The longer Number Ten fails to declare, the more cheerfully Labour will pile in – preparing to frame the Prime Minister as a bottler if he waits until after the Budget to rule out a May poll.
The channel will help to shape Tory members’ take on the general election, the Conservatives, Reform UK, Farage, post-election debate…and, not least, America’s own election, Trump and Biden.
It insists that there was no plan to move to by-election rules. “We’re not so stupid as to push a scheme that we know would be opposed by a large number of MPs.”
Conservatism is not some doctrine deduced from some authoritative text by a great thinker or leader of the past. What comes first for Conservatives is not the theory, but the practice.
Killing the Bill at Second Reading would have meant no opportunity for emergency press conferences and Star Chamber findings at Committee and Report.
The only means by which individuals should be able to avoid removal, is by demonstrating to Home Office officials, that they have entered the country legally, are under 18, or are medically unfit to fly.
We have become a party for whom the grotesque is the primary mode of communication. Just to reiterate, I’m not talking about policy or principle here, but a predilection for the odd and off-putting in presentation.
Though any of the 106 members of the One Nation Caucus do worry that declaring Rwanda a safe country in law is a push too far.
His Bill may be held up in the Lords as he continues to insists that his Government will stop the boats. The only means of squaring the two would be an election with illegal migration centre-stage.
Those who claim the Conservatives would benefit from a spell in opposition to ‘rest and detox’ are misguided. My first nine years in Parliament were spent in opposition, and it was a frustrating experience.
Even as it is, we have been fortunate riots that have proven a rarity. Cut 6.7 per cent a year from the budget and they become almost an inevitability.
Doing the minimum possible on legal migration would have the unwelcome effect for the Prime Minister of prolonging and intensifying debate about it.
The elements that came together to see a Conservative elected Mayor in 2008 – a national mood turning against Labour, a near-celebrity candidate in the as-yet-untarnished form of Boris Johnson, and a radical and increasingly unpopular incumbent – are not currently at hand.
Monday’s speech and today’s announcement show them choosing their ground for the next election. And since Hunt may find no money for further tax cuts next spring, the option of a May general election is opening up.
The Government can now at last claim consistency, and at least enter the next election arguing, with more of a straight face, that it has tried to deliver migration.