Mr Javid was free of frowns ... unlike Miss Rudd
NOISILY staccato, happy to assert his ethnic credentials, Sajid Javid had been Home Secretary less than seven hours when he entered the Commons to answer another Labour urgent question about the Windrush row.
Whack. There was an instant change in tone and pace. This Home Secretary is a confident sort. Likes bouncers.
Physically, the difference between smartly suited Mr Javid and his forlorn predecessor was striking. Where Miss Rudd had looked angst-ridden, her brow corrugated by worries and her eyes a Chelsea bun of swirls, Mr Javid was a frown-free zone.
He uttered sympathetic words about the Windrush fiasco but they did not sound particularly cuddly. His despatch-box bearing was at-yer-throat.
Having arrived to loud hear-hears from the Tory benches, he went straight to the task of repairing the Tories’ Afro-Caribbean vote (er, what there ever was of it).
He spoke a direct ‘pledge to the Windrush generation’ that he would ‘do whatever it takes to get it right’.
Next sentence: ‘I am a second generation migrant. My parents came to this country from the Commonwealth in the Sixties. They, too, came to rebuild this country and offer all that they had.
‘So when I heard that people who were long-standing pillars of their community were being impacted for not having the right documents to stay in the UK, I thought that it could be my mum, my brother, my uncle – or me.’
Everyone sought to be kind about Miss Rudd. Quite right. She is a decent stick and could do with a break. But Mr Javid generated a few snorts when he said he intended to ‘build on her decisive action’.
For those who had not heard him first time round (they must have had candle wax in their lugholes, for he was bawling it out), he repeated: ‘We will do right by the Windrush generation!’
Diane Abbott, that doyenne of detail, that imperatrix of small print, seemed startled that her oppo’ Amber had just been destroyed by a failure to master minutiae of policy. If a clever woman like that can come unstuck, what on earth could happen to dumbo Diane?
YESTERDAY Miss Abbott’s voice and hands shook like the mudguards on an old London bus. She reprised Mr Javid’s statement of his personal qualifications to discuss immigrant issues – ‘the Windrush generation was my parents’ generation’ – and wondered if Mr Javid understood how much anger there was in the land.
The new Home Secretary immediately seized on this. ‘Of course we’re aware!’ he cried. ‘I’m angry too! She doesn’t have a monopoly on that.’
For some reason this infuriated Jeremy Corbyn and a Labour MP sitting behind him, Marsha de Cordova (Battersea).
‘Shame on you!’ they cried at Mr Javid. They were really steaming about it. Boris Johnson, sitting beside Mr Javid, smiled at their aggression. The SNP’s Joanna Cherry, serial droner, attacked Theresa May for her old migration targets.
Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe) agreed visibly with this criticism of the Prime Minister, nodding for all to see. Speaker Bercow noted that Miss Cherry had spoken for twice her allocated time, but what could you expect from a lawyer. A Tory voice: ‘She gets paid by the minute.’ Laughter.
Miss Soubry was twitchily excitable, pointing and harrumphing and muttering to herself – so much so that even her neighbour and spiritual lama, Dominic Grieve (Con, Le Champ du Beacon), leaned away from her. There is a waxen oddness these days about Le Duc d’Autosatisfaction (the zealously pro-EU Grieve).
He sits as though balancing a halo on his head. He moves with the poise of a man preparing to clinch his place in the history books. With the House of Lords kicking up an anti-Brexit tantrum yesterday, who is to say he is mistaken? There is a mood of hard-faced determination among the political Establishment.
With Mrs May apparently dithering, they fancy their chances to defy the electorate, both on the Leave referendum vote and on the populace’s vulgar concern about immigration.