Ireland has just unwittingly revived Rishi’s fortunes

It is not unusual in politics for a measure to be attacked from two opposite fronts at the same time.

Sometimes, for example, a welfare reform is branded too tough by left-wing, pro-claimant campaigners and yet too lenient by right-wing hawks.

But it is very unusual indeed for a measure to be attacked from two opposite fronts at the same time by the same person.

So hats off to Ireland’s deputy PM Micheál Martin for achieving just that with his criticisms of the UK Government’s Rwanda policy. Mr Martin says that the spectre of being removed to the African country is already causing hundreds of UK-based asylum seekers to cross into Ireland in a pre-emptive bid to evade deportation.

The controversial policy is already “impacting on Ireland”, he complained, leaving people fearful of being detained by UK authorities and getting transferred to central Africa. So they are travelling to Northern Ireland and then wandering into the Republic via the land border that Dublin has always insisted should be entirely open and unguarded. “Maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have,” said Martin.

Yet moments later he levied precisely the opposite criticism of the Rwanda scheme, implying it would be entirely ineffective at deterring illegal immigration. “The sort of knee-jerk reaction like the Rwanda policy, in my view, isn’t going to really do anything to deal with the issue,” he said.

Well, which is it then, an irrelevant gimmick or a deterrent so potent as to have already started working just by dint of people knowing it is looming? Cynics will wonder if the truth of the matter could be that Mr Martin starts his consideration of any issue relating to Britain determined to conclude by condemning us, but just hasn’t yet worked out on what grounds on this one.

I suggest we place more store on his initial complaint, based on the actually observed movement of irregular migrants, rather than his secondary and contradictory one, which is just the standard bien-pensant EU line.

After all, French president Emmanuel Macron – our neighbour on the other flank – has just grandly pronounced that the Rwanda plan will prove “totally ineffective”, while also branding it a “betrayal of values”. Sounding a bit rattled, are we, chaps?

Should the UK’s Rwanda policy result in at least some degree of extra deterrence, leading to a notable reduction in illegal arrivals via the cross-Channel dinghies, pro-EU ideologues will go into meltdown. Their entire approach is based on the idea that unilateral action cannot work and that only a continent-wide policy determined by Brussels can conceivably contain illegal migration.

This side of the Channel, even those of us who have long-despaired of Rishi Sunak achieving anything worthwhile might admit that the spectacle of pompous EU-leaders panicking that Rwanda might work is rather cheering.

We may even dare to hope that perhaps it really will, at least to some extent and for a while – until the leftist legal “Blob” finds a way of thwarting it. This could lead to our own struggle with cognitive dissonance, as we attempt to maintain our across-the-board derision towards Sunak while also delighting in him proving continental neighbours wrong.

And let’s be honest, there is no denying that the fellow – cruelly dubbed a “pint-size loser” by Labour’s Angela Rayner – has had a rather good week. He started out by getting stuck into the “sick note culture”, then crushed House of Lords resistance to get the Rwanda measure onto the statute book and then unveiled a much-needed funding uplift for our Armed Forces. Why, the man is starting to look and sound like a Conservative.

The newfound sure-footedness even extended to a jog around St James’s and Green parks with Russ Cook, aka the “hardest geezer” who raised a million pounds for charity by running the length of Africa. And Sunak proved himself both a capable runner and a master of cheery banter in a social media video which documented his trot around the royal parks.

Were I to tell you that he’s a useless “Rishi-washy” and also that he’s just put one over on the Irish and French on illegal immigration then I’d be in danger of sounding as confused as Micheal Martin. And that would never do.