Dan, Dan The Windrush Excuse Man

As the full realisation of what has happened to so many of those who arrived in the UK as children, and have known no other country for more than 50 years, has become clear, even the Tory-supporting press has recoiled in horror. The children of the Windrush Generation have been treated disgracefully by the Government.

Many have lost their jobs, been denied NHS treatment, and even been arrested as illegal immigrants. Some may have been deported, the chilling explanation being that this would have been done “in error”. Dead bloody right it was an error. And during whose tenure at the Home Office was the disastrous policy enacted that led us to this place? Step forward our Prime Minister, Theresa May. If anyone should resign, it is her.

But here we encounter a problem. If she goes, the Tories are in the mire big time. It would be entirely possible to be plunged into yet another General Election campaign if we had yet another unelected Prime Minister foisted on us. So out have come those making the lamest of excuses in order to take the heat off Ms May.

All of which brings us to the especially lame whataboutery of Dan, Dan The Oratory Man, whose intervention is so weak as to be positively homeopathic. Hannan kicked off his lame apologia with “Here's an unpopular opinion on the #Windrush affair. You could say, the system worked. A newspaper unearthed a scandal (well done @ameliagentleman). Pundits & politicians unanimously decried the injustice. Ministers listened and changed policy. That's what's meant to happen, no?” No, Dan, it isn’t. Just no.

The system, as he so blithely calls it, should not cause people to lose their jobs and even homes, then be rounded up and herded into detention centres. Which is what has happened. The UK treating its own citizens as illegal aliens - and had the row not broken over the weekend, it might have got away with it. That’s not good enough.

Still, if at first you don’t succeed, well, try sucking some more seed, eh? So it was that Hannan came back for another go. “Worth pointing out, too - I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere during the current row - that most of the 492 West Indians who arrived on the Empire Windrush had served in the war, mainly in the RAF”. What the holy f*** has that got to do with what has happened to so many of our own citizens?

No, this is, as James O’Brien has correctly pointed out, down to Theresa May, and to her alone: “The Windrush scandal is Theresa May’s creation, borne of an innate inability to equate ‘immigrant’ with ‘person’. It’s a hefty accusation, I know, but it makes sense of almost everything she’s done since 2010. Lying about a cat; Go Home vans; subsuming Ukip; EU citizens as cards”. A total lack of empathy.

And, as Dan King has concluded, “If May and Rudd had even a shred of human decency, they would issue full, public apologies, and then resign”. Amber Rudd for continuing the policy that led us here, and hoping to get away with it. And Theresa May for introducing it in the first place. But that won’t happen, not if the Tory-backing press can help it.

That’s why the Mail is going after only Ms Rudd. The legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre maintains his creepy schoolboy crush on the PM; for her to fall would be unthinkable for him. So it would for Hannan. But, right now, their deflections just aren’t making it.