Britain’s Rwanda deportation policy is the result of a jamboree of Brexit Union Jack flag-shagging

On every level imaginable, the UK government’s attempt to solve the challenge posed by thousands of asylum seekers making their way across the English Channel from Northern France by deporting them to Rwanda in East Africa is barbaric and unworkable.

Yet if not for the last minute legal intervention by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the first flight, scheduled to depart on Tuesday 14 June, would have taken place with just a handful of unfortunate human beings to a fate unknown. That this flight is thought to have cost £500,000 alone, and that the UK government has already paid the government of Paul Kagame in Rwanda £120 million to take UK asylum seekers, leaves home secretary Priti Patel’s credibility in tatters, along with her policy.

Of course, there won’t be any resignations taking place anytime soon — not when we have ourselves in Britain a lawless and roguish government that has already proven itself impervious to such inconviences as honour and integrity. What there will be is a doubling down on the policy by Patel — a home secretary so vicious and cruel you get the idea that she enjoys baseball-batting stray cats in her spare time.

Taking a broader view, the idea of rich countries in the northern hemisphere bribing poor countries in Africa and elsewhere in the southern hemisphere to not only process their asylum seekers but then keep them, is as repugnant as it is unlawful under international humanitarian law. It marks a foul abrogation, sets an awful precedent, and is racist at inception.

There is no doubting that this policy has been cooked up and fueled by the desire to appease a Brexit voting base in the so-called red wall constituencies in the north and midlands of England. This is Britain’s Deep South, banjo country, where xenophobia, nativism, anti-migrant sentiment and white English nationalism have become embedded, and where both Labour and the Tories have focused their energies, given the current electoral map. The result is a jamboree of Union Jack flag shagging and the consequent debasement of British politics.

On any objective basis, anyone with the nuts to uproot from a war zone or a situation of societal breakdown — with UK…