WHY AMBER WAS ASKING FOR IT

WHEN, on Monday, April 16, Amber Rudd stood up in the Commons and blamed the Civil Service for the callous treatment of the so-called Windrush generation — ‘The Home Office has become too concerned with policy and strategy and sometimes loses sight of the individual’ — she might have thought she was getting out of trouble.

In fact, she was asking for it. Rudd has had a remarkably rapid political ascent (she only became an MP in 2010): a more experienced minister would know the officials’ revenge would be savage.

Thus, over two weekends, officials leaked Home Office documents to The Guardian which completely destroyed the Secretary of State’s position.

Six days after her rash Commons statement, the paper published a leaked private memo from Rudd to Theresa May, in which the Home Secretary set out her ‘ambitious’ plans to increase the focus of her department on ‘arresting, detaining and forcibly removing illegal migrants’ and ‘ruthlessly’ prioritising resources to that end.

This was sent to the PM just months before the Windrush migrants were threatened with deportation. In other words, Rudd had been pushing officials to behave in exactly the way she then criticised them for in the House of Commons.

Last Saturday, The Guardian leaked a memo copied in to Rudd, which had informed her that the Home Office set a ‘target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns [of illegal migrants] in 2017-2018’. Coming only days after Rudd had told Parliament ‘we don’t have targets for removals . . .’, this was a devastating exposure of ministerial ignorance at best (Rudd’s only — and hopeless — defence had been to say she ‘wasn’t aware of the targets’).

Interestingly, there was never any talk of a ‘leak inquiry’ — the normal government response in such circumstances. Ms Rudd had no stomach for further conflict with her officials. And last night she surrended.