Echo comment on the Rwanda decision and Braverman's letter

But the Tories will have a deathwish if they plunge themselves into internal civil war, the right wing against the centre, with a hope of installing a fourth Prime Minister in four years. Mr Sunak’s position, now flanked by an unelectable Foreign Secretary, is democratically tenuous as it is, but the Tories could not impose another leader on the country without an immediate general election, which their bitterly divided party would surely lose.

Ms Braverman’s excoriating comments have forced Mr Sunak to talk tough following his Rwanda setback – he said he would not allow a foreign court to stop planes with asylum seekers on board taking off, which is no doubt what the right-wingers want to hear, yet the primary problem is getting it through the British courts.

To that end, emergency legislation is to be rushed through – all for a policy that is hugely expensive, not guaranteed to work, and which the current Home Secretary James Cleverly once apparently called “batsh*t”. Britain has already paid Rwanda £140m and has spent uncounted millions on lawyers and civil servants fighting court battles without a single person being flown over – how many caseworkers (or cuts to NHS waiting lists) could that have been better spent on?

And how many of the 46,000 who risked their lives to reach this country on small boats last year really would have been deterred if a handful of them had been sent to Rwanda?

Through co-operation with our friends the French, by signing sensible return deals with countries like Albania, and by recruiting more caseworkers, the Tories – assisted by terrible summer weather which deterred Channel crossings – under Mr Sunak have at last made progress on the small boats, but all that is being drowned out by those on the right who want to posture and pick fights with foreign courts.