As long as Theresa May remains in the government, the wrong that has been done to the Windrush Generation is not going to be corrected.

Theresa May must go. She can resign, or she can be forced out – I don’t mind which – but she cannot be allowed to stay.

The appointment of Sajid Javid – a BAME minister who Mrs May doesn’t like, let’s not forget (she demoted him when she became PM) – seems to be a token gesture: “Let’s put a second-generation migrant, son-of-a-Pakistani-bus-driver in as Home Secretary and everybody will think we’ve changed – so we won’t have to.”

And – bearing in mind it’s more than a week since the Windrush scandal broke – nothing has changed so far. Let’s consider what that means, with a summary of Mrs May’s attacks on immigrants – both legal and otherwise – courtesy of Dylan Strain on Twitter:

Not only did Mrs May allow this “abomination” to grow to such proportions that it is now a “stain on our national character” – she rewarded those who were responsible for it:

When Mrs May became unelected prime minister (remember: she became Conservative leader because her opponent stood down, and at last year’s general election she lost her party’s Parliamentary majority), she appointed Amber Rudd as Home Secretary. At the 2016 Tory conference Ms Rudd gave an address that led to her being reported to the police on a charge of making racist hate speech.

Ms Rudd wrote a letter to Mrs May in January 2017, promising to increase deportations of people the Conservative government has decided should no longer be allowed to live in the UK by 10 per cent. I cannot, in good conscience, say that this policy was directed at illegal immigrants – as the Conservatives are rather desperately trying to assert – because it has become clear that people with every right to remain in this country were targeted from the moment Mrs May became Home Secretary, never mind Ms Rudd.

(I’m not sure Natalie Rowe’s suggestion is accurate; we don’t know that this was the intention. But it is certainly what happened, and we may deduce that legal residents were targeted in order to meet the increased targets being demanded by Ms Rudd and Mrs May.)

Last week, Ms Rudd lied to a Parliamentary committee, claiming that there were no deportation targets. Then she lied to the Commons themselves, saying she had not known the targets existed – despite having set them in January last year. When her letter discussing these targets with Mrs May became public, she had no choice other than to resign.

Instead of going, Mrs May is trying to draw a line under the matter. But the fact exists that she did receive a letter from Amber Rudd discussing deportation targets.

James O’Brien discussed the implications on his LBC show:

So – as Rachael Maskell argued in Parliament, it seems Amber Rudd was the scapegoat – just one more of Mrs May’s subordinates who was sacked for carrying out her policies:

Mrs May herself has confirmed that she knew the Home Office had targets for the removal of illegal immigrants. Note the word “illegal”. She said: “When I was home secretary, yes, there were targets in terms of removing people from the country, who were here illegally.”

But she didn’t lift a finger when it became clear that people with every right to be in the UK were also being deported – and, as Dylan Strain has pointed out in his Twitter thread (above), she has known for years.

So the argument that Mrs May is in the clear because she may not have heard Amber Rudd misleading a committee, or may not have bothered about it because Ms Rudd corrected what she said the following morning, simply doesn’t add up. Ms Rudd’s correction was also a lie and Mrs May knew it, because she knew all about the targets. But she still allowed her MPs to make public displays of support for Ms Rudd, despite knowing that they were based on false information.

It implies an intention to mislead the public, from which Mrs May cannot slither away.

We should tackle the use of “illegal immigration” by Conservative MPs.

It is, indeed, a disgrace. The prime minister of the UK has known for years that legal citizens of the UK were being targeted by her “hostile environment” policy, that she and her party are still claiming was aimed at “illegal immigration”. If she had done anything at all to stop legal citizens being targeted, then they might be justified in using this excuse. She did not, so they are not.

Now we have a new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid – just another human shield for Mrs May, as Owen Jones explains:

And the “hostile environment” policy goes on – renamed the “compliant environment” by Mr Javid. Those two words mask a multitude of sinister – no, call them what they are: downright evil – meanings, as David Lammy explained:

These crimes against UK citizens are still happening, with the blessing of Theresa May’s government – and will continue happening as long as she is prime minister.

Mrs May has inflicted the policy on the country and has lied repeatedly and bare-facedly in order to keep it going. It is intolerable. She must not be allowed to get away with it. We must demand her resignation – or removal.

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