Rwanda Vote: The death of One Nation Toryism

This wasn't about the fate of Rishi Sunak. It was about the soul of the Conservative party.

He scraped through in the end. It was another day of preposterous drama - great big oafish egos hauling themselves around Westminster, pontificating about principles they do not possess and judgements they do not deploy. Pitiful dilapidated men, like Mark Francois or Bill Cash, clearly savouring the attention, licking up every drop of it, as the scrum of journalists chased after them. But hanging over it, there was the shadow of something truly profound, something which truly did matter: a death on the punishment barge they'd deployed to show their resolve on asylum. A reminder of the human cost to the circus we saw in front of us.

We'll talk a lot now about the machinations. Rishi Sunak managed to survive by indicating to the Tory rebels that he would be open to amendments in its later stages. They want it to go further. It's not enough for them that he has eradicated objective legal judgement, launched an assault against the liberal principle of the separation of powers, set up a war with international human rights law or threatened to traumatise the most vulnerable people on earth. It must go further. 

They are lost in a sadism fantasy land. They're like a drug user, reaching for an ever higher dose in order to find that original sense of blissed-out Brexit euphoria. Each time, they need something more extreme. And now here, we are, gone completely mad, a crack addict in the corner of a bedsit proclaiming themselves king.

Whatever promises he made them, it worked. The Rwanda bill passed second reading by 313 votes to 269. There'll now be a series of complex strategic issues. If Sunak gives in to their demands for amendments in the new year, he might lose the group of One Nation Tories representing the moderate end of the party. If he doesn't, he might lose the headbanger group. 

How true is that? Who knows. The One Nation lot tend to talk a lot, but they rarely actually vote against. The soul of One Nation Conservatism died when Boris Johnson purged the party during Brexit and never came back. But there were signs they might hold the line. "On the preservation of the right to go to court in an extreme case," former attorney general Georffrey Cox said, "I say that is part of the British constitution that our fathers and our party has supported and fought for for generations." Strong stuff. It would be hard for him to walk that back, although you wouldn't put it past him. 

Either way: Sunak is in the position where anything he gives to one side he loses from the other. And all the while, Rwanda chips away at him, reducing his authority, making him seem more and more like a Theresa May cosplay performance. And then, at the end of the road, like a torture machine designed specifically for him, lies the House of Lords.

All of that is pertinent. It matters. This is a disgraceful bill which must never become law. If even one person is sent to Rwanda, it's an affront to who we are and what we stand for. The parliamentary battle is of crucial importance. 

But it wasn't the real story.

An asylum seeker died on board the Bibby Stockholm barge today. Police were called just after 6:20am. Multiple sources reported that it was a suicide.

Suicides in asylum detention are relatively common. I've covered several of them. We cannot say that this was certainly a result of the accommodation. But we can say this: Asylum detention is brutal and inhumane. It takes people who have often been imprisoned and tortured in their own country and applies reminiscent conditions to them here, in the UK, where they think they will find safety. It does not alleviate mental health problems. It exacerbates them. In October, men aboard the vessel told the Guardian: "We despair and wish for death".

We can also say this: Asylum seekers deserve to be treated with compassion. They deserve to be respected. They deserve to be addressed as if they are a person rather than a problem. Rather than an invasion, or an infestation, or an electoral liability.

The debate in the Commons today began with the foreign secretary noting his sadness at the death. And then he pressed ahead regardless. The point of the Rwanda plan, we were repeatedly told, was deterrence. Once asylum seekers saw how brutally we would treat them, they would stop coming. We had to make ourselves hard and uncaring, in order to discourage them. 

Even the supposedly moderate centrist Tories emphasised this point. "That's why Rwanda is so important," Jerome Mayhew said. "It's not that the capacity of Rwanda has to accept every single migrant that currently comes across the channel. It's the deterrent effect to stop them coming in the first place."

That was on the more acceptable end of the spectrum. Elsewhere, Tory MPs were bathing in their lack of empathy. "We don’t want one or two token flights with five to ten people," Tory backbencher Jonathan Gullis told broadcasters. "We need to see planes full to the hilt flying off to Rwanda." 

In the Chamber, Tory Nick Fletcher gave one of the most despicable speeches I've ever heard from an MP in the Commons. He imagined a nice family who get a house in his constituency and then have a child. They move in next door to another nice family, with their little manicured white picket fence garden and their innocent well behaved children. And then the nice neighbours move out and the immigrants move in. 

"And then we have nine people who don't speak English anymore, bed hopping... We are turning parts of our community into a ghetto. Now all of a sudden you're living next door to an HMO [house in multiple occupation] and you've got comings and goings at two in the morning, three in the morning, people outside smoking, the grass don't get cut anymore, the windows don't get cleaned anymore, and unfortunately you feel scared to let your child play out in the garden anymore... Your little child falls over in the street and you have to go to A&E. And you get a 12-hour waiting list and the reason why the waiting list is so long is people don't speak English in these places anymore. And this is what is happening."

Just poison. Nothing more. Hatred and fear and grievance and vitriol, directed towards The Other. The same old tactic that's played out throughout human history, against countless different targets, over and over again. No pity, or compassion or basic decency. Just the very worst aspects of the human disposition, the most cynical and corroded of our reactions to those around us. 

He was the worst of them. But the real horror was not so much in what was said as in that which was not said. Not one Conservative MP today spoke out against the bill from a humane perspective. Not one. Those on the centre of the party equivocated. They said they were on the verge of feeling uncomfortable. They insisted that they'd definitely rebel if it went any further. But none of them had the bravery, or the principles, or the morality to say: this is indecent. This is despicable, as an idea, a priori, regardless of the viability of its legal mechanism. That we have a duty towards asylum seekers. That we should at least attempt to help those who have fled their home country. That kindness is a finer sentiment than cruelty.  

And that, in the end, was the only story worth telling about what happened today. It had nothing to do with the fate of Rishi Sunak. And everything to do with the soul of the Conservative party.