The Rwanda plan is a cruel policy pursued by a prime minister who knows it will not work

Editorial: As was long suspected, Rishi Sunak never thought the plan would succeed in deterring asylum seekers

Sunak persists with a policy in which he does not believe, presumably because he has made such a totem of it (PA)

It is hard to avoid the conclusion reached by Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, that the documents leaked from Rishi Sunak’s time as chancellor show how “incredibly weak” he is.

Here was a minister who said he believed the Rwanda scheme “deterrent won’t work”, who tried to limit the amount of public money wasted on it and who, when he succeeded to the top job, carried on with the policy. The only plausible explanation is that he was trying to appease the unreasonable wing of his own party, having bought their support in the leadership struggle by putting Suella Braverman in the Home Office.

The result has been predictable. The unappeasable element of the anti-immigration wing of the Conservative Party remains unappeased. The policy itself remains stranded in legislative limbo after the Supreme Court said it was unlawful. And the only progress that has been made in reducing the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats has been achieved by better cooperation with the French authorities, which was the only workable basis for policy in the first place.