Sorry, Mark Francois: This isn’t 2019 and Rwanda isn’t Brexit

This week marked the fourth anniversary of the catastrophic 2019 “get Brexit done” general election and whatever horrors have befallen us in the intervening years, one thing has proved rather pleasant: The silence of Mark Francois.

During the Brexit wars, the rotund MP for Rayleigh and Wickford could be relied upon to make any bad situation worse, any stupid notion even more idiotic in his role as a spokesperson for the hilariously named European Research Group (hated Europe, done no research). Few will forget – though many will have tried – how this human luncheon meat statue of Penfold from Danger Mouse clomped his way around the TV studios, burbling vaingloriously about Spartans and star chambers while dispensing gormless bons mot like “my father never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son” and accusing the anti-Brexit CEO of Airbus of being “a German paratrooper in his youth” (said CEO was born in 1958).

Ironically, the moment this lardy Icarus flew too close to the sun came four years ago, when the Tories won their near-landslide victory. “In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. In 2019, the red wall came down,” gloated Francois during an election night appearance on the BBC, leaving Andrew Neil to ask “have you slightly gone mad? Are you hallucinating?” Neil knew what little Mark had yet to grasp – the size of Boris Johnson’s majority now rendered the once-influential ERG (and the DUP, and associated headbangers) impotent. There were reports that when that interview with Neil appeared on screens at Conservative HQ, Francois was jeered and heckled, including a cry of “he can say what the f*** he wants now – we don’t need the ERG any more.”

A satisfying period of silence from Francois then ensued. Until this anniversary week, when (with what must be considerable difficulty) he rose again from a well-stuffed leather armchair the same colour as his own face and inserted himself in the Rwanda debacle. Not, as you might have expected, to offer to fly asylum seekers there himself in a reconditioned Spitfire, but to wake up the sleeping ERG Spartans, star chamber and all, and have them take their place as one of the “five families” of the Tory right.

Francois has spent his life living in the past – specifically, the second world war. It must be a sign of progress that he now yearns for the days when he was almost as important as he thinks he is; that dizzy spell between the elections of 2017 and 2019.

But this is not then and Rwanda isn’t Brexit. Britain is no longer a single-issue country. The cost of living, our crumbling services and the doom-soaked economy are what concern voters most, not one small part of a wider migration policy that at best will deal (cruelly) with a couple of hundred asylum seekers. The notion that sudden success in sending a few unfortunates off to Kigali will make voters forget about 14 wasted years of Tory rule when it comes to the general election is risible. And because voters loathe division, even more Conservative psychodrama is likely to result in even more Conservative losses whenever Sunak dares to go to the country.

Even the assorted lemmings of the “five families” (TBF, Boris Johnson’s had more) recognised this, belatedly. So instead of tormenting the PM as some of them did to Theresa May, these ruthless rebels bared their teeth, sharpened their knives and promised to let Rishi Sunak do whatever he wanted, at least until everyone had enjoyed a jolly nice Christmas.

And Mark Francois was put back in his box. Please, this time let him stay there.