Ruanda and Gaza: symptoms of the same malaise

Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly tell us that the Ruanda bill currently paused by the House of Lords is responding to the ‘will of the people’ and that’s it’s therefore wrong to delay it. But the polling would suggest that it’s the will of some people at best and that overall roughly similar numbers support is as do not. And shows of hands at recent editions of Question Time certainly do not indicate majority support and those audiences are supposed to be representative.

It’s perhaps also fair to say that whether or not the Rwanda plan succeeds it will have no impact on what’s important to people like NHS waiting lists, the cost of living, funding for schools and the state of the country’s infrastructure. So why it is taking up so much Tory bandwidth?

It’s simply Sunak playing to the right wing of his party. He reckons that if he can keep it happy then he won’t loose its votes to Reform (as UKIP is now known). He’s grasping at the straws that might enable him to retain power in the election later this year.

It’s the same in Israel. I’m not for one moment going to be an apologist for Hammas, of course what it did 7 Oct 23 was abhorrent. But I am going to ask why the punishment now being meted out by Israeli forces on men, women and children in Gaza is so extreme. I’m not going to use the G word but what we are seeing is the destruction of a society and that’s pretty dreadful and I’d worry that a new and ‘worse’ Hammas will come out of it.

In parallel to the Israeli attack we have Benjamin Netanyahu talking in terms of not giving the Palestinians and sort of self-determination. For him the two state solution is off the table. Why?

It’s because Netanyahu owes his position to the right wing parties in the Knesset and that’s their position. If he loses their support he loses his job.

Both Sunak and Netanyahu are tailoring their policies to suit their minority right wing. It’s not representative politics but simply the politics of power. They do what they must to hold on to it and it results in bad government.