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The Supreme Court has ruled that the government scheme to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda is unlawful. Why? And how will Rishi Sunak respond? Will he try to take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.
Late on Tuesday night, about a week after the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) encircled Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, Israeli forces entered the complex in what has been described as a ‘targeted operation against Hamas’. IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that troops are operating specifically within the western area of the hospital, one of the largest medical facilities in Gaza. The IDF’s military operation within the hospital, and other hospitals in Gaza, has been a highly contentious issue in the international community. The US – Israel’s closest ally – declared that Israel operate with extreme care in hospitals, making sure that patients and staff do not get caught in the crossfire.
There is no point in critics of our activist judiciary kicking off about today’s Supreme Court’s decision that the government’s Rwanda policy is unlawful. This isn’t a case of ‘lefty lawyers’ thwarting honest politicians, but of incompetent politicians seeking to wish away the United Kingdom’s international treaty obligations without having the bottle to withdraw from them. This PM promised to do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop the boats and yet has failed to do so More precisely, it wholly vindicates Suella Braverman’s accusation of Rishi Sunak engaging in ‘magical thinking’ when rejecting her advice to push through more radical legal changes. The judgment, read aloud by Supreme Court President Lord
The Supreme Court has ruled that the government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda is unlawful. Below is the full judgment from the court, setting out the reasons for their decision: Introduction (1) The nature of the issue before the court
The Supreme Court has this morning concluded that the Rwanda scheme is unlawful, ending 18 months of legal battles in UK courts. In a succinct 10-minute summary, the court ruled against the flagship scheme because of the risk that genuine refugees could be returned to countries from which they have fled. Delivering the verdict, Lord Reed, the Supreme Court’s President, said that there are ‘substantial grounds to believe asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at real risk of refoulment’ – that is being sent to their home nations – something which happened under a ‘similar’ deal with Israel between 2013 and 2018. The Supreme Court judges were ‘unanimously of
Blue-on-blue hits different when it comes from an older vintage. It seems at least one Tory grandee didn’t think much of Suella Braverman’s incendiary departure letter to Rishi Sunak yesterday. Michael Howard, who famously served in the Home Office from 1993 to 1997, today hits out at his successor, writing an article for today’s Daily Telegraph, headlined ‘Suella Braverman is guilty of shameful insubordination’. Ouch. The onetime Tory leader writes that her ‘insubordination’ was intolerable and ‘the government is better off without her.’ Referring to her Times op-ed about the Armistice Day pro-Palestine march, Howard says that ‘I can’t remember another occasion when very senior police officers have accused the
Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza is making steady progress. They moved into the strip on 27 October after a sustained air campaign which paved the way for infantry, armoured and engineering units to enter. Despite military analysts predicting that Israel would sustain heavy combat losses, because of decent intelligence gathered in the preceding three weeks, they remain relatively low (46 dead at the time of writing). The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are now operating inside the Al-Shifa hospital, beneath which Israel believes the main operational headquarters of Hamas is located. According to Israeli media sources, five Hamas fighters were killed in the course of the IDF’s raid into a part of the hospital
Inflation has slowed significantly, according to the latest update from the Office for National Statistics. The headline rate was 4.6 per cent in the year to October, down from 6.7 per cent the previous month. The sharp slowdown is largely attributed to last year’s hikes in energy prices dropping out of the data with the figures now reflecting Ofgem’s price cap reduction. This major slowdown in the inflation rate allows Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt to say that one of their five pledges for the year has been delivered. In January, the prime minister promised to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of the year. The rate in January was 10.1 per cent
The war in Gaza presents a major challenge for Saudi Arabia. The Saudi leadership is trying to placate two different camps: its own population along with the publics of the Arab and Muslim worlds as well as the US administration and influential westerners. The former are horrified by the killings of Palestinians in Gaza whereas the latter want some acknowledgment of Israel’s right to self-defence. This effort to keep everyone happy was on full display over the past weekend at the joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that was held in Riyadh. At the event, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) gave
Italy has become the first European Union country to bite the bullet and set up a scheme to off-shore migrant asylum seekers to a country outside the bloc. Italy’s right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni says she hopes the scheme, signed off in Rome last week with Albania’s left-wing prime minister, Edi Rama, will become a model copied across the EU. It is similar to the Tory government’s troubled Rwanda scheme, but more practical and less vulnerable to legal challenge. Italy will process asylum requests in Albania where it plans to send tens of thousands of migrants a year. Britain, meanwhile, plans to hand the task of deciding who gets asylum to Rwanda
