Johnson The Compassionate Waves Away The Vulnerable

Criminal behaviour: the prime minister in Dover

- Tom Peck

A dual launch, then, for the government's latest bit of witless nonsense. In Kent, we had the criminal. In Kigali, the danger to national security.

We'll trawl through the tedious and pointless detail of this new "innovative, migration partnership" between the UK and Rwanda shortly (but we'll point out here that it's not innovative in any way; the UK is the latest in a long line of countries who've tried this ridiculous refugee offshoring crap, and all of them have failed).

But first, we'll take in the artful majesty of it all. There was Johnson, the country's very first officially criminal prime minister, standing by the Kent shoreline talking about his “infinite compassion”, in the exact spot where his government had to be talked out of installing high-powered boat-deterring wave machines, once it had been explained to them that they would capsize said boats and kill the people in them.

And there, in Rwanda, was Priti Patel, standing alongside her Rwandan counterpart, praising the “incredibly warm welcome” she had received, while launching a campaign to frighten desperate people with the threat of sending them there.