The Rwanda deportations
=======================

The Rwanda deportations are the British policy of removing asylum seekers to Rwanda for resettlement, which John Kiriakou used in July 2023 as his evidence for including the United Kingdom among Europe's entrenched right-wing governments.

The classification

Having listed Poland and Hungary, Kiriakou added Britain with a qualifier, "in the UK, let's be honest", and then gave his reason. "When they're scooping up refugees off the streets and then putting them on planes and sending them to Rwanda for resettlement, I mean that's a right-wing extremist policy and it's probably illegal."

His interviewer agreed that it probably was, and Kiriakou did not soften the assessment.

Where it sits in his argument

The remark closes a sequence in which Kiriakou had walked through the European elections of 2023, Italy's prime minister, the polling of the French far right, and the Greek neo-Nazi seats, which he treated as the most disturbing of the three.

His summary of the resulting political menu was that most of Western Europe now chooses between "a right-wing government, a far right-wing government, or an extreme right-wing government." Britain's asylum policy was, in that frame, not an aberration but a data point.

See also

- The Greek neo-Nazi seats
- The Israeli Electorate Shift
