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The BBC's July 7, 2024 Last two migrants bound for Rwanda to be bailed, home secretary says contains the following:

On his first full day as prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer confirmed the Rwanda deportation scheme is "dead and buried".

This follows the UK Home Secretary's statements.

Politicians say things, and Johnathan Pie asserts that Keir hasn't made a lot of promises, so I'm wondering how to view the statement.

I understand nothing is certain, but can this best be viewed as a prediction, a (perhaps aspirational) statement of policy, or statement of fact?

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  • Questions asking for predictions are off-topic. It's easy to find out Labour policy on the matter, but I guess you want something other than that? Maybe refine the question so it's based in fact not speculation. (And btw I don't think Jonathan Pie should be taken as an authority, he's a humorist prone to exaggeration and other comic devices, regardless of whether you consider him funny.)
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 9 at 9:23
  • @StuartF ya but I've asked for a characterization of Starmer's statement and have not asked for a prediction of the future. You could however consider directing your concern towards Starmer and remind him that just because he says something is dead does not mean it necessarily is, because he can not predict the future. Your quarrel it seems is with him, not my post, and so don't think that answer prevention is going to help.
    – uhoh
    Commented Jul 9 at 9:32
  • Your three options seem to have significant overlap.Maybe you could clarify what you consider a predition/fact/policy statement.
    – Toffomat
    Commented Jul 9 at 10:13
  • @Toffomat with four well-received answers that already nicely address the question just as it was asked, the question is demonstrably fine. It makes no sense to have new definitions for words each time a question is asked, the whole idea of having a shared language is that we don't need to preface each sentence with our one-time-use definitions of words. If you are uncomfortable with how the answer posts use their words, you can address each answer author and challenge their definitions. Once you get some more experience asking SE questions you'll begin to see that we don't need to do it.
    – uhoh
    Commented Jul 9 at 11:54
  • @Toffomat And please revisit what the phrase "best viewed as" actually means. It certainly does not require exclusive categories. I can hold of an article of clothing and ask if it's best descried as a jacket or a coat - that's fine even if there is overlap between those two descriptions. They don't have to be exclusive.
    – uhoh
    Commented Jul 9 at 11:59

4 Answers 4

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It’s a statement of policy, and therefore a statement of fact, since the new government has an enormous majority and so will certainly last for a minimum of four years and be able to implement all of its policies unless there is very substantial backbench Labour opposition to them (which obviously won’t be the case for scrapping one of the Conservatives’ dafter ideas), especially policies whose implementation simply requires the government to do nothing.

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  • "requires the government to do nothing" - not quite; there is the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 to repeal. While Labour could choose to leave it on the statute books, it's a rather dangerous piece of legislation which almost certainly breaches international law (this is even tacitly acknowledged at Section 1(4)) and undermines the judiciary by forcing courts, under Section 2(1), to consider Rwanda to be "safe" regardless of whether it is or not.
    – JBentley
    Commented Jul 10 at 11:51
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HM Government has, by definition, access to all the levers of power. Where legislation grants the government particular powers without requiring them to use those powers, then the government generally has the right not to use those powers.

So in this case, although the government could continue to put people in the Rwanda scheme, it could also decline to do so. Therefore, if the Prime Minister says that his government won't use this scheme, then it seems highly likely that that is indeed the case.

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  • I guess I could ask this serately, but I'm inferring from this answer that unlike in the US, there's no Administrative Procedure Act that a judge could decide HM Government didn't follow in e.g. providing a justification why it's not doing this anymore. (Yeah, the erosion of the 'political question' doctrine via that Act is somewhat amusing, in the US case. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)
    – time takes its toll
    Commented Jul 10 at 13:58
  • @gottrolledtoomuchthisweek As far as I understand it, the actions of ministers are subject to judicial review - but it's typically on the issue of whether they've exceeded their powers under the law, not on the reasoning behind any policy that led to the actions.
    – Steve Melnikoff
    Commented Jul 10 at 15:05
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After reading the full BBC article, it seems the program was only getting underway, with the first batch of people being readied to be deported but no deportation to Rwanda happened so far. The previous government already released almost all candidates on bail, the current government stated that the remaining two people will be released on bail shortly.

So this sounds like a policy that was only about to get started will be killed off before it goes into action. Not a single person will be deported to Rwanda.

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    @uhoh Not deporting people means the scheme is dead in practice right now and will be under the current goverment. Actually undoing the laws that created it takes a lot more work and is not something Starmer can do in a few days but he also doesn't need to do it that quickly.
    – quarague
    Commented Jul 7 at 9:08
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    @uhoh any policy could be cancelled by one government and revived by the next (or vice versa), so it’s impossible to say that this won’t be back in a few years, but it’s unlikely the new government will last only weeks. They have a solid majority, no elections for about 5 years, no obvious leadership wars inside the party, and I think with the Truss lettuce precedent fresh in everybody’s minds, they are unlikely to make moves so drastic that the markets will push them out. Of course anything can change if a sudden acute crisis happens, but no one has a crystal ball here.
    – jcaron
    Commented Jul 7 at 14:15
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    @uhoh even if the involved mechanisms and laws (“Rwanda is safe” by law) were repealed (which they probably are going to be, but I don’t think there’s any urgency in that), the next Parliament could reinstate them. It may take a little bit longer, but if that’s their wish, Parliament is sovereign.
    – jcaron
    Commented Jul 7 at 14:19
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    @jcaron I would argue there is urgency in repealing the Act, because its scope goes beyond just the Rwanda scheme. For example, someone seeking political asylum in the UK from Rwanda can currently be deported back home with the courts unable to consider whether it would be safe to do so. That's entirely separate from the scheme which aims to deport people generally (not just those arriving from Rwanda). In this sense, the idea that the scheme is "dead in practice" isn't correct; it will continue to have ongoing affects until the Act is repealed.
    – JBentley
    Commented Jul 10 at 12:00
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    Also the claim in the answer that "not a single person will be deported to Rwanda" isn't correct either, for the same reason as my comment above. While the government can choose not to implement the general deportation scheme, until the Act is repealed asylum seekers can still have their applications refused by the Home Office and be unable to appeal the decision on the basis of Rwanda's safety.
    – JBentley
    Commented Jul 10 at 12:05
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It's certainly a "statement of policy" - it is Labour's policy. It is/was in the Labour manifesto 2024 and this is not the first time Starmer or indeed any Labour representative has said that or something along those lines.

Labour manifesto 2024:

  • Strong foundations: "[new Border Security Command] will be funded by ending the wasteful Migration and Economic Development partnership with Rwanda."
  • Labour's fiscal plan: "scrap the Rwanda scheme" (in context of above)

Guardian newspaper, May 2024:

Labour will not allow any deportation flights to take off for Rwanda from the moment it wins an election, Keir Starmer has said.

After a speech in which he announced his plans to tackle illegal immigration, Starmer committed to scrapping the Rwanda scheme “absolutely, flights and all”.

Starmer told Sky News: “There will be no flights scheduled or taking off after the general election if Labour wins that general election.”

And a number of occasions beforehand, going back to at least October 2023. Daily Telegraph:

Sir Keir Starmer has declared that he would scrap the Rwanda border plan even if it succeeded in slashing small boat arrivals.

Whether it's a "statement of fact" seems like a question of time and whether it's a "prediction" seems a question of semantics: it is something they intend and if things go as they wish then it will happen.

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