Will any European country really adopt Rishi’s Rwanda plan?

As the prime minister visits Vienna to pitch his shabby flagship asylum policy to politically sympathetic EU leaders, Sean O’Grady says surely he has more pressing matters – not least trying to get us an improved Brexit trade deal?

Rishi Sunak discussing his flagship idea for tackling illegal migration with Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer (PA)

It is more than a little pathetic to see a British prime minister touring the capitals of Europe on a quest for approval.

The bizarre Rwanda plan to deport refugees to a “safe” third country – a plan to which Rishi Sunak seems so devoted, it might as well be one of his children – has been blocked by the courts, assailed by the House of Lords, ridiculed by the Labour opposition, and derided by some in his own party as unlawful, immoral, impractical and obscenely expensive.

So instead Sunak takes his spurned little project abroad to show to like-minded leaders in Europe in the hope they will lavish praise and approval on the scheme – starting with the Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer, in glittering Vienna.