Rishi Sunak has urged mutinous Tory MPs to “unite or die” ahead of a key Commons vote on his controversial bid to save his party’s ailing plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
The prime minister harkened back to the first days of his premiership with the call to MPs at a meeting of the 1922 Committee this week, according to The Times, which carried claims that some Cabinet ministers are “on manouevres” in case of an earlier-than-expected Tory leadership race.
There are claims that nearly two-dozen MPs have submitted no confidence letters, and in an olive branch to rebels, Mr Sunak is said to be “happy to have conversations” about his Rwanda plan’s future, providing the Bill – disliked by both Tory moderates and hardliners – passes through the Commons.
It is a last-ditch bid to get planes in the air after the Supreme Court ruled the government’s previous plans illegal. The legislation gives ministers the powers to disregard sections of the Human Rights Act, but does not go as far as allowing them to dismiss the European Convention on Human Rights.