Politics Uncovered newsletter: Rwanda threatens to break apart Tory Party

Sunak will have woken up to headlines about how he wants to break apart families, as journalists were told that people renewing their spousal visas will have to meet the threshold (with combined salaries, savings and benefits). Later on in the week, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister told me that this was being reassessed as the government was “extremely mindful” of how stressful this was. Then on Friday, it was confirmed this rule would apply to renewals - all to reduce immigration by around 10,000 people. 

On Tuesday, Home Secretary James Cleverly was in Rwanda to sign the treaty in the first part of his two-pronged approach to try and get flights going to the east African country. This gave Sir Keir Starmer plenty of ammunition for what was his best PMQs in months. He left Sunak looking more flustered than I’ve seen him with what appeared to be more detailed knowledge of the treaty than the PM. Perhaps that was a portent of what was to come, as the real chaos was to come that evening.

When Cleverly announced the government’s emergency legislation, the Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick was nowhere to be seen. Labour’s Yvette Cooper was quick to notice: “We’ve got a Home Secretary making the statement but the rumours that the Immigration Minister has resigned. Where is he? Perhaps he can make that the first question that he answers.”

And this precipitated the biggest crisis of Sunak’s premiership. He’s come up with a bill that might be too extreme for the centrist One Nation caucus and not hardline enough for the right-wing groupings. I watched Sunak give a slightly desperate speech on Thursday morning, in which he insisted that any questions about whether the bill will pass should be directed at the Labour Party and not him. It seemed slightly delusional. 

The Rwanda scheme has become a millstone around Sunak’s neck, a bind of his own making. It wasn’t even his plan, charities question whether it will actually work and it’s looking increasingly unlikely any planes will ever take off. This is all with an outlay of £290 million plus. Yet Sunak has bet the house on the Rwanda plan, making (or breaking) his whole premiership around stopping the boats, despite it being something largely out of his control

As much as he insists it’s not a confidence vote, if he cannot get it through the Commons he surely cannot continue as Prime Minister. A fourth Tory PM in 18 months anyone?

Story of the week: Lady Hale - the former Supreme Court justice who gave the ruling against Boris Johnson for proroguing Parliament - has revealed she wishes she never wore her famous spider brooch. It led to her getting the nickname spider woman and held up as a hero of Remainers, but Lady Hale says the decision was not political and she wishes she’d worn something else.

Quote of the week - “It looks as though it's something to do with the app going down and then, um, coming up again. But, somehow, automatically, um, erasing all the things between that date when it went down and when it was last backed up.”: Boris Johnson explaining to the Covid Inquiry why thousands of WhatsApp messages were missing from his phone during the time the UK went into lockdown in 2020.

Coming up next week - the Rwanda vote: MPs will get the first chance to vote on Sunak’s controversial bill to declare Rwanda a safe country, and disapply certain sections of the Human Rights Act.

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