Rishi Sunak’s strategic genius

The conservative party MPhas changed Britain profoundly during its 13 years in office. One such change is that it has made the absence of chaos seem like competence and the previously unthinkable seem acceptable. A prime minister should not be a relief because he did not blow up the financial markets within a month, yet Rishi Sunak was just that. Governments with large majorities should not lose votes in the early stages of legislation, yet the fact that the new passed a second reading this week was greeted as a triumph of Tory party management. It is not normal for a British government to suspend human-rights legislation, ignore international law or set Parliament in opposition to the judiciary, yet moderate Tory s cravenly go along with it. Britain needs stability. The Rwanda row underlines that neither Mr Sunak nor the Tories can provide it.The itself is both impractical and unprincipled. Boris Johnson’s government struck an agreement to deport to Rwanda asylum-seekers who arrive in Britain on small boats. Their claims would be heard in the African country; if successful, the claimants would be settled in Rwanda, too. That prospect would, the scheme’s backers say, deter people from illegally crossing the English Channel.