RISHI Sunak held crunch talks with Tory rebels this morning ahead of a make-or-break vote on his Rwanda deal.
The PM urged right wing MPs to back his plan in the Commons tonight or risk meltdown at the heart of government.
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Over breakfast in No10 Mr Sunak told hardliners that his emergency Rwanda Bill WILL get flights off the tarmac.
And in his first major intervention since resigning as Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace urged colleagues to back to the Bill rather than “wreck” the government.
The plan is on a knife-edge after right-wing Tories gave it the thumbs down yesterday.
A “Star Chamber” of lawyers acting for hardline MPs said the legislation was a “partial and incomplete solution” to stopping future removals being thwarted in the courts.
This morning new Illegal migration minister Michael Tomlinson insisted he was “very much in listening mode” as he refused to call critics troublemakers.
He told Sky News: “They’re not pesky rebels. They are respected colleagues who I have worked with.
“I knew the desire of colleagues right across the breadth of our broad church in the parliamentary party. What do they want? They want this Bill to work.
“The way I’m going to help to persuade them to support the Bill and to support us as we pass the Bill through Parliament is to help show that the Bill is actually going to work, because that’s what we all want.”
Mr Tomlinson added: We all want this legislation to work. And that is what I’m determined to do.”
Last night Downing Street hit back at critics by publishing their legal advice which makes clear breaking international law would be “alien to the UK’s constitutional tradition of liberty and justice”.
And writing in The Telegraph, Mr Wallace said: “Before anyone in my party thinks the solution to this… is to wreck the government, perhaps we should calmly state that we are heading in the right direction and making progress.
“Yes, we lost before the courts, but just like any government before us, we have addressed the issues and I am confident that, as long as Labour doesn’t use the unelected House of Lords to derail the scheme, there is a good chance the return programme will progress.”
Five Conservative caucuses on the right of the party demanded the PM hardens up the Bill ahead of the first Commons showdown tonight.
Downing Street has so far been adamant any toughening would see Rwanda pull out of the flagship removal scheme and spell curtains for the plan.
The Star Chamber gave its verdict at a meeting of like minded Tory factions this afternoon: the European Research Group, the Common Sense Group, the New Conservatives, the Northern Research Group and the Conservative Growth Group.
Dubbed the “Five Families”, they have enough members to kill Mr Sunak’s Rwanda Bill in the Commons tonight when the legislation has its “second reading”.
The last time a government was defeated at second reading – where MPs vote on the principle of the proposals – was in 1986, and a repeat would spark a crisis for the PM.
Mr Sunak needs to stop 29 MPs rebelling, or 53 abstaining, as that would torpedo the plan.
