When Prince Charles travels to East Africa next week, he is concerned that the debate over Rwanda’s refugee proposal will overshadow his Commonwealth message, after he called Priti Patel’s migrant policy “appalling.”
When leaders gather in Kigali for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the Prince of Wales will represent the Queen.
It will be his first such gathering since being named the Commonwealth’s future head of state in April 2018.
However, the prince is concerned that the controversy over the Government’s Rwanda policy, which aims to send some migrants who cross the Channel on a one-way ticket to the African country, may overshadow his visit.
He is alleged to have remarked last week, risking a huge spat with No 10, that handing Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was “appalling.”
It was ‘very difficult,’ a source told The Telegraph, to fly to Rwands for the meeting when the policy was being debated.
Clarence House is aware that questions about the plan may be raised during private bilateral discussions, and has not ruled out bringing it up during the trip.
Tensions between the two men have been reported, echoing accounts of the Queen’s strained relationship with Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister.
It comes as Priti Patel promised this week that Rwanda flights will begin in weeks, despite Cabinet ministers urging her to disregard Strasbourg judges who halted the plans at the last minute.
On the same day that the flight plans were thwarted, Charles hosted an engagement at Buckingham Palace honoring the Commonwealth’s contribution to the United Kingdom.
The founding head of Operation Black Vote, Lord Woolley of Woodford, said it was “quite evident” that the Prince of Wales cared about the Commonwealth and that he would want the discourse to be “centred around that.”
He did agree, though, that “others have other agendas.”
After the Home Secretary gave a forceful statement to MPs saying that the government is still ‘committed’ to the unpopular policy, Conservatives have suggested that the European Court of Human Rights’ views should simply be ignored.
Ms Patel called the European Court of Human Rights’ intervention “surprising” and “disappointing,” as well as criticizing the ruling’s “opaque nature,” but noted that it had not found the plans unconstitutional.
The ‘usual suspects’ and’mobs,’ she insisted, could not be allowed to rule.
The brash position came as Conservatives raged at the ECHR, with one MP suggesting that the UK should now ‘kick these b***ards into touch.’
Any attempt to ignore the ECHR’s directives would almost certainly result in a barrage of legal protests, a backlash in domestic courts, and ramifications at the Council of Europe.
Although Conservatives have suggested reducing the status of judgements in the past, a Home Office source said it was not something they were looking at right now.
Domestic courts, according to lawyers, just ‘take account’ of the ECHR’s views anyway.