Consider the aftermath

Dear Prime Minister,

It is with great regret that I am resigning as home secretary. I feel it is necessary to do so because I inadvertently misled the Home Affairs Select Committee over targets for removal of illegal immigrants during their questions on Windrush.
Since appearing before the select committee, I have reviewed the advice I was given on this issue and become aware of information provided to my office which makes mention of targets. I should have been aware of this, and I take full responsibility for the fact that I was not.
The Windrush scandal has rightly shone a light on an important issue for our country. As so often, the instincts of the British people are right. They want people who have a right to live here to be treated fairly and humanely, which has sometimes not been the case. But they also want the government to remove those who don't have the right to be here. I had hoped in coming months to devise a policy that would allow the government to meet both these vital objectives - including bringing forward urgent legislation to ensure the rights of the Windrush generation are protected. The task force is working well, the residence cards are being issued well within the two weeks promised, and the design of the compensation scheme is making good progress.
The Home Office is one of the great offices of state and its job is to keep people safe. It comes with the responsibility to fight terrorism, support and challenge the police and protect people against the abuse, as well as manage migration.
It has been a great privilege to serve as your home secretary. I have seen first-hand the second to none commitment and bravery of our police, fire and intelligence services, they truly are the best in the world and we should rightly be extremely proud of them.
I have been particularly pleased that we were able to set up the first Global Internet Forum for Counter Terrorism which has led the way with encouraging social media sites to go further and faster in taking down radicalising and terrorist material, which plays such a dangerous part in increasing extremism.
Setting out new laws to tackle the scourge of knife crime and acid attacks and helping to steer our young people away from a life of crime and violence by providing them with credible alternatives have been particularly important to me.
Opportunities to work on issues that safeguard the vulnerable, champions women and make a lasting impact on people's lives particularly stand out for me. New policies to fight domestic violence and abuse against women are out to consultation, and will lead this country to taking a new approach. Helping to bring thousands of refugees, including child refugees from both Calais and the Middle East region, and meeting some of the families who fled the terrible situation in Syria and have now been given a chance to rebuild their lives here in the UK in safety and security is something we can be proud of.
It has been an honour to work on a new security treaty with the EU as part of our new partnership going forward and to participate in your Brexit sub-committee helping to ensure that we have the best possible EU deal for our economy, businesses, jobs and people across the UK.
The new Economic Crime Centre that i launched with the first use of unexplained wealth orders will be important to the confidence of London as a financial centre.
I will continue to support the Home Office ministerial team whenever possible on all these important subjects, supporting the government from the back benches and continuing to work hard for my constituents of Hastings and Rye.
Best wishes,
Amber Rudd

Here is the prime minister's response:

Dear Amber,
Thank you for your letter of this evening tendering your resignation as home secretary. I was very sorry to receive it, but understand your reasons for doing so.
When you addressed the House of Commons and the Home Affairs Select Committee last week on the issue of illegal immigration, you answered the questions put to you in good faith. People who have entered the United Kingdom illegally or overstayed here should expect to face the full force of the law and know that they will be removed if they will not leave this country voluntarily. Just as importantly, people who have come here legally and enriched the life of our country should not expect the state unreasonably to challenge their presence here; rather, it should help them prove their right to continue living here and contributing to the life of our nation.
Under your tenure, the Home Office has been working to enforce a firm but fair immigration policy - working to increase the number of illegal migrants we remove, while ensuring that we continue to recognise the huge contribution of everyone who has come to the UK legally, and remain open to the brightest and best from across the globe.
When you spoke in the House of Commons, you said that you had not agreed specific removal targets, but that the Home Office's Immigration Enforcement command had been using local targets for internal performance management. You also said that you were not aware that those operational targets had been set.
I understand why, now that you have had chance to review the advice that you have received on this issue, you have made the decision you have made and taken responsibility for inadvertently misleading the Home Affairs Select Committee.
I am very sorry to see you leaving the Home Office, but you should take great pride in what you have achieved there - working with internet service providers to set up the first Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and take extremist and terrorist content offline; countering the cyber threat to British families and businesses; standing up for the victims of crime, abuse and domestic violence; offering shelter to refugees from Syria and elsewhere; and advancing the cause of equality as minister for women and equalities.
This comes on top of the considerable contribution you have made to Government since 2012 - first as a whip, then as minister and subsequently secretary of state at the department for energy and climate change - as well as the devoted service you have always given, and will continue to give, to your constituents in Hastings and Rye.
As a former home secretary myself, I appreciate the particular demands of that great office of state. You should take great pride in the way you have led the Home Office and its dedicated public servants through a number of serious challenges, including five terrorist incidents and other complex national events. You have done so with great integrity, compassion, and selflessness - notwithstanding the personal and political challenges you have faced during this period.
I know that you have a great contribution still to make to national life, and look forward to seeing you do so.
Yours,
Theresa

