Crazy is new Tory normality

Aweek is a long time in politics so it’s no wonder that the supposedly “seismic” events that led to the departure of Amber Rudd from the Home Office only last week inevitably feel like very old news. It’s already like looking through the wrong end of a telescope to remind oneself of Rudd’s carrying of the can for her predecessor and Mrs May’s “Big girl did it and ran way to Downing Street” approach to ministerial responsibility.

We’re now onto the “craziness” of Theresa May’s customs partnership suggestion, Jacob Rees-Mogg hailing Sajid Javid – who’s been in the Home Office job all of 10 minutes – as “amazing” and a future PM and good old, reliable Boris Johnson being good, old reliable Boris Johnson. On the same principle that David Niven once explained that you could always rely on his friend and housemate, Errol Flynn, because Errol always let you down. Of course, Mrs May then compounds the agony by saying what generations of prime ministers have always said about incompetent idiots who seem to know where the bodies are buried and are therefore deemed unsackable – until they’re sacked. That is, that she has “full confidence“in the Foreign Secretary. Sadly, like many politicians in these interesting times, she is definitely full of something but confidence isn’t the first thing that springs to mind.

Then there’s said Rees-Mogg forming a mutual admiration society with the aforementioned Johnson in pursuit of “aggression” and “control” in policymaking, while the latter combines his freelance foreign secretary approach with a hapless bid to prevent Donald Trump reneging on the Iran nuclear agreement, which the American president has previously and frequently called “insane”. Is insane better than crazy? In the world these people inhabit and are re-creating in their own image, who knows? After all, if there is anyone who knows about insane and/or crazy, plans (apart from Kim Jong-un and he seems to have been overtaken by a nasty streak of moderation in recent days), it is surely Donald Trump, swiftly followed by Boris Johnson.

Any road up, pondering as I have been over the past few days about the whole sorry Home Office charade as it unfolded, one thing has come to the forefront of my thoughts. The “hostile environment” schtick, now speedily sidelined by Mr Javid, has obviously been in place (although I and many oth- ers, including, it would appear, the former Home Secretary, didn’t know about it) for some time. Yet even in the midst of all this storm of Pooh Bah-style “I wasn’t there!” and “It wisnae me, it’s not my writing and I was off that week” excuses, nobody has actually come out and told us anything about how effective (or not, of course), this approach has been. You’d think, wouldn’t you, desperate for some measure of success to parade before the harassed public, that if it had done what it said on the tin re illegal immigration, that we would all be told about it in no uncertain terms. There it would be, at the forefront of any government announcement, headlining any speech on the progress of Brexit or even, in the way of the modern political world, emblazoned on the side of a bus or two, like “Go home or face arrest” or even “£350 million a week for the NHS”.

Illegal immigration needs to be tackled; this is not really a point at issue. Call me a cynic, if you will, but if this policy was pursued and conducted with the same level of fairness, reason, competence, efficiency and speed that has characterised the treatment of the (working, tax-paying, contributing) Windrush families – this has been going on since 1948, remember – not to mention the current limbo swirling around the largely blameless heads of (working, tax-paying, contributing) EU citizens, my guess would be that the said pesky illegal immigrants have damn all to worry about.

What it says about us as a nation, of course, is another thing. And it does say something, regardless of how you view our current political direction, that the only outward face we appear to be showing to the rest of the world is when we open the door to kick people (including our own citizens) out. Outfit I was entranced to see the array of apparel at this week’s Met Gala in New York, the principal lesson appearing to be that “ye canna beh class”. In my admittedly limited experience, there are only really three ways to describe what someone is wearing. The first is an “outfit”. Little judgment going on there. Acceptable if tedious. The second is a “get-up” which smacks rather more of passing an opinion (unflattering), all without the use of pejorative adjectives.

The third is a “rig-oot”. And trust me, if someone views your mode du jour and says: “Whit’s that rig-oot aboot?”, the only response is to go right back to the drawing board or reach for the Littlewood’s log-in. Eat your heart out, Dame Anna Wintour.

Jacob Rees-Mogg.