The Rwanda Bill should become law today – and the government is ready for when it does. That was Rishi Sunak’s message at a No. 10 press conference this morning, ahead of what could be an all-night showdown of parliamentary ping-pong. The House of Lords last week mounted a tougher-than-expected resistance to Sunak’s flagship legislation, with frustrated Tory MPs aiming to overrule peers on the last outstanding amendments later today.

As well as keeping the heat on Labour and the Lords, Sunak’s press conference was intended to look ahead to what happens after the legislation becomes law. He rattled off the interdepartmental work done since the Supreme Court’s decision in November – ‘training caseworkers, building detention capacity, getting the judiciary and the court rooms ready, training escorts, getting charter planes booked, getting an airfield ready, getting the guidance changed, working with the Rwandans.’ Some 150 judges are lined up to deal with deportation claims with an airfield now on standby and commercial charter plans booked for deportation.

Yet in stressing how much work has gone into the scheme, the Prime Minister acknowledged the scale of the challenge still ahead. He spoke several times of the ‘enormously complex operation’ facing Border Force, calling it ‘one of the most complex operational endeavours ever for the Home Office’. Given the well-documented challenges facing that particular department, it was no perhaps surprise that Sunak declined to give a specific flight for dates. Ministers are keen to concede as few hostages to fortune as possible, conscious of the legal challenges that they will likely face on every individual asylum claim.

Complicating Sunak’s goal of ‘stopping the boats’ is the Hydra-like aspect of the migration crisis: just as arrivals from one country are stopped, another suddenly emerges. Sunak spoke proudly of small boat crossings in 2023 being down a third on 2022 figures. But much of that is down to the successful returns deal with Albania.

Now, Sunak says, it is the Vietnamese who are arriving en masse, with the number of small boat arrivals from Vietnam up ten-fold the previous year. He hopes to do a deal with Hanoi’s leaders and, again, work with Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders to stop new arrivals. However, that will take time, a diminishing commodity available to Sunak.

Perhaps the most surprising moment of today’s conference was Sunak’s apparent swipe at his predecessors. Upon coming to office, he said there was a prevailing attitude that stopping the small boats was an insoluble problem. Coming off the back of his PMQs’ jibe at Liz Truss last week, and with the local elections due in ten days’ time, it will be worth watching to see if this marks a significant shift in Sunak’s leadership style.