Theresa May Must Go

[Update at end of post]

As her pals in the press exhort their readers to look anywhere except where the evidence is inexorably piling up, Theresa May is pretending to say sorry for the shameful desertion of duty by the department that she led for so long, while no-one, least of all her, carries the can for the débâcle. The children of the so-called Windrush Generation have lost jobs, been denied NHS care, and rounded up as if they were illegal immigrants. Yet there have been no resignations, only more spin and deflection.

(c) Steve Bell 2018

Ms May hosted a meeting of Caribbean leaders at 10 Downing Street yesterday, where, as the BBC has reported, “She said she was ‘genuinely sorry’ about the anxiety caused by the Home Office threatening the children of Commonwealth citizens with deportation. The UK government ‘valued’ the contribution they had made, she said, and they had a right to stay in the UK”. But then came the news that undermined her yet further.

Amelia Gentleman at the Guardian was once again on the case: “The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties”.

There was more. “The former employee (who has asked for his name not to be printed) said it was decided in 2010 to destroy the disembarkation cards, which dated back to the 1950s and 60s … The files were destroyed in October that year, when Theresa May was home secretary”. Theresa May again. It keeps coming up Theresa May.

Also coming up are the excuses, mainly that it was all about data protection law. This is, let us not drive this one around the houses for too long, bullshit. These were paper records, and as historian Bendor Grosvenor has told (see his thread on the issue HERE), “1st, the Data Protection Act relates primarily to records created post 2000. 2nd, the records were still being used, and of value to the people whose information they contained. 3rd, there is a clear exemption in the Act for material of historical value”.

The Government response has once again been to spin and deflect: the records, they claimed, were not reliable. But they had already claimed that it was a DPA problem. Meanwhile, as Ms Gentleman tells, “Many Windrush-generation individuals who have had difficulties providing evidence of their status have told the Guardian how they were repeatedly told their names were ‘not in the system’”.

They were faced with having to pay out in legal fees to progress their cases, but did not have the money to do so. And although MPs such as David Lammy have correctly called for Home Secretary Amber Rudd to resign, as the mess has been uncovered on her watch, it keeps coming back to the architect of the problem, and that is Theresa May.

That is why papers like the Mail, still stoking the faux outrage this morning with its headline “WINDRUSH: THE NEW BETRAYAL”, is skating on very thin ice. They have decided Ms Rudd must go, but are seemingly oblivious to the clear corollary - that Ms May must follow her. The Mail won’t go there, as they back the PM, but the scandal just might.

Theresa May is an uncaring hypocrite. And she has yet to do the decent thing.

[UPDATE 1335 hours: Theresa May used today's PMQs to try and blame Labour for what has happened. As the BBC has told, "Theresa May has said the decision to destroy landing cards of Windrush migrants was taken under Labour ... The Prime Minister told MPs she was not Home Secretary when the move was approved, saying it happened in 2009".

Thus she scored the necessary point. But then came the reverse ferret, as Paul Waugh observed: "Imp clarification after #PMQs from No10: destruction of landing cards was an 'operational decision' by the UK Border Agency. Ie Not a decision by a Labour Home Secretary or minister".

So Theresa May had misled the House. And it got worse: as James O'Brien deduced, "I'm open to correction/clarification too but surely the landing cards only became relevant after the removal of this clause from the 2014 Immigration Act. And there's no doubt about who was in the driving seat for that decision". So back to Theresa May once more.

And thus the problem: no matter how hard she tries, it keeps coming back to her. Only this time she has misled the House, which turns the possibility of it being a resigning matter into a racing certainty]