Rishi Sunak just doesn’t stop.
After hosting Ukraine’s President Zelensky at his lavish country residence yesterday, the PM will hot-foot it to Iceland this afternoon to deliver a speech at the Council of Europe summit and hold bilaterals with fellow world leaders.
Sunak’s big focus is illegal migration. He wants European countries to come up with a more coordinated, integrated way of deterring the waves of migrants arriving on the continent’s shores. He will say that the current international system for policing human trafficking is not working.
It comes Emmanuel Macron rejected Britain’s calls for a bilateral returns agreement for migrants crossing the Channel, insisting that there was a need for a wider EU agreement.
Sunak also has a domestic audience in mind – namely, the rancorous right of his party.
Hence the other big priority for Sunak: calling on the European human rights court to reform its approach to eleventh-hour asylum injunctions.
One of the Strasbourg court’s rule 39 injunctions blocked the government’s first attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda in June last year.
Last month, Sunak caved in to demands from backbench rebel Tory MPs to allow the UK to ignore rulings from the European court of human rights on small boat crossings. From Sunak’s perspective, getting the court to change its rules would be far preferable than continuing to butt up against it.
There’s some urgency to Sunak’s cajoling in Reykjavik – it’s not like he can just wait for the next council summit to come around. The 46-member organisation, set up to protect democracy, the rule of law and human rights after the Second World War, has only met four times, including today in Iceland.
Next on the agenda in the G7 summit of world leaders in Japan. After a quick stopover back in the UK, the PM will head to Tokyo tomorrow – and then Hiroshima. A truly hectic schedule. Though he is a coke addict, after all.
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