Why are Tory MPs prioritising illegal migrants over the British people? asks RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

An old friend of mine was enthusing about her next holiday in the New Year. She’s just booked herself a Dian Fossey-style Gorillas In The Mist safari… in Rwanda.

There are currently 66 companies offering all-inclusive gorilla trekking breaks in Rwanda.

According to the travelandleisure.com website: ‘It is one of Africa’s great safari destinations. Rwanda is simply one of the best destinations for luxury honeymoons, family holidays or friends taking that last, big bucket list trip.’

Five-star hotels, luxury suites with private plunge pools, gym and spa facilities and artisan farm-to-table African cuisine.

Sounds divine, doesn’t it darlink? What’s not to like? It’s also considered one of the safest countries on the African continent, provided you steer clear of the Burundi border, where things can get a bit grumpy.

Tourists from Europe, the UK and the U.S. are happy to pay anything up to five grand a pop for a seven-day Rwandan adventure.

In the face of opposition from this smug, virtue-signalling mob, Rishi Sunak (pictured) has watered down his Illegal Immigration Bill to the point of it being unworkable

Rishi Sunak during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday

So if it’s safe for an Englishwoman of A Certain Age; for Howard and Hilda from Hemel Hempstead, and Hank and Hillary from Hot Springs, Arkansas; why is it unsafe for Kurdish gangsters and suspected Islamist terrorists who have entered Britain illegally?

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak says his Rwanda law WILL get deportation flights going as he holds hastily arranged No10 press conference after bombshell resignation of immigration minister – but backs off threat to call election if he loses crunch vote next week 

That’s the question I’d like to put to the rebellious rump of so-called ‘One Nation’ Tory MPs determined to scupper the Government’s plans to deport small-boat migrants to Rwanda for processing?

The same question should also be addressed to Labour MPs, Supreme Court judges and the entire taxpayer-funded cabal of parasitical yuman rites lawyers.

In the face of opposition from this smug, virtue-signalling mob, Rishi Sunak has watered down his Illegal Immigration Bill to the point of it being unworkable.

He’s bottled out of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, which means his Rwanda plan is still open to individual, legally aided challenge and is inevitably doomed to failure.

Sunak’s cowardice has prompted the resignation of mild- mannered Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, previously considered one of his loyalists, and a bucket-load of well-deserved ordure from the former Home Secretary Sue Ellen Braverman.

We expect self-serving obstructionism over immigration from Labour, led by a complete and utter lawyer, and a Left-wing legal system getting fat on taxpayer-funded yuman rites cases.

But why the hell are Conservative MPs pressing the self-destruct button? They were all elected in 2019 on a Get Brexit Done manifesto which promised to ‘take back control’ — especially of illegal and legal immigration. As some of us have been pointing out for donkey’s years, that’s never going to happen while Britain remains under the yoke of European courts.

Migrants packed tightly onto a small inflatable boat bail water out as they attempt to cross the English Channel on September 7 2020, off the coast of Dover

So why won’t Sunak take the so-called ‘nuclear option’ and withdraw altogether from the ECHR? Simple, despite his alleged (though virtually invisible) support for Vote Leave, he’s a Blairite technocrat from the tip of his contrived New Labour speech patterns to his half-mast Mothercare trouser cuffs.

Plus, despite representing a Northern constituency, he’s much more comfortable with the ‘liberal’ Home Counties Tories in the One Nation gang than voters in the former Red Wall.

And the truth is that the Wets hold the people who voted them into office with a thumping majority in undisguised contempt.

They are far happier sucking up to Eurocrats in the lobster supper bistros of Brussels than slumming it over a pint of Newcastle Brown in the snooker room of a North-Eastern working men’s social club. Most of them would be equally happy on the Labour or Lib Dem benches.

Why are they so keen on upholding judge-made European law? After all, the migrants they are defending have themselves broken the law several times over, by ripping up their passports and entering Britain illegally, having paid a small fortune to organised criminal people-smugglers.

They are also in breach of the Dublin Regulation, which specifies that they must settle in the first ‘safe’ country in which they arrive. Why should these migrants’ ‘rights’ override the rights of the British people to have secure borders and decide on who is allowed to settle here?

The truth is that, as Sue Ellen said this week in her scathing resignation statement, the Tories are on the brink of well-deserved obliteration. That’s not the fault of down-to-earth Red Wall MPs, who were elected on sincere promises to honour the referendum result and the manifesto, but who now face an early bath because of the antics of self-regarding, public school-educated Tory Wets, addicted vainly to their Twitter feeds.

As the Mail asked yesterday: Is there no end to this destructive infighting, which began when Boris was defenestrated and the Posh Boys seized back the party, culminating in the return of Call Me Dave as Foreign Secretary?

Apparently not. Since Sunak and Jeremy Hunt slithered their way, unelected, into high office, the Tories have been transmogrified into a Big State, high-tax party, indistinguishable from Labour and the Lib Dems.

Prominent Brexiteers, from Braverman and Raab to Dorries and Priti Flamingo, have all been purged. Of course, the biggest scalp was Johnson, never forgiven for leading Britain out of the EU.

Whatever his well-documented failings, which he admits, it was madness to remove him over a confected row about prosecco he didn’t drink and birthday cake he didn’t eat.

Sunak’s cowardice has prompted the resignation of mild- mannered Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick (pictured), previously considered one of his loyalists, and a bucket-load of well-deserved ordure from the former Home Secretary Sue Ellen Braverman

This week, while the Conservative Party was imploding, the man who led them to an 80-seat majority was being pilloried at the Covid Inquiry by a preening brief high on his own importance. This wasn’t an inquiry, it was a prosecution.

But even though he didn’t blow the bloody doors off, Boris fought his corner with growing confidence and apparent honesty.

I still believe that if he was to be shown the red card, it should have been by the electorate, not a half-arsed gunpowder plot by resentful, ambitious and self-regarding Tory MPs. I also think that if he hadn’t been strung up by his own party, he stood an outside chance of leading the Conservatives to victory next time round, albeit with a reduced majority.

Furthermore, I’m sure he would have eventually found a way to defy the courts over immigration, just as he did with Brexit.

But for now we are lumbered with a system which prioritises illegal migrants over the British people. Even if Rishi’s Bill passes in the Commons it will struggle to get through the Lords, who are answerable to nobody.

And if it does squeeze past all attempts at sabotage and the first plane to Kigali takes off this side of the election, UK taxpayers will still have to pay the accommodation, legal and retraining costs of migrants sent to Rwanda — for the next five years!

It would be cheaper to send them on safari.

The Seventies is not a decade we usually look back on through rose-tinted spex. But this week we seemed to be heading back to the future.

Cash is making a comeback, as families seek economies. Proper meals such as bangers and mash and fish ‘n’ chips are on the menu once more. Meanwhile, Deputy PM Oliver Dowden is advising us to stock up on batteries and candles as Net Zero and foreign hackers threaten electricity supplies.

The last time that happened was during the Three-Day Week under Grocer Heath, when I remember typing stories by candlelight. We’ve even got our own Three-Day Week now, thanks to the WFH cult. The miners aren’t on strike these days, because there aren’t any miners left. But the doctors and railway workers have formed a 1970s TUC tribute act.

And at this time of year, Merry Christmas Everybody, recorded by Slade in 1973, is on the wireless every five minutes. It’s Deja Vu All Over Again.

I wonder if I can still squeeze into my loon pants…

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