WHAT A CRUEL FARCE

RWANDA FLIGHT GROUNDED. 'IMMORAL' £500K TORY STUNT COLLAPSES AFTER LEGAL CHALLENGES

- BEN GLAZE

THE Tories' Rwanda flight stunt ended in chaos last night after a jet due to take migrants was grounded.

Last-minute legal bids halted the move after a day of protests and fury at No10's cruel policy.

A No10 source confirmed the £500,000 flight, initially carrying just seven asylum seekers, was not going ahead.

FLYING CIRCUS

Last-minute intervention from Euro human rights court stops deportation

SITTING on the apron of a military airbase yesterday this jet sits ready to take its cargo of desperate asylum seekers and dump them 4,000 miles away in Rwanda.

But the £500,000 flight was last night grounded after dramatic late legal bids, protests and fury plunged Boris Johnson's cruel policy into chaos.

Seven migrants were due to be flown to Rwanda after losing appeals in the High Court and Supreme Court yesterday. But two Iraqis were later given an 11th-hour reprieve by the European Court of Human Rights and eventually No10 relented, stopping all from being forced out of the UK.

Moments before take-off a Government source confirmed it would not leave. Leaders of the Church of England, including the archbishops of Canterbury and York had branded the "immoral policy" a move that "should shame us as a nation".

Mr Johnson claimed deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda would help put an end to smugglers sending them across the Channel in unsafe vessels.

But Labour peer Lord Coaker branded the policy "unethical, unworkable and expensive" and said it "flies in the face of British values".