Even Sunak’s own MPs do not believe two more barges will solve migrant crisis
Rishi Sunak gives update on ‘stop the boats’ pledge
Sitting in Portcullis House on the Parliamentary estate with a Tory MP watching the Prime Minister’s press conference in Kent on the migrant crisis, the reaction was telling.
When Rishi Sunak suggested that the Government is getting on top of the problem pointing to reduced numbers in the first three months of the year, the MP grumbled: “You could have fooled me.”
And the announcement of two more barges to hold migrants in merely provoked an eye roll.
The problem for the Prime Minister is that tackling the migration crisis is increasingly looking like his last roll of the dice to breathe life into his exhausted Government.
But to say Tory MPs are “sceptical” about his ability to succeed would be putting it mildly, to say the least.
The problem is that most MPs agree with Nigel Farage that the reduced numbers were mostly down to bad weather at the start of the year.
They are now awaiting the figures for the second three months to the end of June which will show whether the reduction is a trend.
Meanwhile, hotels are filling up and bad feelings about the whole issue are just growing.
At least with the barges, there is a chance that at least one of them is heading to a Labour constituency in Merseyside which would appease some of the Tory backbenchers wondering why their constituencies have been targeted for hotels.
Southport Conservative MP Damian Moore, who holds the only Tory Merseyside seat, said he was fine for the barge to be coming to his area “as long as it’s the Labour Liverpool side”.
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Two more barges or as one Tory MP put it, “just yet more accommodation for people who should not be here”, is not the solution that backbenchers want.
It does not address the key issues as to why the UK seems to legally not be able to control its own borders.
This is why the Prime Minister may yet be forced to agree to change Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights and Refugee Convention as well as overhaul the Human Rights as part of the next election’s manifesto.
Everything else just looks like a sticking plaster solution, tinkering with a problem that needs a dramatic solution.
As one Red Wall Tory put it last week: “I just don’t see any of this working, there doesn’t seem to be the will or backbone to do what needs to be done.”
Meanwhile, the Lords are trying to scupper the Illegal Migration Bill today with the charge being led by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and his fellow bishops.
The question will be whether the Government will stand up to the Lords and refuse to accept their amendments or cave again as they have on other Bills such as Retained EU Law.
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But this is increasingly becoming an issue about whether Sunak’s Premiership can survive let alone if he can win the next election.
Over the weekend, some supporters of Boris Johnson were briefing they are “confident” that Sunak will quit before the election.
One said: “He [Sunak] is panicking and has lost the will to do anything. He’s going to go.”
That feels unlikely but the poll which showed half of the 2019 support had disappeared will have worried Downing Street.
It was perhaps no coincidence that he was on the migration front line in Dover today as he tries to drum up support.
Defeat at the next election is not inevitable but if he is going to win the Prime Minister needs to resolve the small boats by the time he goes to the country.
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