Bye bye: Amber Rudd has quit. Now we can focus on the real architect of the Conservative Party’s racist immigration policy – Theresa May.
Fantastic. Just as I was writing the following article, the BBC announced that Amber Rudd has resigned as Home Secretary.
The report states:
“Home Secretary Amber Rudd has resigned, Downing Street has said.
“Ms Rudd, who was due to make a statement in Parliament on Monday, was under growing pressure to quit over the Windrush scandal.
“She has faced criticism over the existence of Home Office removals targets and her knowledge of them.”
That’s everything the BBC – and therefore the Conservatives – had to say at the time of writing.
But I think I can add a little illumination, via the article on which I was working when the announcement came through.
Here’s what I would have said:
If Amber Rudd didn’t know about Home Office deportation targets, why did she send Theresa May a letter promising to increase “enforced removals by more than 10% over the next few years” – back in January 2017?
Come to that, if she didn’t know about the targets that she increased in January last year, why does Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis recall not only knowing about them but also discussing them with Ms Rudd while a minister in her department, between June 11, 2017 and January 8 this year?
And, if she didn’t know about the targets that she increased in January last year and discussed with Brandon Lewis between last June and January, why do Home Office sources say they have been regularly discussed at the highest levels, implying that Ms Rudd was included in those discussions?
I think she did know about the targets she increased in January last year, discussed with Brandon Lewis between June and January this year, and regularly discussed with Home Office officials at the highest levels. Call it intuition.
The worst part of it is that, after the Windrush Generation scandal, “Home Office sources have told The Guardian that Immigration Enforcement has been working all year to reach the target of 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18.
“They have been bracing themselves to acknowledge to ministers that the agency has failed to do so. To meet the goal, it needed to deport 250 people a week, but it has only been able to remove about 225 a week.
“’At the Home Office we work in a target culture,’ said a source. ‘The civil service is completely target based. That’s all we do. It is shame-faced nonsense for Amber Rudd to say otherwise.’”
So Ms Rudd – and Mrs May, no doubt – are still deporting people in order to meet the racist removal target they mutually decided 15 months ago.
The next charter flight is PVT070 to Jamaica:
Amber Rudd has nowhere left to go.
She said there were no deportation targets. If she wrote to Theresa May about increasing them in January 2017 (and she definitely did – it’s her signature on the letter), that was a lie.
Then she said she did not know there were deportation targets. If she wrote to Theresa May about increasing them in January 2017 (and she definitely did – it’s her signature on the letter), that was a lie.
These cannot be interpreted as mistakes. Amber Rudd deliberately misled Parliament – and the nation.
It is a clear breach of s.1.3.c of the Ministerial Code with no ambiguity.
So Amber Rudd has no choice but to offer her resignation to Theresa May at her earliest opportunity.
And I was right, wasn’t I? She did.
But take a look at what I wrote.
The racism continues.
The deportations are progressing without pause.
The laws which support them have not been changed.
And Theresa May is still prime minister.
It is time to turn our attention to her.
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