While the Prime Minister received a boost after last week’s tax-cutting measures, it is the failure to tackle migration which poses “an existential threat for the Tory party”.
As net migration hit 745,000 last year, one MP said eight in 10 of the voters he speaks with demand to know what is being done.
With time running out before the general election, Tories are becoming “completely disillusioned” by the lack of progress.
Ex-Brexit minister David Jones said: “These figures are extremely worrying. This is a large British city arriving in the country every year, without the infrastructure to accommodate it.”
He added that it will be a “very big problem” if the Government does not stop the small boat crossings. It suffered a setback earlier this month when the courts ruled its Rwanda plan was illegal.
PM Rishi Sunak said: “I need to finish the job and that means getting the Rwanda deal up and running. I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to get that scheme operational.” Work is underway on a new framework to make the proposals successful.
Former Chief Secretary to the Treasury Sir Simon Clarke insisted he must ensure flights to Rwanda take off, despite the Supreme Court defeat.
He said: “It’s impossible to overstate how important it is that the Government brings forward legislation that will actually resolve this situation – and not a compromise based on fear of what may happen in the House of Lords.”
Former Business Secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “The coalition of voters we had in 2019 voted for us in part because we would control legal and stop illegal migration.
“At the moment we’re not doing either. It is really, really important the Government gets to grips with this.”
Mr Sunak defended the current position, telling a Sunday newspaper that he had already taken action in other areas to curb migration. He said: “There is obviously a lot more to do and that’s why we need to take action. I announced previously
significant tightening up on the number of dependants that students can bring, which has seen a very striking rise over the past year or two.
READ MORE: Rishi Sunak’s rushed law won’t get Rwanda flights to take off
“This represents the single biggest measure of restriction on legal migration that anyone’s announced in years.
“That should give people a sense of my determination to bring these numbers down.”
He added: “ I’ve come into this job, I’ve had it for a year and I’ve already got the numbers down by a third.
“So I think people can trust me when I say I’m going to do something, that I’m going to deliver.”
Exclusive polling by WeThink shows that while people welcomed last week’s tax cuts – with 48 per cent in favour and 21 per cent against – they do not think the Government will succeed in sending asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing before the election.
Of more than 1,100 adults asked, fewer than one in five (18 per cent) think the plan will become reality before polling day, compared with 57 per cent who think it will not.
New Home Secretary James Cleverly has fuelled anxiety on the Right of the party by saying the Rwanda scheme should not be seen as the “be all
and end all,” insisting that the “mission is to stop the boats”.
A backbench Conservative said: “There is no way to tackle small boats and illegal migration without a deterrent – and Rwanda is our deterrent.
“It’s pretty concerning he’s making those comments.”
Former Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns said: “If I knock 100 doors, immigration will be raised by at least 80 of them. Stopping the boats is essential.
“It is compassionate and fair. We must break the cycle of gangs exploiting some of the most vulnerable people.”
A Conservative MP said the Prime Minister “knew immigration was a massive problem” but has “chosen to do virtually nothing about it,” adding: “With 2019 Tory voters, immigration is the number one issue. As a party we’re now drifting towards an extinction level event.”
And an MP representing a former Labour Red Wall seat said: “If the Govern-ment hasn’t realised that its multiple by-election defeats and its local government results are somehow connected with all of this, I really don’t know what they must be thinking. It’s just unbelievable.
“This issue has really rocked a lot of people’s confidence.
“This is now an existential threat for the Conservative party and many MPs are completely disillusioned.”
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Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski said stopping the boats is “critical” for the party’s election chances.
He claimed that “privileged elites in London” were “cushioned” from the impact of immigration “by their private wealth, their private healthcare, their private schools”.
Prominent Red Wall MP Jonathan Gullis said drastic steps were needed.
He said: “The Prime Minister must take serious action, by disapplying the Human Rights Act and withdrawing from
the European Convention on Human Rights in order to get planes off the ground to Rwanda as soon as possible.”
A Government source insis-ted sending illegal migrants to Rwanda remained a priority, saying: “It’s a huge part of our plan. There is no change there.”
A Home Office source said that “with small boat arrivals down a third” the Home Secretary is “very focused on the PM’s mission to stop the boats, and control and bring down legal migration”.
The source said Mr Cleverly will “stay resolutely focused on doing something about it”.
Fears that people will turn to fringe parties if the Conser-vatives fail to address concerns about immigration have been stoked by the success of the hard-Right Geert Wilders in last week’s Dutch election.
Conservative MP Tom Hunt said: “What has happened in the Netherlands is something we should all take notice of.
“If mainstream parties don’t listen to and respond to voters’ concerns on immigration, this is what can happen.” Even before the Dutch result, there was concern in Tory ranks that Reform UK – the successor to the Brexit Party – could take crucial votes from the Tories in key seats.
Sir Jacob said while the UK’s first-past-the-post system may mean Reform will not win seats, “they can wound so the Conservatives need to be very conscious of that”.
The success of Wilders – who become notorious as a result of his statements about Islam – came in the same week that the biggest riots in Dublin in recent decades broke out.
The head of the Irish police blamed the unrest on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-Right ideology”. The violence followed the injury of a school care assistant and three children in a knife attack.
The police say that “hateful assumptions” were made about the incident. This is thought to refer to claims the attacker was a foreign national.
The BBC said that sources indicated the suspect is “an Irish citizen who has lived in the country for 20 years”.
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