A shameful bungle

FIRst the home Office issues them with impossible demands for paperwork to prove their right to be in Britain, after decades of raising families here.

Now it emerges this self-same department destroyed thousands of landing cards recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK – the very documents that would have helped prove their entitlement to permanent leave to remain! Indeed, the more we learn about officialdom’s betrayal of Caribbean-born residents who answered Britain’s call to help with our post-war reconstruction, the more incompetent it appears.

truly, their treatment has been a monstrous injustice, which ministers are only beginning to redress with their abject apologies and belated promise to help victims regularise their status.

this is a classic case of bureaucratic bungling by the home Office. It is thanks only to media campaigning, from every side of the political spectrum (not least this paper), that action has been promised.

Nothing more vividly illustrates newspapers’ role in holding the Government to account, something the enemies of Press freedom should bear in mind. ANY competent Opposition leader could have made a strong argument for insisting that MPs should have been consulted before Britain joined the missile attack on syria. But not Jeremy Corbyn.

After days of posturing, he sent his party home early when Parliament finally had its say on Monday, letting the Government win a symbolic vote by 314 to 36. so feeble was his performance yesterday, when he sought another vote, that only 205 of his 259 MPs could bring themselves to back him.

this was just the prelude to a debate in which Labour members launched blistering attacks on Mr Corbyn’s failure to tackle anti-semitism. how long must Labour and Britain wait for an Opposition leader worthy of the job?