Home Secretary Priti Patel last night defiantly vowed to plough ahead with her Rwanda relocation plan despite a European judge’s extraordinary 11th-hour intervention blocked the first flight from ever leaving the runway.
An out-of-hours European Court of Human Rights judge made the dramatic 11th hour intervention, with the crew of the Boeing 767 told they could not take off from MoD Boscombe Down, Salisbury at 10.30pm as planned.
Ms Patel issued a strongly-worded rebuttal of the Strasbourg justice’s ruling, saying she was disappointed the flight to Kigali would not go ahead as scheduled, but would not be ‘deterred from doing the right thing’.
In a statement released late on Tuesday, the Home Secretary admitted the policy ‘will not be easy to deliver’ but expressed optimism that the Government would be able to overcome left-wing lawyers’ repeated legal challenges.
On Tuesday morning, just seven names remained on the list – which was whittled down from 130 – of those due to be…
