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<\/p>\nSeconds after the result, Chief Whip Simon Hart winked at Rishi Sunak\u00a0and he responded by hugging him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a beaming Rishi left the packed chamber he patted colleagues and thanked his new immigration minister, Michael Tomlinson, a quiet lad who had risen to the occasion.<\/p>\n
Labour MPs were unfazed. The Government’s healthy majority looked more of a blow to Mark Francois, self-styled Tory\u00a0rebel leader, who had been putting himself around for days with no little strutting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He and his confreres, including\u00a0Suella Braverman, stayed glued to their seats during the vote, abstaining. The result was a pikestaff in the gizzards for Corporal Francois. Military surgeons were last night operating.<\/p>\n
Amid all the rococo oratory in this Rwanda\u00a0debate, all the stiff, pink rhubarb from lawyers, the most remarkable speech came from an obscure Tory MP, Nick Fletcher (Don Valley).\u00a0<\/p>\n
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As a beaming Rishi (pictured) left the packed chamber he patted colleagues and thanked his new immigration minister, Michael Tomlinson, a quiet lad who had risen to the occasion<\/p>\n
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The debate was opened by James Cleverly (left), Home Secretary. Things soon became fiendishly legalistic. Mr Cleverly looked underequipped for such combat and needed prompts from lawyer colleagues<\/p>\n
Even Mr Fletcher’s friends would not call him Demosthenes. A voice like cardboard. His is not the most nimble of political brains. He just said, to howling gyp from Labour MPs, what his electors thought.<\/p>\n
‘Doncaster’s full.’<\/p>\n
His opening words sent the opposition into torrents of disgust. Mr Fletcher proceeded, in his flat drone, to describe what happened in his constituency when asylum seekers arrived.<\/p>\n
Neighbours saw house values plummet. ‘We’re turning part of our country into a ghetto,’ continued Mr Fletcher. ‘Shocking!’ roared Labour.\u00a0Dogged Mr Fletcher plodded onwards, a cyclist pedalling through a mist of slurry. He was doing what he felt he had been sent to Westminster to do, even though the elite mocked.<\/p>\n
A memorable afternoon. Newark’s Robert Jenrick, newly out of government, made a fluent, notes-free speech which felt like a leadership pitch. He has lost weight. The house was rapt. Mr Jenrick has made himself something. Has he outmanoeuvred Suella? She avoided the debate.<\/p>\n
Sir Geoffrey Cox, whose trouser belt now sits a long way above the Plimsoll line, opened the throttle on his Lagonda larynx and explained why he thought the Bill would do the trick. What a voice. When this Horace Rumpole of West Devon is in full flow, greenhouse panes quiver and ice-cubes rattle in nearby gins and french.<\/p>\n
The debate was opened by James Cleverly, Home Secretary. Things soon became fiendishly legalistic. Mr Cleverly looked underequipped for such combat and needed prompts from lawyer colleagues. An early intervention came from Sir Bill Cash (Con, Stone). It sounded \u2013 so far as one can ever follow old Bill’s contributions \u2013 that he was going to support the Government. That felt significant.<\/p>\n
The debate, in terms of policy disputes, happened on the Tory side: a contest between Righties such as Danny Kruger (Devizes), who criticised the Supreme Court, and not-so Righties such as Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon), who worships the judiciary.<\/p>\n
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The debate, in terms of policy disputes, happened on the Tory side: a contest between Righties such as Danny Kruger (Devizes), who criticised the Supreme Court, and not-so Righties such as Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon), who worships the judiciary<\/p>\n
Where, asked Sir Robert with pomposity and some anger, did the Bill leave ‘the principle of comity’? ‘Exactly!’ shouted Sir Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda), as if he understood what comity meant. On that he was at least a step ahead of Mr Cleverly.<\/p>\n
The speech by Labour’s spokesman, Yvette Cooper, was puerile, over-long, devoid of policy.<\/p>\n
One of her worst performances yet. Mr Cleverly put her off by repeatedly muttering, some 20 times, ‘what’s your policy?’<\/p>\n
Expostulating disgust was done better by the SNP’s Pete Wishart who, in a reference to the film Life of Brian, said the Tories made ‘the People’s Front of Judea look like a model of unity’. Kevin Foster (Con, Torbay) thought it quite something to ‘get a lecture on unity from the Scots Nats’.<\/p>\n
Labour’s Stephen Kinnock said that his late mother Glenys, who died only last week, would have disliked the bill. An emotive argument, but perhaps excusable in the circumstances.<\/p>\n
‘Speaking as a lawyer, I feel queasy,’ mewed Maria Eagle (Lab, Garston & Halewoood). Sammy Wilson (DUP, E Antrim) said he was heartily sick of such lectures.<\/p>\n
Lawyer MPs should look to their political responsibilities and do what they had promised at the last election.<\/p>\n