Paul Goodman on Con Home

“Amber Rudd seemed slowly to be escaping the worst of her troubles yesterday.  Now she has gone.  Did she come to consider her position too vulnerable, after all?  Has she simply had enough? Or is there some twist to the tale – some as yet undiscovered Home Office document or exchange – that we don’t yet know about?  At the moment, it looks as though the second is the case, but we will doubtless find out more in due course.
So Michael Fallon, Priti Patel, Damian Green and now Rudd have left the Cabinet that Theresa May formed last summer.  That’s a departure rate of almost one of its members every three months – an indication of this Government’s essential fragility.  The Prime Minister will not have wanted to lose a senior former Remainer from her Cabinet who can now cause her Brexit trouble – and perhaps tell recent tales of dealing with both May’s Home Office legacy and her internal management of leaving the EU

I thought the first part of Paul Goodman's article was fine, but I'm not quite so keen on the speculation about who will replace Rudd in the latter part of the piece. Let’s hope May isn’t forced (by ‘quota maths’) to choose someone weak, vulnerable and colourless.

I like Stephen Daisley. He goes on to make some interesting suggestions for revamping the Home Office; do read the whole thing in the Spectator.

The Home Office is not a government department; it’s a nervous breakdown minuted by civil servants. It is too big, too unwieldy, and too overstretched. It is an uber-bureaucracy of overlapping remits and contradictory objectives, at once sclerotic and dementedly populist. Tony Blair recognised this and hived off courts, prisons and probation to the Ministry of Justice. It was a good start but the decade since has proved that more radical restructuring is needed. 

Sometimes it’s vital to know who said what to whom and who knew what when, but I feel that the media is placing far too much emphasis on that aspect of the 'targets' affair in this case.

I prefer to look at the wider picture. In the Conservative press, there is some sympathy for Amber Rudd, in particular with regard to her competence in seeing through the proposals for putting things right for the Windrush generation. On the other hand, the Guardian was at the head of the campaign to depose her. Just imagine what the Home Office would be like under Diane Abbott. Is that really what the Guardian is aiming for?

After the business of the left dismissing the latest racism scandal in the Labour Party as a politically motivated smear, how can Diane Abbott get away with pretending that her crusade-like campaign against the government is any different?  

Let’s hear the BBC’s flagship political experts like Smith, Marr and Humphrys challenge Labour as ‘robustilly’ as they have been doing with the Rudd, May and anyone who ventures to defend them.

Depose the fragile Conservative government and usher in an utterly shambolic and vindictive opposition?  As in the Iraq debacle, this time please let’s consider the aftermath!

Update
Ah! It's Sajid!

Partisan agenda

There was an astonishing interview on the Today Programme just after the eight o’clock news.  In the studio with John Humphrys were Michael Gove and Diane Abbott. If you didn’t hear it, you should listen here. Go on.

The topic was immigration and in particular those contentious targets. You know, the targets that led to a small fleet of innovative “go-home” buses intended to generate a hostile atmosphere for illegal immigrants, who would obviously take one look and immediately flock to the airport in droves or drive to the airport in flocks.

John Humphrys was super-indignant and incredulous that the Home Secretary hadn’t seen the memo and/or didn’t know about the targets, especially after the Guardian had got hold of some damning evidence or other. He was so incensed that he started speaking in that staccato way of his, where each word is enunciated separately as if someone had scattered full-stop-confetti over his head. But Michael Gove wasn’t having any of it. 

“John, John! You’re making yourself an instrument of a highly partisan campaign against a highly effective Home Secretary.” 

Way to go! And it was followed shortly after by:

“John, John, in your desire to maintain the prosecutorial stance in the service of a partisan agenda..”

“You’ve gotta withdraw that!” said John, helplessly. Realising he had to let it go, he said, “I’ll let it go”.