Sacked ministers seldom have nice things to say about the boss but Suella Braverman’s letter to Rishi Sunak is a ferocious assault on the Prime Minister, his character and his style of leadership. If she’d taken a flamethrower to the man he’d have come away less severely burned. She claims they had a deal – a written agreement – that he would pursue certain policies in No. 10 in return for her backing him as leader following the Liz Truss debacle. According to the former Home Secretary, Sunak undertook to cut legal migration by tightening the rules on international students and driving up work-visa salary thresholds; to legislate ‘notwithstanding clauses’ so that efforts to stop the
A trade deal with the US has long been a holy grail for Brexiteers, not least because it is something that the EU has failed to achieve. Barack Obama told us we would have to go to the back of the queue, then Donald Trump told us we were at the front of the queue. Unfortunately, though, Trump wasn’t minded to serve anyone before being replaced by Joe Biden, who has shown a similar lack of interest in trade deals. Indeed, Biden has returned the US to an age of protectionism through his bizarrely-named Inflation Reduction Act, which offers grants and subsidies to green industries – so long as they
When Suella Braverman was sacked by Rishi Sunak on Monday morning, the departing Home Secretary promised to say more in ‘due course’. Well, just over 24 hours later, that time has come. This afternoon, Braverman has shared on social media a scathing resignation letter in which she suggests the Prime Minister needs to ‘change course urgently’: ‘In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself. Someone needs to be honest:
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When Suella Braverman was sacked on Monday she warned that she would have more to say in due course, and she has just released her resignation letter. It is predictably punchy, accusing the prime minister of backtracking on policy promises he made to her and especially on his commitment to stop the boats. Will Sunak come to regret casting Suella Braverman aside? Is this the start of a leadership bid? Cindy You speaks to Katy Balls and Paul Goodman. Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson.
Dear Prime Minister, Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave Government. While disappointing, this is for the best. It has been my privilege to serve as Home Secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do. I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary. Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time I am proud of
Another day, another financial catastrophe for the SNP. This time it concerns the recent Rutherglen by-election, which saw the nationalists lose the Westminster seat to Labour in a humiliating defeat. But the by-election wasn’t the only embarrassing loss facing the Nats: their party bank balance took a hit too. It transpires that the SNP spent many thousands of pounds more on their campaign than their competitors. Talk about adding insult to injury… First Minister Humza Yousaf’s party spent £96,000 on their failed by-election campaign, which amounted to a staggering £14,000 more than Scottish Labour. ‘What were they spending their money on?’ laughed one Labour canvasser. ‘They were nowhere to be
Happy birthday, Your Majesty. The King turns 75 today but the celebrations will be muted: Charles is spending the day launching the Coronation Food Project, which is designed to deal with the pressing issue of food shortages throughout the country. He’ll also be hosting a reception for NHS nurses and midwives. For a monarch who has been accused of taking it easy (there was an extended summer break in Scotland), this represents a riposte to his critics. Charles is once again seeking to present himself as a dutiful, committed monarch, getting on with the business of ruling. Yet it is Charles’s private life – particularly his relationship with Prince Harry – that continues to excite most attention and
Rishi Sunak’s decision to recall David Cameron from his shepherd’s hut has been hailed as a triumph by centrist dads. They’re convinced that axing nasty Suella Braverman shows that the grown-ups are back in charge. No . 10 insiders are pleased with themselves: one person working in Downing Street told the Sun that the PM’s phone was ‘inundated’ with texts from fellow world leaders welcoming the appointment. But come the next election, Sunak is in for a shock. The decision to axe Braverman marks the beginning of the end for the PM. Whatever the reason for the Home Secretary’s departure, most voters will see that she was forced out for speaking
Over 100,000 French citizens marched peacefully through their cities on Sunday. They did so to show their support for the country’s 500,000 Jews, a growing number of whom have been harassed physically and verbally since Hamas attacked Israel last month. In the Mediterranean city of Nice many of the 3,000 demonstrators chanted ‘we’re all Jews’, a facile and frankly offensive refrain. It’s become a habit in recent years to virtue signal one’s solidarity with victims of terrorism or religious persecution: not only do we share your pain but also your identity. One suspects that had those non-Jewish demonstrators in Nice been confronted on their way home by a group of Hamas
This weekend saw protests across Spain after the acting prime minister, socialist Pedro Sánchez, agreed to a general amnesty for Catalan separatists in return for parliamentary votes to enable him to stay in power. The amnesty will benefit hundreds of separatists facing fines or imprisonment for their involvement in the illegal referendum on independence for Catalonia in 2017, the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence and the concomitant street violence. There have been nine consecutive nights of often violent protest outside the socialist party’s headquarters in Madrid. But Sunday’s demonstrations, convened by the conservative opposition, held at noon in over 50 Spanish cities and attended by hundreds of thousands, were peaceful. At the