Amber Rudd

Now, Amber, be honest. Have you been telling porkies? I know you're a Tory but you can fess up if you try. I suspect you have and I think you should stop because you're not very good at it.

So far you've told us you didn't know the Windrush people were being deported illegally. Let's just understand something: when a new boss (say, a Home Secretary) is appointed to the job, s/he moves into a department that's pretty well staffed with civil servants chosen for their high educational standards. Part of their job is to write briefing papers for the new boss and discuss them with him/her. Are you saying your people didn't do that? If that's true, it's time your office had a good 'redd oot,' as we say in Scotland. Because if the rest of us out here have known for about 4 months now that the Windrush people were being screwed by your party, why didn't you?

Or maybe you just didn't pay attention to what your 'people' were telling you. A bit surprising that, since we've been led to understand that Cabinet ministers get appointed on merit, although looking at Boris, that's getting to be hard to believe.

Maybe it was the immigration policy you didn't grasp. You know the policy I mean. The obsession with getting immigration down to the tens of thousands (where is has never, ever been for good reasons that I'll come to shortly). Keep British jobs for British workers. Can we sell you a wee red anti-immigration mug? Here's a van warning you to go home if you're in the UK illegally. And if you're an EU citizen, you may have lived, worked and paid taxes here for 30 years but your right to remain is over. Us out here - you know, the ones that are going to have to pay to fix the shambles the Tories have made of Windrush and are making of Brexit - we knew that was the policy. We even knew the Tories and Labour were following the same policy. What bit of this did you not get, Amber?

And there's also the wee problem of a shortage of workers. We're now desperately short of nurses and doctors and we can't bring them in because Home Office immigration officials are routinely refusing to give them work visas, despite the fact that these people have been recruited by another branch of your government. So we're paying in the length of time we have to wait to see doctors too.

Then there are the people who pick our food in the fields and greenhouses who have decided the racist insults they now routinely encounter here are not acceptable and there are plenty of places they can work in the other 27 EU countries. Nobody's too sure what that's going to mean in terms of our food supply but we'll find out come summer.

And some of us may also get a shock when we discover that our kids' teachers and childcare workers have decided living here is not worth the aggro and have gone 'home' before the start of the new school year.

The other thing us out here have sussed, Amber, is that none of this had anything at all to do with what's best for 'the country.' What happened was that both your party and Labour went mad when it came to fending off the threat from UKIP at the last two elections. Not only did politicians of your two parties not try to counter the nonsense about immigration spouted by UKIP - and their pals in the press - but you tried to outdo them in your xenophobia. It's about politics, not the national interest.

So here's a question I would really like the answer to: how are you going to fix this mess?

And if you can't answer that question, you really need to resign. And take your boss with you.

And now that Amber Rudd has resigned, here's my comment:



Dear Amber,

How awful that your career has come to a juddering halt because you ‘inadvertently misled Parliament’ over Windrush.  At least, that was what you claim happened. It only turns out Windrush people, who always had rights of citizenship under English law, have been deported illegally. In addition, your civil servants, a well-educated bunch of people chosen for their high educational standards, have been miscalled for giving you false information, while us out here (voters to you) knew perfectly well what was going on.

It turned out you lied.

Worse than that – much worse – it seems you were stupid enough to put in writing to your boss that you had plans in place to step up the deportation of immigrants.

Meanwhile, the situation you leave behind is worse than it was when you took over the Home Office. There’s still the obsession with getting immigration down to the tens of thousands (where is has never, ever been for good reasons that I'll come to shortly). We still need to keep British jobs for British workers. The Labour Party has a wee surplus of red anti-immigration mug if you need one.  And somewhere there’s a van warning people to go home if they’re in the UK illegally.

And if you're an EU citizen, you may have lived, worked and paid taxes here for 30 years but your right to remain is over. Us out here - you know, the ones that are going to have to pay to fix the shambles the Tories have made of Windrush and are making of Brexit - we knew that was the policy. We even knew the Tories and Labour were following the same policy. What bit of this did you not get, Amber?

And there's also the wee problem of a shortage of workers. We're now desperately short of nurses and doctors and we can't bring them in because Home Office immigration officials are routinely refusing to give them work visas, despite the fact that these people have been recruited by another branch of the Tory government. So we're paying in the length of time we have to wait to see doctors too.

Then there are the people who pick our food in the fields and greenhouses who have decided the racist insults they now routinely encounter here are not acceptable and there are plenty of places they can work in the other 27 EU countries. Nobody's too sure what that's going to mean in terms of our food supply but we'll find out come summer.

And some of us may also get a shock when we discover that our kids' teachers and childcare workers have decided living here is not worth the aggro and have gone 'home' before the start of the new school year.

And Theresa May lives on. Amber, you are an utter fool.

The other thing us out here have sussed, Amber, is that none of this had anything at all to do with what's best for 'the country.' What happened was that both your party and Labour went mad when it came to fending off the threat from UKIP at the last two elections. Not only did politicians of your two parties not try to counter the nonsense about immigration spouted by UKIP - and their pals in the right-wing press - but you tried to outdo them in your xenophobia. This was about politics, not the national interest.

It's a shame those of us who live in parts of the UK that need people to come and work here and also don't share the Tory and Labour fear of foreigners are getting dragged into this nonsense. 

I won’t lie and claim I’m sad to see you go. I’m just sorry you didn’t take your boss with you to the back benches – where you will, of course, continue to pull in a decent wage – and no doubt get compensation for losing your Cabinet post. All us out here can look forward to is a Home Office run by Michael Gove.

I admit I’m just hoping there are enough sensible people in Scotland who will look at this kerfuffle and decide it’s time to say goodbye to the idiocy that calls itself the Union.