Defeat Rwanda scheme, win asylum rights

The Tory government’s “Safety of Rwanda” Bill comes back to the Commons for further debate and a vote on 16-17 January.

Tory ultras are pressing to sharpen it, and saying they will vote against if their amendments fall; other Tories dislike the Bill’s conflict with international law even as it is.

The Bill declares: “Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country... The provisions of this Act apply notwithstanding the relevant provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998... It is for a Minister of the Crown... to decide whether the United Kingdom will comply with [an] interim measure” [ordered by the European Court of Human Rights]. It is designed to get round the Supreme Court decision on 15 November that the government’s plan to deport refugees to Rwanda, rather than let them apply for asylum in the UK, is unlawful.

Risk

The judges unanimously agreed that there is a real risk refugees will not be safe in Rwanda. Rwanda’s government is itself accused of torture, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

Whether Rwanda removals ever go ahead or not — immigration lawyer Alasdair Mackenzie, for example, thinks them unlikely to happen soon if ever — it is clear that the Tories want to make the show of pursuing performative cruelty a core plank of their “culture war” electoral strategy.

In Parliament, Labour’s Yvette Cooper has denounced the Tories for incompetence and “wasting time, wasting money”, rather than over the principle of asylum rights.

Such strategies of triangulation allow the racist right to dictate the narrative and drag politics ever rightwards. Pleading for parliamentary norms, managerial competence, respect for legality, and an imagined standard of “civility” in ruling class politics, will not vanquish rightwing populism.

We must step up the political fight — making an unapologetic case for migrants’ rights, including free movement, safe passage, sanctuary and equality for all.

This means pressing within the Labour Party for transformed policies; building working-class solidarity against discrimination and immigration raids and deportations; pushing for workers’ collective non-compliance with immigration enforcement; winning our trade unions to action; and taking to the streets.

• Labour Campaign for Free Movement: labourfreemovement.org