UK PM Sunak battles to unite divided party in pivotal week

LONDON - British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces the most dangerous moment of his premiership this week, when

he is due to appear before a Covid-19 inquiry

and must win a crunch vote in Parliament on his plan to revive a policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Just over a year since he became Prime Minister, Mr Sunak is struggling to maintain his authority, as politicians on both the left and the right of his Conservative Party are threatening to vote against his flagship asylum policy.

Parliament will hold a first vote on Dec 12 on the legislation that would override some human rights laws with the intention of allowing the first deportation flights to leave for Rwanda before a national election expected in 2024.

The proposed law is opposed by some moderate Conservative politicians who are worried about Britain breaching its human rights obligations, and also by right-wing lawmakers who want the government to go further. Both sides are taking legal advice before deciding how to vote.

For Mr Sunak, struggling to revive a weak British economy and heavily trailing the main opposition party in opinion polls, the

Rwanda policy has become the defining issue for his government,

despite lawyers saying at every stage that it will not work.

“The Rwanda policy has become a totemic struggle and it has liberated the factions in the Conservative Party to continue their all-out war,” said Professor Tony Travers, a politics professor at the London School of Economics.

The plan was ruled unlawful by Britain’s Supreme Court in November, which said genuine refugees would be at risk of being returned to their home countries where they might face potential violence or ill-treatment, which would breach British and international law.

The government has spent about a quarter of a billion pounds on the scheme in the hope that it will deter the tens of thousands of people – including from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq – who arrive on the south coast of England after crossing in small boats from France.

In a sign of how uncertain Mr Sunak is about the size of any parliamentary rebellion, he decided against making it a confidence vote. If he had done so and lost, he would have faced calls to hold a general election.

But the Prime Minister stands to be badly weakened if he loses any vote on the legislation. Only 29 Conservative members of Parliament would need to rebel to defeat the government.

Asked on Dec 10 if Mr Sunak would call a snap election if the legislation failed to pass, Mr Michael Gove, a senior government minister in charge of regional development and housing, played down the possibility.

“No, we’re not contemplating that because I’m confident that when people look at the legislation and have a chance to reflect, they will recognise that this is a tough but also proportionate measure,” he told Sky News.

Divisions

Mr Sunak finds himself in a similar crisis that engulfed the Conservative Party under former prime minister Theresa May during the 2016 to 2019 fight to implement Brexit.

Once again, a prime minister is facing a revolt from backbench MPs, there are rumours of colleagues plotting a leadership challenge, there are concerns about Britain abandoning its international promises, and there are questions about the power of Parliament versus the judiciary.

Ahead of the vote on Dec 12, Mr Sunak will appear at the official Covid-19 inquiry on Dec 11 for a day-long hearing examining his role in response to the pandemic.

Mr Sunak, who was finance minister at the time, has been accused by one former government adviser of saying the government should “just let people die” rather than impose a lockdown because he was worried about the impact on the economy.

But the bigger danger for Mr Sunak will come from the parliamentary battles over his Rwanda policy.

Some lawmakers said that while they expected the government to win the vote on Dec 12, a bigger showdown would come at the next stage when they can vote on amendments, likely after Christmas.

“That’s when the rebels will get stuck in,” said one Sunak-supporting Conservative MP.

Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden underlined the threat to the government last week when he warned colleagues that it would be “insanity” to oust Mr Sunak.

Britain was once known for its stable politics. But if Mr Sunak were to be toppled, the country would be on its sixth prime minister in just over seven years for the first time since the 1830s.

Another Conservative politician said her colleagues needed to remember “politics is a team game”.

“If we have another leadership contest, we would be annihilated (at the next election),” she said. REUTERS