Despite the slow-motion departure of Amber Rudd, Theresa May is not out of the woods yet on Windrush or the deportation targets row.
The expectation at Westminster is that Jeremy Corbyn will continue to focus on the Prime Minister’s Home Office role vis-a-vis the “hostile environment” on illegal immigration at Commons Questions tomorrow, after which, by happy coincidence, Labour has chosen as its subject for an Opposition Day debate - Windrush.
Yesterday, Downing Street deployed some semantic wizardry to explain the former Home Secretary’s non-intention to mislead MPs and to distance Mrs May from the political feeding frenzy.
On the first point, it noted how there was not a national target to increase the deportation of illegal immigrants but an “aim over a non-specific period” to increase by more than 10 per cent the number of illegal immigrants leaving the country. “It isn’t an in-year number-specific goal,” said a spokesman.
READ MORE: Sajid Javid appointed as new Home Secretary after Amber Rudd resigns
So: aim not target and nothing specific; despite the figure.
On the second point, No 10 pointed out how when the PM was Home Secretary she was aware of departmental deportation targets but once she relinquished her role, she would “not have received any operational detail of that kind”.
Given someone somewhere in Whitehall has been leaking internal correspondence, this statement might be a hostage to fortune as it was a massive trawl of documents that led to Ms Rudd realising over the weekend that she had in fact been copied into memos about targets.
READ MORE: New Home Secretary vows to treat Windrush generation with decency and fairness
Perhaps it was a canny move to promote Sajid Javid, the son of a Pakistani immigrant, to sort out the Windrush fiasco; as he pointed out to an indignant Diane Abbott, his Labour Shadow did “not have a monopoly” of feeling angry about what had happened.
On another front, his appointment does not create a great imbalance in Cabinet on Brexit; he toyed with backing Britain leaving the EU but ended up as a reluctant Remainer.
READ MORE: Sajid Javid’s journey from bus driver’s son to Home Secretary
Apart from his priorities of sorting out the Windrush fiasco and cooling things on the deportation row, the 48-year-old former City banker has to tackle rising gun and knife crime in England, the ever-present threat from terrorism and the not insignificant bureaucratic task of assigning status to more than three million EU nationals living in the UK as well as implementing whatever new immigration system is brought in after the end of the transition period in 2020.
Ms Rudd’s departure means that Mrs May has now lost five Cabinet ministers since the ill-fated General Election of 2017.
That’s two a month at which rate, if she survives to the 2022 election, she will have replaced her entire Cabinet. So don’t bank on the MP for Hastings making a Mandelson-style return.
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