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LONDON — Rishi Sunak won a key House of Commons vote on his contentious Rwanda legislation Tuesday — but with a reduced majority, as Tory disputes threatened to boil over.
The British parliament passed Sunak’s Rwanda Safety Bill by 313 to 269 in an evening vote at an early parliamentary stage, which is usually a formality. However, Conservatives on both sides of the party had criticized the plan in the lead up to the vote, and the legislation still faces a tricky path to becoming law. The margin of victory indicates that several Conservatives opted to abstain, rather than vote for the government.
The embattled U.K. prime minister staked his premiership on the troubled Rwanda plan, which aims to permanently send asylum seekers to the central African nation. No flights have ever successfully taken off and the scheme — first announced in 2022 — was judged illegal by the U.K. Supreme Court last month.
The PM put forward the emergency legislation in an effort to override judges’ concerns. But his party is split on how far he should go to try and make the expensive plan work — with those on the right demanding even tougher legislation, and those on the left warning they will not support anything which breaches international law.
Tuesday night’s ultimately successful vote for the government came after Sunak’s team spent days attempting to convince wary MPs to back them in the vote.
As part of those efforts, Sunak invited around 20 potential rebels to Downing Street for a breakfast Tuesday morning. The previous day, a so-called “star chamber” of legal experts aligned to the Conservative right pronounced their view that Sunak’s legislation does not go far enough in preventing possible legal challenges to the deportation plan.
Those MPs who opted to back Sunak — despite their concerns — will have an opportunity to amend the bill in later votes, which will take place in the new year. Speaking before the vote, right wing Tories indicated that their plan was to abstain in Tuesday’s vote with a view to amending the bill later — and voting it down if they failed to do so.
This developing story is being updated.
