Rishi Sunak refused to guarantee that a deportation flight would take off to Rwanda by the next election despite Conservative warnings failure to do so could cost him his job.
The Prime Minister is desperately trying to reconfigure the flagship policy to “stop the boats” in the Channel after it was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.
He promised emergency legislation to end the “merry-go-round” of legal challenges that have hampered the plan.
But Mr Sunak is resisting pressure from the Tory right, led by his angry former home secretary Suella Braverman, to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
He vowed that he would introduce emergency laws to stop “systemic challenges” in the domestic courts and promised that he “will not allow a foreign court to block these flights”.
But amid questions over the strength of the Prime Minister’s planned legislation, former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland told i that it “would still be challenged, so it’s now an operational question for the Government rather than one of law”.
“There will inevitably be a court challenge,” he added, while suggesting Mr Sunak should now reconfigure his asylum policy away from the Rwanda plan.
“This is the risk of elevating Rwanda to being the be all and end all of immigration policy and this has now come home to roost,” Sir Robert said.
It came as Natalie Elphicke, the MP for Dover on the front line of the Channel crisis, said the court’s ruling meant the policy was “effectively at an end”.
“No planes will be leaving and we now need to move forward,” she said.
Mr Sunak’s tough language contrasted with the tone of new Home Secretary James Cleverly, who said it would not be “necessary” to leave the ECHR to save the policy.
But the Prime Minister refused at least twice in a Downing Street press conference to guarantee a flight taking off by the next election – January 2025 at the latest – saying only that ministers were “working extremely hard to make sure that we can get a plane off as planned in the spring”.
It will fuel Tory fears that the Rwanda policy is in disarray and could cost the party the election.
One MP told i: “”This Government doesn’t have the guts to scrap the ECHR.
“That means we lose voters in the ‘Red Wall‘.
“It’s going to spell out an election wipeout if we can’t turn it around.”
Ms Braverman, who until being sacked on Monday was in charge of the policy, demanded that Mr Sunak bring in laws to block off the ECHR, Human Rights Act and other routes of legal challenge.
“We must legislate or admit defeat,” she said.
Former prime minister Boris Johnson also called for a change in the law to designate Rwanda a “safe” country, claiming there was “only one way to end the legal blockade” on the deportation plan.
Trussite former Cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke meanwhile suggested Mr Sunak’s leadership was under threat, telling Sky News: “This is now an existential challenge for this Government.”
“It is a confidence issue in his judgement as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party.”
A Tory insider said the Rwanda plan was in “tatters” and that now the Government “has to call an election” in spring.
Another insider added: “What are they going to do? Just sit back and watch the party tear itself apart for the next year. They have to deliver”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer demanded an apology to the nation from Mr Sunak for wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash on the “ridiculous, pathetic spectacle”.
A senior Government source said on the legal commitments outlined by Mr Sunak: “The treaty together with legislation will provide the legal certainty that the court has demanded in both domestic and international law – this will make clear to our courts that the risks of refoulement [deportation of asylum seekers to dangerous home countries] laid out by the Supreme Court are protected against in law”.
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