RISHI Sunak will battle head-to-head with Sir Keir Starmer today after snatching the Rwanda vote amid threats of a Tory New Year's uprising.
At PMQs Mr Sunak will be pressed on his plans to control Tory rebels who say they're primed to "kill the Rwanda Bill" when it returns to the Commons in January.
Last night more than two dozen right-wingers refused to back the PM’s emergency deportation legislation by abstaining — kicking the battle to toughen it up into the New Year.
After a day of drama and haggling — including a breakfast summit in No10 — not a single Tory rebel voted against the bill.
A total of 313 MPs voted for the bill and 269 voted against — a majority of 44.
But the revolt ringleaders warned the stay of execution might only be temporary.
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This morning a defiant James Cleverly insisted it was "absolutely wrong" that a lot of Tories don't want the Rwanda Bill to work.
The Home Secretary told Sky News: "We of course are more than willing to listen to good faith amendments that are designed to make the Bill better, keep it within the bounds of international law, keep it in a state that the Rwandans are happy to work with.
"The Conservative Party is united on the desire to get this right and to stop the boats.
"The Labour Party's position is to try and wreck it."
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Mr Cleverly added that to "kill the Bill" wouldn't be "the best way" for right wing rebels to act over concerns the legislation is too weak.
He said: "I will talk to (rebels), of course, to understand their thinking on this and try to harvest their ideas to make things better.
"But I can't see if someone's got a concern that the Bill might not be as strong as they would like, killing the Bill doesn't strike me as the best way of doing that, because if the Bill isn't on the statute books it can't possibly succeed."
Last night, a Tory rebel on the right of the party put the Prime Minister on notice.
They said: “This bill has been allowed to live another day.
“But without amendments it will be killed next month.
“It’s now up to the Government to decide what it wants to do.”
The right-wing rebels are an alliance of five different Tory groups, dubbed the “Five Families”.
Leader Mark Francois said: “We have decided collectively that we cannot support the bill because of its many omissions.”
For large parts of yesterday, the bill had looked to be in jeo- pardy — with white knuckles in Downing Street.
In a bizarre twist, the climate change minister Graham Stuart was flown back from the Cop28 summit in Dubai just to vote.
Rebels were angry with the Government’s handling of their concerns.
At one stage, it was briefed they would face consequences if they voted against the bill.
This led to right-wing big beast Sir Bill Cash angrily confronting chief whip Simon Hart for making the veiled threat to strip wavering MPs of the whip.
Last night, Mr Hart was in the crosshairs as rebel sources described his engagement with them as “woeful”.
The PM personally led a day of ferocious lobbying that began with a dawn breakfast meeting of the New Conservatives caucus.
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Over bacon butties the PM implored the hardliners to back the bill and dangled the prospect of “tightening it up” in the New Year.
He followed it up with a last-ditch appeal stressing: “To stop the boats, we need to back this bill.”
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