The battle over migrant boats is really a fight for the soul of the Tories

The principal peril facing Rishi Sunak is the fact that, in practice, he presides over a hung Parliament. True, the Prime Minister notionally commands a working majority of 66. In reality, however, the Conservative backbenches are divided by ideology, faction and the proto-campaigns of those vying to succeed him as party leader.

Yesterday, as the Commons debated the Illegal Migration Bill, the flagship legislation of the PM’s “small boats” strategy, he was able to negotiate a truce of sorts with the main group of backbench rebels — but only just, by postponing the moment of reckoning.

Last week, one might have supposed that Sunak had gained full control of his fractious tribe, as he saw off the mutiny over the Windsor Framework on Brexit.

But Sunak has not tamed the Tory beast. Only by promising that he and Home Secretary Suella Braverman would give further consideration to four hardline amendments on migration policy and international human rights law did he convince the rebels, led by Danny Kruger, Simon Clarke and Jonathan Gullis, to hold off for now. As one of told Politico’s Playbook PM: “The Government will either fix this at report stage or the Prime Minister will be taking up a position as emeritus professor of government at Stanford University.”

And that is not all. A smaller but still significant group of more moderate Conservative MPs, led by Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham), is urging Sunak to commit to more “safe and legal” routes for migrants before cracking down on crossings of the Channel.

The PM, in other words, faces a political pincer movement. For a start, Tory MPs know that a general election, in which they will be judged against their extravagant promises on illegal migration, is just around the corner. But this is also a teaser trailer for the seething argument over the future of Conservatism into which the party will be plunged if it loses power.

The fault-line exposed by this week’s debate concerns the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights specifically and, more generally, the relationship between national sovereignty and international obligations. Even in unamended form, says Braverman, the bill is “more than 50 per cent” likely to break human rights law.

The Kruger-Clarke-Gullis group of MPs would like to see yet more restraints imposed upon the ability of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to intervene in the UK’s border management — as the court did in June to block the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Lurking beneath such amendments is the hardening conviction among Tories of the populist Right that the ECHR, though distinct from the European Union, is no less grievous an institutional impediment to the “taking back of control”. Every amendment demanding that UK ministers ignore judges in Strasbourg in particular circumstances whispers of a greater ambition: for the UK to ditch the ECHR altogether.

Unlike Braverman, Sunak does not wish to do this, attempting instead to maintain a precarious balance between tough measures and the requirements of international jurisprudence. “This is a country and a government that does follow the law,” he said yesterday.

It would indeed be extraordinary if the UK were to exit the ECHR — a post-war document drafted in large part by Britons. Specifically, our post-Brexit agreements with the EU, which make frequent reference to the ECHR, would be imperilled. So too would the Good Friday Agreement, which requires the convention to be enforced in Northern Ireland (it is no accident that Sunak does not want a noisy debate on the ECHR before President Biden’s visit to Belfast on or around April 10).

For this country to leave the ECHR would be an act of flagrant ethical secession from the international community; it would send an unambiguous signal to the rest of the world about British identity and make it all but impossible for us to criticise the human rights abuses of other nations.

In February, Sir Bob Neill, Tory chair of the Commons justice committee, said to the Financial Times: “If Conservatives don’t believe in the rule of law, what do we believe in? Are we going to put ourselves in the same company as Russia and Belarus?”

This was and remains a very good question. To an alarming extent, the Tory party is edging ever closer towards a deeply unpleasant answer.