Ministers must do what it takes to get the Rwanda plan off the ground

Just as Meatloaf sang that he would do anything for love, “but I won’t do that”, so our political classes tell us they would do anything to achieve those things they promise. But when confronted with the choice to do what is necessary, the answer is often that they won’t do that.

This weekend, the predictable happened. The anti-Israel march – held on Armistice Day – was directed away from the Cenotaph. But on this vital national day, the same hatred and anti-Semitism spewed out from radical protesters. And far-Right hooligans descended upon Whitehall, supposedly to defend Armistice Day, but in reality to fight, cause trouble and behave in a manner antithetical to the quiet dignity of remembrance.

Predictably, the Left blamed the Government for stoking division and heightening tension. But the Prime Minister made clear his displeasure at the idea of anti-Israel protests taking place on Armistice Day. The Home Secretary’s criticism of the rolling weekly protests was justified by the criminality and incitement to violence we all saw once more. This weekend, in fact, the behaviour was even worse.

Many prefer to ignore the truth, and engage instead in projection and displacement activity. The hatred they observe is not on the anti-Israel marches but spoken by ministers and the media. The incitement they see is not the calls for “jihad” on our streets but from those who criticise the hands-off policing in response. 

The continued criminality on the anti-Israel marches and the thuggish behaviour of the hooligans stems from the previous failure to police the streets and apply the law equally. Yet the Met has continued to insist that the legal grounds to ban the march – that doing so would prevent serious public disorder – was not reached. But it was only by not enforcing the law, and not arresting protesters who appeared to be inciting violence, that worse disorder than that we witnessed was averted.

The march could therefore have been banned, had those in a position of power chosen to do so. But whatever Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman wanted, the Public Order Act 1986 makes clear that such a decision can only be made by the Home Secretary upon a request by the relevant police chief. 

Some argue that it is right, whatever the frustrations of the Prime Minister, that a decision to ban a march should be made by police chiefs, not by ministers alone. But the existing approach is not working. As with other cases – from recorded hate preaching by imams in mosques to Left-wing protesters blocking the highways – the police are very publicly not enforcing the law. And if the law does not allow the prohibition of, or imposition of severe restrictions on, marches that persistently disrupt the shared reality of city life, intimidate minorities, incite violence and promote hatred, the law needs to change. As does the process through which such decisions are made.

Some say Rishi Sunak’s promise to hold to account Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, for the policing of the protests, is an unacceptable assault on the concept of operational independence. But this is nonsense. Operational independence means the police must not be directed – by politicians or anybody else – to arrest or not arrest a particular person. It does not mean the police should be shielded from scrutiny or criticism. 

The problem is less about political interference in policing and more about police involvement in politics and political decisions. While police chiefs feel comfortable criticising ministers personally, enforcing laws in an unequal way that anticipates the reaction of particular groups and opining on matters from the budgets available to them to the language used to describe Islamist terrorism, politicians are accountable for what they cannot control. With public order policing in particular, the public look to the politicians, and the politicians look – often with little more than misplaced hope – to the police chiefs.

This impotence applies beyond policing. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will judge the legality of the Government’s Rwanda scheme, through which those entering the country illegally will face deportation to their home country or to claim asylum in Rwanda. The policy has been on hold since the European Court of Human Rights imposed a Rule 39 interim injunction to block it. Then our own Court of Appeal found that while Rwanda is generally a safe place to send migrants, there is a risk that vulnerable migrants might be sent by Rwanda to their home countries.

This was a novel ruling on narrow grounds, and the Government’s policy, on a vital issue facing the country, is in danger. But the legal basis upon which the Court might strike down the policy cannot be changed, for it is based on our now de facto constitutional law, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Once again, the politicians are accountable for decisions made by others: in this case, judges.

The whole immigration system is the same – insofar as there is a system. It has never really been designed, but has grown, like a thicket, following thousands of judicial rulings, many of which are underpinned by the ECHR. Other examples include the planning system, another legal quagmire made over-complex by administrative law and legally-binding environmental targets and public services run by unaccountable managerial elites.

Ministers often express their frustration that with operational failures or particular social or economic problems they want to address, their hands are tied. And with existing frameworks of law and policy, they are often right. But in most of these cases, their hands are bound in ropes knotted by the logic of their own political positions.

If the police do not enforce the law, reform the police and change the law. If legally-binding targets skew policy and encourage judges to make law, scrap those targets. If quangos are over-powerful, transfer their power to more accountable organisations. If administrative law is making it impossible to get things done, change judicial review. If human rights laws kill the Rwanda policy, and render immigration and border control notional, leave the European Convention. Anything else is just Meatloaf politics.