I had almost forgotten that Diane Abbott was there, so quietly and patiently had she been waiting.

All she wanted to do was relate the tragic cases of Windrush grannies who have been herded into deportation camps in droves. (or driven in herds) Humph must have been conscious that he’d better grill the shadow Home Secretary as fiercely as he’d tried to grill the Gover, otherwise, that immaculate impartiality of his, which he had reminded us of moments earlier, might be called into question. 

However, he couldn’t quite raise the same passion with Diane and resorted to telling her to concentrate on the targets rather than describing some non-specific Windrush cases in an emotive fashion. She accused the government of deliberately confusing illegal immigrants with the Windrush generation. Deliberately!  It really was an astonishing interview for oh so many reasons. 

However, the bottom line is, and I’m straying from the astonishing interview now, but I think I need to ask… where can we see some facts? Like, for example, are there any statistics on erroneously deported individuals? What became of them? Can they be compensated? How about the people that were not deported but erroneously disenfranchised and prevented from working, driving and being treated on the NHS. Are there any statistics on these cases, and can they be compensated or is it now too late? 

I think we need some idea of the scale of the problem rather than hearing Diane Abbott emoting and hurling out innuendos. That’s one thing. Then there’s the matter of how difficult was it for the Windrush people to regularise their status? Because obviously, some have done so.   

This whole business is far too reminiscent of a parallel scenario, where the pro-Palestinian movement is generally far more concerned with attacking Israel than helping the Palestinians.  The politicised agenda we have here means that Labour seems far more concerned with calling for Amber Rudd’s resignation than actually helping the people they say they’re concerned about. 

Almost on cue, moments after that interview, John Humphrys spoke to a very satisfied customer. A member of the Windrush generation who had received his certification and was a very happy bunny. 

The Labour Party is mired in antisemitism. One would think they’d be embarrassed about calling for a symbolic resignation when the bleeding obvious applies to their own leadership a thousand times over. 

Andrew Neil is a little scamp

Andrew Neil is a little scamp ... The lefties aren't impressed with this ... Personally, I thought it was hilarious 😂 If Jezza doesn't want to be viewed as anti-west then maybe he should stop taking an anti-west stance on everything #RussiaGate #AgentCob pic.twitter.com/oilA7fl8Ov

— Support Amber (@voteforrudd) March 16, 2018

Oh, Boris!

Andrew Marr certainly got himself a headline-making scoop this morning, getting Amber Rudd to agree that Boris was behaving like a "back seat driver", as well as getting her to talk about him as if he was an overexcited child, or dog. ("Aww, Andrew, he's soooo full of enthusiasm and energy, bless him! And he can be reeeally entertaining too!", she almost said - several times). 

Boris was certainly the main story this morning for AM's programme. Andrew's introduction began as follows:

It's strangely easy to forget, but as a country we are under attack. The Parson's Green bomb was the fifth terrorist attack this year and the police say they have foiled another half a dozen serious plots. You'd think that would dominate today's front pages - but no, Boris Johnson has lobbed a verbal firework into the Brexit debate and snaffled the headlines. Oh, Boris! 

Well oddly, today's front pages, contrary to what Andrew said, were actually dominated by the Parson's Green terrorist attack. The Observer, the Sunday Express, the Daily Star on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror led with it. The Sunday Times led with tuition fees, not Boris, but actually put the Parson's Green story first on their front page. The Sun on Sunday and the Sunday People went with their own stories. Boris only led the Sunday Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday. Oh, Andrew!

Reflections on this Sunday

I forgot the Andrew Marr show was starting half an hour early today so I went out for a walk.  I don’t know what I missed, but it couldn’t have been better than fresh air, big sky and sparkling sea on a beautiful, breezy, autumn day. 

Millions of surfers were out already. I spotted one wearing a huge oversized towelling maxi-poncho with a hood, roomy enough to get changed in/under. Never mind the burkini, this is what I call modesty. No more towel, hitched precariously below the belly. Must recommend it to David Cameron.

Anyway I did catch Andrew talking to Amber Rudd, who looked as though she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards - bit like me -  and I did notice that she was wearing a necklace in the form of a giant silver chain just like Theresa May’s. (Is that symbolic - of being chained to one’s office?)

