She’s gone! Amber Rudd has resigned as Home Secretary
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:
Disgracefully another mass deportation to Jamaica flight PVT070 is due to deport a whole plane full of people frm next week, just spoken with a mother /grandmother whose mother is Windrush gen, children & grandchildren all British citizens being removed on the flight #jamaica50 pic.twitter.com/us0pnHKypo
— BARAC (@BARACUK) April 27, 2018
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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Did she go or was she pushed which ever its made my day good riddance to bad rubbish May should do the same after all Rudd was doing what she was told
One down. One more to follow soon (hopefully)
Good riddance. May should go too.
Hooray! Phew! They take some levering out! It’s not electoral reform that we need, it’s bigger crowbars! Next up on the list of ‘targets’ or ‘ambitions’ then? Being ‘chief’ she would have known about ‘everything’! Approved of ‘everything’! Planned ‘everything’! Ordered ‘everything’! Skipping through the corn – my a***! Whoops! More moderation there!
Michael Fallon gone, Damian Green, Amber Rudd, how many more to go from this rotten government ?
Priti Patel had to go as well. There have been quite a few!
I had forgotten about her !
Ok so Amber Rudd is out. But the hostile environment is still in. The Windrush Scandal is the template for the Disabilities Scandal, where the hostile environment is systemic and not just individual cases. It targets all disabilities with having to prove those disabilities against the impossible hostile systemic criteria. Ken Loach tried to engage National sympathy but politically no one blinked an eyelid. Yet there is national sympathy about Windrush from the same public that gave rise to the hostile environment, and ostensibly national outcry about so called anti-Semitism. Yet only callous disregard for the systemic evil hostile environment against people with mental/physical disabilities. Who is going to give this scandal political impetus and stamp it out and give compensation to all those that have endured additional suffering because of this.
” The Windrush Scandal is the template for the Disabilities Scandal, where the hostile environment is systemic and not just individual cases… ”
Well said. I made a similar brief point of the sinister similarities of policy and practice against the disabled here, previously.
The cynical profiling of targets, ” … the low hanging fruit … ” also come to mind.
Both the naive UK citizen of former colonies, and those with mental health issues became easy targets.
Never mind dear Ken, the UN’s condemnation has yet to make a dent in the (s)tory propaganda.
Do you think the British people are beginning to wake up yet?
” ‘The civil service is completely target based. That’s all we do. It is shame-faced nonsense for Amber Rudd to say otherwise.’”
Which infers, of course, that the DWP do have targets for sanctions, MR’s and refusing Social Security payments
i am Impressed, this strong and stable leadership goes from strength to strength, what going to replace all the people that resign often, there are some ex BHS mannequins floating about, cheap, can be dressed up, are quiet and won’t answer back, ample supply, so who next to go in the tory collective perhaps they could start a red bus, let’s save 350 million by seeing how many of our ministers can resign, we could easily put that back into the NHS and that could be a true fact rather than a pretty red bus of lies
Just to rain on our parade, which complete idiot is going to replace her. And if anyone says they couldn’t be worse they probably will be.
PS. That was a great shot of her ‘skulking away’! For a minute I thought she was behind bars! We can only dream!
About time this Tory rotten apple left the governing barrel. When can we look forward to further departures from aming her supporters like Michael Gove? After all, they strongly supported a revealed liar, so aren’t such people equally contaminated with being sparing with the truth (just as they were during the Referendum campaign)?
Looking at the wider community, there seems to be a habit developing among our rulers for blaming customers for any mistakes, however caused rather than those in charge taking responsibility for their actions. Last week I listened to Money Box Live where Windrush teenagers, admitted to UK as kids on their mothers’ passports had to wait 6 YEARS or more for the Home Office to respond to their applications for British status to be extended, and then set on a ten year escalating scale of fees because the Hone Office did not supply correct documentation.
Doesn’t this remind you of the DWP programme of sanctioning welfare recipients who fall foul of their arcane regukations? Further, it’s similar to the Police ‘overlooking’ evidence they should have passed on to defendants in rape cases, now revealed as sytemic when HMRC faiked to pass on financial info in a fraud case, and much the same for internet companies (such as ISPs and BT/Openreach) blaming customers for problems they caused thenselves?
All too often those in power are being revealed as incompetent and devious in their dealings with the public. Long past time for independent action for more heads to roll!
Has Amber confirmed whether she has seen her resignation letter to the PM ?
In true Monty Python style – “When danger reared it’s ugly head Amber turned her tail and fled, the Tory ran away”
Like Hunt and the rest, none of them have an ounce of decency and will never stand up to scrutiny.
Chris Grayling said this morning with reference to the Winrush Scandal that we (the Conservatives) have to obey the Courts of Law decisions on these matters. Oh really, the courts are enforcing Conservative government policy.
Gone before she could be prosecuted I suspect.