The twentieth film in the James Bond franchise, and the last one to star Pierce Brosnan, was titled Die Another Day. This is the same thing that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak can say after surviving this Wednesday a rebellion over the immigration issue by the Eurosceptic Tory extreme right, which aims to take the Conservative Party along the same path, or very similar, as Donald Trump to the Republicans of the United States. The law to send immigrants to Rwanda was approved as it was written, without amendments, with all the opposition against it (320 to 276).
Bond is indestructible, no matter how much he spends a year in a North Korean prison or all the forces of evil conspire against him, but Sunak is not, and in fact he fears that his months are numbered, exactly those that remain until a scheduled general election. initially for the fall. What will come next is a war of succession between the center conservatives and the radical right, the moderates and those who want to be a replica not only of Trump but of Vox, Le Pen, Wilders or Meloni.
What happened this Wednesday in the House of Commons was a prequel to the coming battle for the Tory soul, typical of a 007 epic. The conservatives, looking over the precipice, believe that their future sustainability depends on exploiting the anti-immigration feelings of the working classes, who do not see what foreigners contribute in labor, pensions and economic growth, but regret the competition they mean in the distribution of State subsidies and the additional pressure for public services (education, health, housing ...) punished by a long decade of austerity.
The Eurosceptic extreme right, the same one that insisted on a hard Brexit without concessions, tightened the screws on Sunak to toughen the law that provides for the sending of illegal immigrants to Rwanda and the processing of their asylum applications there, a plan that It will cost the United Kingdom 500 million euros, more than if the country absorbed their presence and even kept them in a superior five-star hotel. And this, without any guarantee that any plane will take off for Kigali.
The rebels lobbied with the help of the right-wing press to make appeals by individual migrants almost impossible, and for London to ignore its obligations under international law and the Refugee Convention. In the end they had to settle for a single concession, an express instruction to officials (non-political positions) to ignore the provisional provisions of the European Court of Human Rights blocking the sending of undocumented immigrants to Rwanda and follow the orders of the ministers. But it will be seen, when the time comes, what role the British Supreme Court itself adopts, which has described the African nation as an “unsafe country” for asylum seekers. That the Government has dictated by law that it is does not mean that justice will accept it just like that. It is not a judicialization of politics, but a politicization of the judiciary, also an attack on the traditional division of powers.
The Tory right, although in the end it threw in the towel in this Wednesday's skirmish and allowed the approval of the law as drafted by Sunak, has taken a position. If the conservative defeat in the elections is confirmed, they will raise the anti-immigration flag, for the reduction of taxes and the (even greater) cut of the welfare state, of skepticism about climate change and globalization, the defense of the colonial legacy and the rejection to the culture of diversity and inclusion. And with that ultra platform he intends to take control of the party.
The greatest victory, Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is the one that does not require a battle. But the conservatives' quest to find their soul is going to be inevitable, after five prime ministers since 2010, two referendums (Scotland and Brexit), four leadership struggles and experiments with authoritarianism, populism, social liberalism, anarcho-capitalism and technocratic elitism, of raising and lowering taxes like a yo-yo, of expanding and shrinking the State, of moving away from Europe, flirting with grandiloquent globalism and petty English nationalism.
Rishi Sunak is no 007 agent and he has survived, but only to die another day.
