Delhi has succeeded where the courts and opposition have failed by forcing the Coalition into the open over its boat policy

Whatever the minister says, he didn’t stop this boat. Scott Morrison was not in great shape when he faced the press this afternoon to admit – after Guardian Australia broke the story – that the Tamils floating round the Indian Ocean on a Customs vessel for the last three weeks are to be brought ashore.

He was white as a sheet. His rhetoric was especially solemn. The “broad menu of measures” he mentioned once or twice during his 20 minutes confrontation with the press didn’t include humble pie.

You have to pity the poor bugger: he’s the minister for immigration and border protection and he can’t tell us where the 157 will be landed and where they will be held. The Guardian had already told him: Cocos Island and Curtin detention centre. He expressed no gratitude.

Never, he insists, has he claimed the Abbott government stopped the boats. Others may have. Not him. He’s only ever claimed to be “getting results”.

Not this time. Through the welter of obfuscation it emerged that India is calling the shots here. The Tamils are to be brought ashore “out of respect” said Morrison “for the way the Indian government wished to conduct the process”.

So it’s been left to India to tell us to behave ourselves – not the high court or the opposition or those Australians appalled by us imprisoning asylum seekers for weeks on the high seas. But India.

The deal is that, once ashore, the 157 will be vetted by Indian officials. India will take the Indians. Delhi has promised only to “consider” the fate of the rest. It’s not much of a promise. All will remain in Australia until the vetting is done.

And after that? Morrison batted away suggestions that Papua New Guinea is now refusing to take any more of these people. He insists all the old “measures” are still available to break the smuggling trade and prevent asylum seekers arriving here by water.

As for this boatload: “They will not be resettled in Australia.”

It was a solo performance. The generalissimo usually produced for these events was absent. Perhaps that encouraged the minister to adopt the demeanour of a first world war commander who had just suffered a particularly embarrassing defeat.

A long gaze. A bulldog jaw. A full restatement of war aims. Solemn warnings. Undiminished resolution. Clear plans. Blunt talk. And a dignified retreat through the double doors to a world of “operational matters” he never has to explain.