Therese Coffey Made A Gaffe For The Ages During The Rwanda Bill Debate

Unfortunately one which will live forever in Hansard, too.
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Therese Coffey made quite the geographical blunder in the Commons when MPs were debating the Safety of Rwanda Bill.

“It’s important to speak in this bill today,” the Tory backbencher began, before immediately launching into an attack on Labour.

Coffey, who was the deputy PM under Liz Truss, said: “I have to say I’m quite astonished by the speech by the shadow home secretary, who can’t even get the name of the country right, talking about the Kigali government.

“Rwanda is a respected country that has recently been president of the Commonwealth.”

Labour’s frontbenchers, Yvette Cooper and Stephen Kinnock, exchanged a wry smile at that – because Kigali is, of course, the capital of Rwanda and the country’s largest city.

It is common practice to refer to a national government by talking about the capital of the country.

And, when Rwanda hosted the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in 2022, leaders were welcomed in... Kigali.

In case you were wondering, Coffey also ended up voting in favour for the government’s controversial plan to deport asylum seekers to the east African country despite not knowing its capital.

Watch the painful clip for yourself here:

You can imagine how well the clip went down on social media, too...

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