Keir Starmer Mocks Rishi Sunak For Tory Party ‘Tearing Itself Apart’ Over Rwanda Bill

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appealed to Commons House Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to intervene as Labour leader Keir Starmer incessantly mocked him over his failure to get his Rwanda bill pushed through parliament.

The testy exchange came during Prime Minister’s Questions, as Starmer asked Sunak where the 4,250 asylum seekers that he wants to send back to Rwanda are. A question Sunak couldn’t answer.

“Where are they?” Starmer asked.

“Mr. Speaker,” the prime minister said, appealing to Hodge, “it’s the same thing again and again.”

“He hasn’t got a clue where they are, has he?” the Labour leader said to jeers and laughter in the chamber.

He continued: “I can tell you one place they are and that’s Rwanda, because the only people who were sent to Rwanda are cabinet ministers [to negotiate the deportation deal].”

Raising revelations in recently leaked documents from Sunak’s term as Chancellor under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during which time he opposed Johnson’s Rwanda policy, Starmer said: “And for all the world, the ridiculous thing is, we know the prime minister himself doesn’t even believe in this Rwanda gimmick. He had to be talked out of scrapping the whole thing. He didn’t want to fund it, he didn’t think it would work.”

He continued: “When he sees his party tearing itself apart — hundreds of bald men scrapping over a single broken comb — doesn’t he wish to get the courage to stick to his guns?”

Rising in his defence, to jeers and laughter, Sunak replied: “Well, Mr. Speaker, now I have absolute conviction that the plan we put in place will work because I believe it is important that we grip this problem.”

The bill is set for a third reading on Wednesday even after Tuesday night’s amendment votes saw 60 Tory MPs, including the two deputy party chairmen, push for a more harder approach, signalling the largest rebellion under Sunak’s tenure.