‘Zut alors! We ’ave un visiteur dans reception et it looks like zay have bought un cadeau. Vite vite! Send un interne to ze gift shop.”
That’s the best explanation as to how Emmanuel Macron ended up presenting Sir Keir Starmer with cufflinks emblazoned with the Élysée logo. That’s barely one step from “um … would you like zis um … mouse mat”.
Starmer had gone to Paris with a football shirt from his beloved Arsenal, with “Macron 25” printed on the back, reminding his host that he is France’s 25th president, in case he had forgotten. Somewhat awkwardly for Starmer, the Arsenal home kit has a “Visit Rwanda” badge on each sleeve. Although the only people who do visit Rwanda are home secretaries.
It is worth remembering that the daft Rwanda idea wasn’t Rishi Sunak’s daft idea. It wasn’t Suella Braverman’s daft idea either. Nor, amazingly, Liz Truss’s. It was dreamt up by Priti Patel after she finally concluded that Tracy Island, Narnia and Balamory were not suitable locations for a refugee processing centre. Not known for over-thinking things, Boris Johnson ran with it. And then in a leadership contest in which only someone daft enough to still be in the Tory party could vote, the daft idea prevailed.
Sunak — who had apparently “hated” the daft idea — could have dropped it then, but that ship has now sailed. Another boat he hasn’t stopped. Oddly, he spends so much time shouting about the non-working Rwanda thing that nobody notices that actually the record on other areas of illegal migration is good, if not spectacular.
It’s not that it’s daft to want to stop people coming here illegally. But is it a deterrent if your main legal argument is that actually Rwanda is lovely at this time of year? Touring one of the flats set aside for the non-existent deportees in March, Braverman trilled: “These houses are really beautiful … I need some advice for myself.” She even joked with her host about sending an interior designer to Britain. You’ll be surprised to learn that the owner of Kigali Kushions hasn’t yet boarded a flight either.
It also isn’t a deterrent if it isn’t going to happen. A couple of weeks after sipping tiny coffees on the Champs-Élysées, Starmer went on Sunday morning TV. He was asked what he would do as PM if the flights to Rwanda had already started and the policy was working with the number of small boats declining. Would he scrap the daft policy? And he said: “Yes.”
Now, are we really to believe that the desperate and dangerous people currently camped out in Calais are connected enough to British politics to tune into every pointless emergency No 10 press conference (in which Sunak nervously muttered “right?” in between every other word to reassure himself) but not to also use their smartphones to check the opinion polls? If you’re planning to cross the high seas, you are likely to know which way the wind is blowing.
And, like his beloved Arsenal, Starmer is on a winning streak. Bluntly, anyone who thinks that fact is going to change with another round of Conservative slogans, resignations, rebellions, self-appointed Star Chambers of armchair lawyers, and (God help us) “letters going in” is, well, just daft.
