The Conservative’s plan to clamp down on illegal immigration in Britain is deeply immoral whichever way you cut it.
Ever since Suella Braverman announced the plans to the House of Commons, anger over the unhinged nature of what the party is proposing has been palpable.
It has been some time, after all, since the government had to include a legal disclaimer – the political equivalent of putting health warnings on cigarette packets – on the front of the Bill.
Braverman says it’s because she wants to be ‘upfront’ with the public.
In reality, their plans to effectively traffic immigrants to ‘safe’ third countries such as Rwanda, strip them of their rights under modern slavery laws and lock them up in prison are extreme enough to have more than a 50 per cent chance of being illegal.
An unprecedented move for lawmakers.
But the plans are as unworkable as they are unhinged, and that is arguably just as bad.
As one barrister put it to us after the announcement, the Conservatives are “introducing a law that they know will never become law”.
The real purpose of the bill is simply to “shift the blame for illegal immigration from the Home Secretary to whichever campaign group challenges the bill” in a bid to relieve themselves from taking any meaningful action.
Others have tweeted in a similar vein, with Max Migliorato dubbing the plans “un-implementable”.
“But it gives latitude to Government Ministers to blame absolutely everybody for stopping their much needed policies”, he said.
“From lefty lawyers to the ECHR, from Starmer to NGOs, from Meghan Markle to James O’Brien. A perpetual grievance machine that can get cranked when needed.”
Immorality has been a constant bedfellow of the Conservatives over the last 12 years, but not enough gets said of how little they have actually achieved.
Their Immigration Bill is the latest example of pulling the wool over voters’ eyes, giving them an excuse to do nothing.
And that, arguably, is just as bad as being immoral and deranged.
Related: Exposing the Tories’ Deepfake Illegal Immigration Bill