Rishi Sunak has urged peers to “do the right thing” and back his Rwanda legislation as he prepares for a showdown with the House of Lords after winning Commons approval for his illegal migration plan.
The Prime Minister saw his legislation pass its third reading in the Commons on Wednesday night, after a would-be backbench revolt on his Rwanda Bill largely melted away.
But the victory came only after dozens of backbenchers rebelled and two party deputy chairmen quit to back right-wing amendments over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday, in the latest sign of the deep divisions within the party.
He is now facing a major battle with peers in the House of Lords, many of whom have already expressed deep unease about the Rwanda plan.
Sunak has warned peers against blocking the “will of the people”, even though the people have never been asked about the policy.
A number of people have also pointed out that the “will of the people” isn’t what put Sunak in the job in the first place, and if he had any interest in those sorts of things, he’d call a general election tomorrow.
With that in mind, we’ve had a go at rewriting Constitutional Peasants from Monty Python with Sunak replacing Arthur as the protagonist.
And honestly, there really is no difference:
RISHI SUNAK: Old woman!
DENNIS: Man!
RISHI SUNAK: Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
DENNIS: I’m thirty-seven.
RISHI SUNAK: What?
DENNIS: I’m thirty-seven. I’m not old!
RISHI SUNAK: Well, I can’t just call you ‘man.’
DENNIS: Well, you could say Dennis.
RISHI SUNAK: Well, I didn’t know you were called Dennis.
DENNIS: Well, you didn’t bother to find out, did you?
RISHI SUNAK: I did say sorry about the ‘old woman,’ but from the behind you looked–
DENNIS: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior!
RISHI SUNAK: Well, I AM prime minister…
DENNIS: Oh, prime minister, eh, very nice. An’ how’d you get that, eh? By exploitin’ the workers — by ‘angin’ on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic an’ social differences in our society! If there’s ever going to be any progress–
WOMAN: Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down here. Oh — how d’you do?
RISHI SUNAK: How do you do, good lady. I am Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
WOMAN: Prime minister of the who?
RISHI SUNAK: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
RISHI SUNAK: Well, we all are. We’re all Britons and I am your prime minister.
WOMAN: I didn’t know we had a prime minister. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes–
WOMAN: Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That’s what it’s all about. If only people would–
RISHI SUNAK: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
WOMAN: No one lives there.
RISHI SUNAK: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don’t have a lord.
RISHI SUNAK: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
RISHI SUNAK: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
RISHI SUNAK: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs–
RISHI SUNAK: Be quiet!
DENNIS: –but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more–
RISHI SUNAK: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh — who does he think he is?
RISHI SUNAK: I am your prime minister!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
RISHI SUNAK: You don’t vote for Conservative prime ministers.
WOMAN: Well, ‘ow did you become prime minister then?
RISHI SUNAK: The Lady of the Lake, [singing] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Rishi Sunak, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your prime minister!
DENNIS: Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
RISHI SUNAK: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
RISHI SUNAK: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
RISHI SUNAK: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
RISHI SUNAK: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! — HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
RISHI SUNAK: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a giveaway. Did you here that, did you here that, eh? That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing me, you saw it didn’t you?
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