elevating itself to an unacceptable level above the law, above our much-admired Supreme Court, and above the reputation internationally of the United Kingdom law.“We’ve seen in various countries the damage that is done when governments use perceived and often ill-judged political imperatives to place themselves above the courts – this is a step towards totalitarianism and an attitude that the United Kingdom usually deprecates.“I think you’ll find that many of us in the House of Lords will say this is a step too far, this is illegitimate interference by politics with the law, on an issue that can be solved in other ways.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailSir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he would rather see Donald Trump win the upcoming US election than Joe Biden, claiming the current President “dislikes Britain”.The former business secretary said President Biden’s tenure has been “very unfortunate” for UK-US relations.And he said Mr Trump is “better disposed” towards the United Kingdom.Jacob Rees-Mogg said Mr Trump is ‘better disposed’ towards the United Kingdom His comments came after the ex-President overwhelmingly won the Iowa caucuses on Monday evening in the first official contest of the Republican presidential primaries.Sir Jacob told ITV: “I would rather have Donald Trump than President Biden.“I think Donald Trump is better disposed towards the United Kingdom, I think President Biden has shown his dislike for the United Kingdom throughout his presidency and that’s been very unfortunate and unhelpful to whatever you make of the special relationship.”Asked for his view on what would happen if, as some fear in the US, Mr Trump stopped backing Ukraine in its war against Russia, he said that would be “a terrible thing”.“We cannot let the tyrant Putin win, and I would hope that any American president would support those efforts,” Sir Jacob said.He added: “I would be very surprised if he did that. But Donald Trump often says things in a way that excites people and then he’s much more pragmatic when he’s in government.“Certainly that was true with all that he said about Nato when he was president last time around.”The former US President had dangled the prospect of striking a “very big trade deal” with Britain while in office, hopes of which have been dashed under Mr Biden.But defence chiefs have warned of the prospect of Mr Trump withdrawing his backing for Ukraine, which could lead to instability in Europe.A former Nato secretary general has said he was “sceptical” about the US continuing to provide military aid for Ukraine if Donald Trump was re-elected as president.Anders Fogh Rasmussen told PBS Newshour on Wednesday that it was detrimental for America’s national security interests for Russia to win the war against Ukraine. “We cannot allow (Vladimir) Putin any success in Ukraine.”He was asked about US aid for Ukraine that has been held up by Congress, as Republicans seek to force the Democrats into passing tougher immigration controls.If a new aid package cannot be passed under president Joe Biden’s government before the US goes to the polls in November, Mr Rasmussen said he was “sceptical” of the chances one would be agreed under a potential Trump administration. More