The government’s Rwanda policy was unanimously rejected by the audience of the BBC’s Question Time - despite most of them being Tory voters.
Not a single person put their hand up when asked by presenter Fiona Bruce asked who backed the controversial plan.
The damning verdict was delivered on the same day that the Court of Appeal ruled that the policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed was illegal.
Bruce said: “We’re very careful how we select our audiences here and I’m not trying to overstate the importance - this is not a YouGov poll.
“But what I’m seeing here is that even though we have more people who voted Conservative than any other single party here, is there anyone here who supports sending people to Rwanda?”
When no one in the Exeter audience put their hand up, panel member and TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall shouted “good on you.”
Bruce then asked social care minister Helen Whately, who was also on the panel, if she had a response to the audience’s rejection of her government’s signature immigration policy.
She replied: “This is a very hard problem to solve and I think most of us feel that we want to be welcoming people and understand that people have made hard and difficult journeys to try and come to the UK and choose to get into a small boat.”
The results of the straw poll also fly in the face of claims made today by home secretary Suella Braverman when she said the majority of British people back the Rwanda policy.
Rishi Sunak has said the government will appeal against the court’s ruling as he tries to salvage his promise to “stop the boats” carrying migrants across the Channel.
He said: “The policy of this government is very simple, it is this country – and your government – who should decide who comes here, not criminal gangs. And I will do whatever is necessary to make that happen.”