With Operation Save Amber finally derailed after two weeks of fire-fighting the former home secretary’s failing memory – by the weekend she couldn’t even remember what targets she was meant to have forgotten – the Tory party’s attention turned to Operation Save Face. Aka Operation Save Theresa. With Amber Rudd out of a job, the prime minister has been left with no one else to take the blame for her hostile environment policy that caused the Windrush scandal.
First out of the blocks on Radio 4’s Today programme was the former cabinet minister Damian Green, a zen master of never saying anything interesting. It took a while for Green to even admit that Rudd had been forced to resign and even then he restricted himself to a laconic: “She had to go.” Which made one wonder why he and so many other Conservatives had spent the previous week saying she had to stay.
Next on the airwaves was Chris Grayling, which showed how much of a panic the government was in. The transport secretary is just about the only minister who makes David Davis look quick-witted and is the last person who should be sent out in a crisis.
Sure enough, Grayling self-destructed in 10 seconds. After demonstrating he had no grasp of the situation by insisting a fourth cabinet resignation within six months was merely “unwanted noise”, he went on to say that May wouldn’t have known about the targets letter Rudd had sent her in 2017. After all, if the home secretary couldn’t remember writing the letter, then why on earth should the prime minister be expected to recall having read it? Over in Downing Street, May let out a shriek as Grayling inadvertently tried to get her the sack as well.
The transport secretary pressed on. What it came down to was this: no one was really to blame for the Windrush debacle and Rudd was every bit as much a victim as the many thousands who had found themselves deprived of work and healthcare and threatened with deportation.
More so, in fact. It had been a real advantage to have someone in charge of the Home Office who didn’t know what she was doing and it was a tragedy that she had resigned. Rudd’s tragedy was that she was just too good for this world. She had just made one teeny-weeny little mistake. The mistake of trying to protect her boss.
Shortly after appointing Sajid Javid as her new home secretary, it was May’s turn to face the cameras. She looked and sounded terrible, as if she was featuring in a hostage video. Yes there had been targets when she had been home secretary, she mumbled, her eyes numb with terror. It was near enough a confession that she knew Rudd had misled parliament but hadn’t thought it important enough to mention to anyone. Amber could be very proud of her time as home secretary, she added. It’s not everyone who gets to preside over one of the department’s biggest failures in its history.
Having posed with his legs thrust astride outside his new office – the department had needed a bit of manspreading to shake it up – Javid soon found himself inside the Commons to face his first urgent question as home secretary. Understandably, he chose to keep his opening remarks short and sweet. He was Windrush. Kiss the badge. Nobody cared about Windrush more than him and he would do whatever was necessary to put things right.
Labour’s Diane Abbott wasn’t convinced. She had heard much the same from the last home secretary and what was required was actions not words. Would he reverse the 2014 immigration act and commit to making sure that no other Commonwealth citizens were treated in the same way?
“She doesn’t have a monopoly on anger,” Javid snapped indignantly, before going on to show that he still hadn’t fully understood the nature of the problem by failing to acknowledge it had been the prime minister’s hostile environment policies that had resulted in British citizens being threatened with deportation.
Several Labour MPs tried to put him right, but Javid wasn’t having any of it. He refused to recognise the term hostile environment. “It’s a compliant environment,” he protested. Compliant as in being as beastly as possible to anyone who looked foreign without being actively hostile. Words matter.
Tory Nick Boles invited the new home secretary to distance himself from legacy policies that were fundamentally wrong. Sajid declined. He’d only just got the promotion and was not about to do anything that might get him sacked on the first day. He knew where his priorities lay. His job was to appear to be different. Not be different.
