French immigration bill defeated

The French government's immigration reform plan suffered a setback on Monday night after a cross-party coalition threw out proposals backed by President Emmanuel Macron, voting 270-265 to reject them without even a debate.

Though he won a second presidential term earlier this year, Macron's Renaissance party lost its majority in the national assembly shortly afterward in the general election.

And since then, he has struggled to get legislation through.

Moderates and extremists on both the right and left joined forces to reject the bill, which the government had said would help with the integration of migrants, while also controlling immigration better.

The bill is a watered-down version of a stricter draft proposed by the upper chamber, the rightwing dominated Senate, which also included measures restricting access to healthcare and benefits. Left-wingers say the measures are too harsh, and those on the right say they are not harsh enough.

Clemence Guette of the far-left La France Insoumise party called the bill "xenophobic chatter", with her party saying all irregular migrants should be given an unconditional right to stay and work in France.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party, celebrated its failure, saying this had "protected the French from a migratory tidal wave".

She said she would table a new bill that would focus on "keeping irregular migrants in check" and "forcing irregular migrants to leave the country".

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who was a vocal backer of the legislation, offered his resignation following the surprise defeat, but Macron told him to stay in office and find a new way of getting the bill — which is seen as one of the main legislative planks of his second presidential term — passed.

"It feels like the end of the road for his law and therefore for him," hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said about Darmanin.

But Employment Minister Olivier Dussopt criticized the decision, saying "many MPs who have been calling for a debate on immigration for months and months have just denied themselves the debate".

Across the English Channel in London, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was also facing a major challenge to his authority over immigration policy.

On Tuesday, the latest rewritten version of his plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda was due to go before Parliament, with previous bills having repeatedly been thrown out by the courts on human rights grounds.

It is widely expected that almost all opposition members of Parliament would vote against the latest version, meaning Sunak would need solid support from his own Conservative members, but a group of hard-line right-wingers has criticized the legislation, saying it is not tough enough.