This is the first time I actually read the argument that won at the appeals court: basically it says that Rwanda is in fact not doing a good job under the Refugee convention at the moment and so there’s too high a risk of them screwing up on the UK’s agreement. This sounds very reasonable, though it does mean that if Rwanda sort their act out, or if the government finds a new partner who does not have a record of refoulement, this will be back on the table. I suppose that raises the question of how serious an issue that would be; in my mind besides the practical issue there is the belief that the government has pushed this legislation to draw on the prejudices of their voters by creating a plan which can be billed as “we’re sending the unwanted hordes to some horrible country in Africa - yes, you know, one with a genocide.”

It seems like we’re ill-equipped to deal with this latter kind of accusation - certainly I don’t think we can argue that it’s illegal, but also I don’t see that we have any real way to convince people it’s a bad basis on which to make policy if they kind of like the idea.

Tories are talking about tabling new legislation (even without withdrawing from the EHCR) so presumably the plan is not actually dead. I don’t know how it can be resumed even with “narrow legislation” as they said but that latter problem will still be there whatever form it comes in.