How a Rwandan gambit consumed the Conservative Party

THE STORYMP of the modern Conservative Party can be found in Rwanda. In 2007, then in opposition under David Cameron, the party launched “Project Umubano”. Tory s and activists volunteered in impoverished Rwandan villages, where they built schools, taught English or played cricket. Mr Cameron visited Kigali, embraced President Paul Kagame, and talked about aid and climate change. It all showed that the Tories had been “detoxified”.Lord Cameron is still around, as Rishi Sunak’s foreign secretary. So is , now in his 23rd year of repressive rule. And Rwanda transfixes the party more than ever. In 2022 the British government struck a deal to deport asylum-seekers to Kigali. The failure to see a single migrant take off has become a humiliation for Mr Sunak. And the scheme now symbolises a different set of Tory values: an authoritarian approach to border control, a disdain for checks and balances, and the triumph of performativeness over pragmatism.