The interview was virtually pointless because neither Theresa nor Amber are presently willing to divulge anything whatsoever. They say it’s premature “You don’t expect a running commentary on our Brexit negotiations, do you Andrew?”  Theresa May said something similar last week. No-one is sure whether the secrecy is a cover for downright uncertainty and indecision.  “Now what are we going to do?” Just lie back, repeat “we’re doing what’s best for the UK” and think of England.

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All the best stuff occurred outside the usual Sunday morning political fare. Emily Thornberry gave a car-crash interview on Sky, (the BBC reported it rather generously here) in which Dermot Murnaghan exposed the mind-boggling extent of shadow foreign secretary’s ignorance. Vast swathes of it. He kept saying, with incredulity, “But you’re the shadow foreign secretary.” 

The funny thing is, it was Thornberry herself who brought up the ‘pub quiz’ analogy, which drew attention to the fact that she’s probably less well informed than your average pub philosopher. 

She must have learned that when you’re in a corner, the best defence is attack. Rats are well known for doing that. She alighted on sexism, but that strategy didn’t fool anyone, except perhaps the person who wrote the aforementioned BBC report. The Sun has some fun with it here.

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Where did you get that hat

I thought this story was interesting. Michael Foster was the Labour candidate for my very own neck of the woods at the last GE. Labour doesn’t stand much of a chance in this constituency, but I must say I felt a pang of admiration for Foster last year when he shouted out “Say the word Israel” at Corbyn’s  Israel-free speech at the Labour friends of Israel reception. (He wouldn’t say it.) 

The Mail has a much more colourful version of this story than the BBC’s subdued account of it. 

It seems that after he lost his court case (he fought against Corbyn standing for re-election without having to establish the requisite number of nominations) Foster published an article in the Mail on Sunday savagely attacking Corbyn’s leadership. Now the Labour Party has barred Mr. Foster from even voting in the leadership election, despite the fact that he had donated huge sums of dosh to the party before Corbyn’s reign. He’s also been banned from the Labour Party conference. I don’t suppose they want him shouting out any more awkward requests.

From Mail on Sunday August 2016

This is a big row that has been going on for some time, and reignited on 14th August, 2016 when he wrote the infamous ‘stormtroopers’ article for the Mail on Sunday. I haven’t read it, but it obviously caused quite a stir, especially as the MoS had taken it upon themselves to put the word “Nazi’ in the headline. 

The Huffington Post hit back with a piece by Corbynista Richard Burgon MP., which included several Tweets by well-known hat-wearer George Galloway and assorted members of the hard-left.

Another closely related scandal has flared up surrounding Corbyn, which according to the Telegraph has “reignited” all those allegations of antisemitism.  

The Guardian and the Telegraph have printed almost identical reports, but you get the sense (or is it just me, looking for trouble) that the Guardian is slightly more hostile to Israel than the Telegraph.   I would say that, wouldn’t I.

The story, in case I completely forget to explain it, is that  Corbyn first ignored, and has now turned down, the invitation from Isaac Herzog, leader of the Israeli Labour party, to visit Yad Vashem in Jerusalem “to witness that the last time the Jews were forcibly transported it was not to Israel but to their deaths”. (This alludes to Ken Livingstone’s theories about  Hitler and Zionism)

 Corbyn is sending a flunky in his place. His diary is full, he says. Probably full of urgent Stop the War Coalition fundraisers and the like.

Here’s another version of the story, with added gossip about Seumas Milne, which he denies. 

“In the latest of a series of allegations of anti-Semitism plaguing Britain's Labour Party, media reports on Sunday said that one of party leader Jeremy Corbyn's closest aides had tried unsuccessfully to get Hebrew expunged from a Jewish holiday greeting. 

The New York Times and London's Jewish Chronicle say the adviser, Seumas Milne, wanted to remove the words "Chag Kasher Ve-Sameach," which means "A Happy and Kosher Holiday," from Corbyn's Passover greeting to the Jewish community.Dave Rich writes in The Times that Milne thought the Hebrew phrase "implied support for Zionism."

I’m not saying the BBC has been more biased than all the other news organs over these matters. It might have omitted some parts of these stories, and the parts it did report were handled in a subdued manner. It’s treading carefully. Heaven forbid it accidentally makes a value judgment. I’m aware that those stultifying ‘complaints from both sides’ are an ever-present threat, but less isn’t always more.