Fergus Finlay: Ousting of charlatan Johnson just can’t happen soon enough

The British prime minister's Rwanda plan is the ultimate expression of a truly pathetic excuse for a leader

When it comes to political depravity, you’d really begin to wonder what depths Boris Johnson won’t plumb in order to distract attention from his own disgusting carry-on.

It's very clear that there are no levels of depravity to which Vladimir Putin will not sink. He is waging not just a war, but a war of terror against the Ukrainian people. There are no targets not considered legitimate, no sections of the population regarded as off-limits. Babies and children, it is clear, are just as likely to be murdered on his orders as soldiers are. He will go down in history as a war criminal.

When it comes to political depravity, however, you’d really begin to wonder what depths Boris Johnson won’t plumb in order to distract attention from his own disgusting carry-on. He has one thing and one thing only on his mind. To persuade his increasingly hapless and supine party that they should keep him as prime minister until he can find a way to wriggle free from the scandals he has created.

That’s why he went to Ukraine, to parade alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the hope that some of the glow of a genuine hero would brush off on him. I can only imagine the lengths the Ukrainians had to go to to keep him safe on their territory, when a phone call would have sufficed. And they must know how awful the British government response has been to the plight of Ukrainian refugees.

But Johnson probably knew the fines were about to be issued for the partygate affair, and he was so desperate to look good that everyone had to be put at risk.

But there’s even worse. I don’t believe I have ever come across a more shocking and ugly idea than Boris Johnson’s latest effort to distract. 

I didn’t think it was possible for a democratically elected leader to come up with something so tawdry. But he’s done it.

From now on, anyone hoping to seek asylum in Britain, picked up from a boat in the British channel, will immediately be put on a plane and flown to Rwanda. No legal rights, no due process, no appeal, no enquiry about the legitimacy of individual claims. Rwanda will be paid by the British government “to process” these claims. They can accept them or reject them, and if they reject them, Britain will presumably pay Rwanda to send these people back to wherever they came from.

People fleeing from torture, people in fear of their lives, or simply people hoping to make a better life for themselves — there will be no distinction. All will go immediately to Rwanda.

Rwanda is roughly the size of Munster, with a population more than twice that of Ireland. It’s already among the most densely populated countries in the world. An article in the Guardian newspaper by Joshua Surtees, who used to work for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, described the plan as a decision by one of the 10 richest countries in the world to deport people to one of the 25 poorest countries in the world.

Obviously, Rwanda must need the money and, obviously, it doesn’t cost Boris Johnson a thought to take advantage of that. And he has the gall to cloak it in language like “our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not”. 

It’s the same language used by the more odious proponents of Brexit to foster the impression that Britain was in danger of being overrun by dangerous foreigners.

As Surtees says in his piece, Johnson’s disreputable government is trying to win kudos by positioning Britain as a country closed to the world, and especially to those who need its sanctuary the most.

They’re trying to pretend that this Rwanda plan is all about combatting the traffickers who exploit desperate people. They’ve done nothing concrete about that for years, of course, and it’s just another bit of the hypocrisy around this disgusting scheme.

Alf Dubs came to Britain as a child refugee from Czechoslovakia at the start of the Second World War and had a distinguished career as a Labour MP. He’s now a member of the House of Lords and has vowed to fight the Rwanda plan tooth and nail. When the point about trafficking was put to him, he was scornful. “This,” he said, “is state-sponsored people trafficking.” It’s early to say if they will get away with it. There is opposition already, some of it coming from unlikely places. The British Home Office, itself no bastion of liberalism, has gone on record expressing serious doubts that the plan can work and has challenged its odious boss Priti Patel, herself the daughter of Indian and Ugandan parents, to issue specific instructions in the matter. Senior church leaders are speaking out in pretty trenchant language. There will certainly be legal challenges.

But the charlatan who currently inhabits 10 Downing Street appears determined to press on.

Of course, this is exactly the sort of cheap populist gesture he has learned from the Trump playbook. Like Trump’s border wall, it’s the sort of thing that appeals to the meaner and baser instincts. And, of course, it has the potential to be polarising, cementing what’s left of his base and creating enemies of “the other”.

Perhaps he’s doing it because he believes this is where the British people are at. They voted for Brexit, after all. They wanted to take back control of their borders because Johnson and others manipulated the truth to persuade them their borders were in danger.

But that’s not the Britain I recognise. Our neighbouring country is at heart a place of decent traditions, and it’s a place where honour matters. This is utterly dishonourable.

But maybe Johnson actually knows where Britain and its people are really at right now. This is not about fear of refugees. Instead, it is yet another desperate attempt to save him from the reckoning that is surely coming.

There was a letter from an ordinary man called John Robinson from Staffordshire in some UK papers last week, and I think it reflects the real truth of people’s feelings. He describes his wife’s death from Covid early in the pandemic, the pain of her loss and the unbearable pain of being unable to mourn her the way she deserved. Her son-in-law had to stay away from the churchyard, as he would have been the forbidden seventh mourner.

And then he talks about Johnson’s partying, in breach of all the rules he had imposed on others. And he says, “Anger doesn’t even touch the sides of how I feel about this pathetic excuse for a man, and I suspect that the majority of us little people share my views, will never forget and will never forgive.” I don’t think I could have expressed it better. Johnson’s hypocrisy has been revealed to everyone in full technicolour. And his Rwanda plan is the ultimate expression of a truly pathetic excuse for a leader. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to take for his party to decide they can’t stomach him anymore. I do know that he will go down in history as simply the worst British prime minister in history, and it can’t happen soon enough.