The HMT Empire Windrush docks at the Port of Tilbury on 21 June 1948, with some 492 West Indian immigrants on board

Bagehot: Amber Rudd finds herself in a hostile environment

The Economist, April 28, 2018 (Adapted)

The home secretary is damaged by the Windrush scandal—but not fatally

Last November the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) held a drinks party to fete the younger generation of Tory MPs. The message was simple: far from being the zombified and lobotomised monstrosity that it appeared, the Conservative Party was, in fact, busily renewing itself, thanks to a new generation of MPs drawn from a wide range of backgrounds and fizzing with ideas. The star of the show was the home secretary, Amber Rudd. The choice of Ms Rudd was significant for two reasons: she represented a link between the establishment and the new generation; and she represented a unifying force in a divided party. Here was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think-tank championing the leader of the Remain faction in the cabinet.

Today Ms Rudd is fighting for her political life, thanks to the abysmal treatment of the “Windrush generation”, Caribbean migrants who came to Britain in 1948-71, who have recently been harassed in innumerable ways because they can’t produce paperwork to prove they are British citizens. Labour has called for Ms Rudd to resign. She faced blistering questioning from a parliamentary committee on April 25^th about the Windrush affair, and what it says about Britain’s treatment of immigrants.

Windrush is only the latest in a succession of setbacks for the home secretary. Britain has seen a surge in knife crime and acid attacks. In February and March London’s murder rate briefly exceeded New York City’s. The Conservative right has added its voice to Ms Rudd’s Labour critics.

How badly damaged is she? Probably not fatally, unless there is another scandal festering in the Home Office’s basement. Ms Rudd has tarnished her reputation with her handling of the Windrush disaster. She blamed her underlings at the Home Office, which was hardly statesmanlike. Her statement to the House of Commons that she found the cases “heartbreaking” provoked a stinging response from Amelia Gentleman, the Guardian journalist who broke the story: why, then, had the home secretary delivered nothing but pro forma answers when the paper contacted her about those very cases almost every week for the past six months? In 2016 Ms Rudd also horrified her friends on the Conservative Party’s left by demanding that employers publish lists of their foreign-born employees. But for all that, her primary sin is administering a policy that she inherited from her predecessor.

The principal architect of the Windrush mess, in so far as there is an architect, is Ms Rudd’s boss, Theresa May. Mrs May not only developed the “hostile environment” policy that was meant to discourage illegal immigrants from staying in the country. She also pursued David Cameron’s target of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands, with a determination worthy of Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. She insists that students should be included in the numbers, despite the opposition of almost everyone else in the cabinet, including Ms Rudd.

Even more than the Maybot’s rigidity, the policy was driven by Britain’s deep ambivalence about both immigration and identity documents. Under New Labour Britain pursued one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world, opening its doors to eastern Europeans after 2004. It then slammed the doors shut. Britain is one of only a handful of EU countries that do not require people to have ID cards. But at the same time it is increasingly demanding that people who receive the benefits of the welfare state should be able to prove they are in the country legally. Windrush is the product not of racism, but of the collision between the demands of the bureaucratic state and Britain’s commitment to ancestral rights.

Ms Rudd is fortunate in that her strengths outweigh her weaknesses, making her unusual in the current cabinet. She is a natural member of Britain’s officer class, devoid of clever ideas but just the sort of person you need to keep the show on the road. She also has flashes of star power. During the referendum debate she skewered Boris Johnson by describing him as “not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening”. And her pro-European views make her hard to sack. Removing her would upset the most important balance in politics.

This is not to say that Ms Rudd will be able to relax any time soon. The Windrush scandal continues to metastasise, recently ensnaring citizens from other Commonwealth countries, including Canada. It also raises thorny questions of both competence and culture. Why should EU citizens think that they will be spared the Home Office’s bureaucratic ineptitude after Brexit? And why should members of ethnic minorities trust the Tories again?