Resignation .....

[TheOstrich]

I see it's breaking news that Amber Rudd has resigned as Home Secretary. I haven't read the details, but personally, good! I have never warmed to her as an individual, and she's obviously nowhere near on top of her brief.

How to fill the vacancy? I'd suggest they offer the job to Boris!

[cromwell]

Yes, and she should have gone before now.

To me "targets" aren't the issue. For illegal immigrants there ought to be a target of 100% removal in all but exceptional circumstances, but the issue is that Amber Rudd was not truthful. In ordinary language she either lied repeatedly or she is totally incompetent.

And as she was defending a policy of "you have to prove who you are, not the government, we can't be bothered" which was set up by Theresa May, it doesn't look good on her either.

The thought does occur - starting from a position which enjoys popular support, a crackdown on illegal immigration - how do you end up here? Grovelling apologies, repeatedly being found out in untruths and high level resignations!

[Kaz]

Yes, the lying was the issue. I'm glad she resigned.

[Workingman]

Maybe Rudd should have gone earlier or maybe she was buying time for the wagons to circle around T May.

As Home Secretary May was the architect of the intolerant attitude to illegal immigration and also set a target of 10s of thousands for legal immigrants, both were generally popular with the general public. What she nor us took into account was the law of unintended consequences hence - Windrush.

The thing is that in 2013 some Windrush migrants were caught up in the mayhem and this continued well through 2015, at the time when May was Home Sec. They were not, at the time, big numbers and It was all kept pretty much under the radar, but it is now perfectly obvious that May did not raise a finger to help.

Her (in)action raises concerns about how much she was on the ball and it also begs the question about how fully briefed Rudd was when the new PM handed over the keys to her old office.

I guess that the opposition will not push too much on this until they see how Javed handles things. If he gets it sorted in short order the accusation will be made that so could May and Rudd. If he cannot find a solution then it will be that it is an intractable problem caused by May and then Rudd. Either way there will be much political mileage to be had come the next GE.

[Suff]

The thought does occur - starting from a position which enjoys popular support, a crackdown on illegal immigration - how do you end up here?

Well the figures show that we really are not cracking down on illegals..

How we end up here is that we talk about cracking down on illegals then put the vast majority of our effort into blocking people with, what would have been called, documentation irregularities.

I noticed the rise of this in the Blair government.

Yep she has not been on the ball at all and for a H/S that is fall on your sword time. But this is civil service momentum and if Javid wants to get it under control he's going to have to put in 5 times the effort normally expected.

This will be lauded as a "fix", in the next year or two but the cancer of the Civil Services will still be there waiting to take back control. The people who should have fallen on their swords are the senior Civil Servants who knew this was going on and, either, didn't want to stop it, or couldn't be bothered to do their job.

[miasmum]

Do you know I wouldn't be at all surprised to wake up one morning and find the Queen gone and Sajid Javed in her place The man gets everywhere