After Windrush, Amber Rudd’s leadership ambitions are over – enter Jeremy Hunt

When Amber Rudd agreed to speak at a lunch for Westminster journalists on Thursday, it was an opportunity to display her credentials as a future Conservative Party leader. The only cloud on the horizon was crime figures to be published a few hours before the lunch, which were likely to show another rise in violent offences.

But the Windrush generation scandal meant that Rudd, asked about her leadership ambitions at the lunch, admitted she was “just thinking about staying in the game” – fighting to keep her current job, in other words.

Her fall from grace has been as fast as her rise to home secretary only six years after becoming an MP. Just two weeks ago, her cabinet colleagues, who cannot help but gossip about who will succeed Theresa May, agreed that Rudd would likely be one of two names chosen by Tory MPs from which the party’s 120,000 members will elect its next leader.

Rudd, a prominent Remainer in the 2016 referendum and a liberal Tory, would be up against either Boris Johnson or Michael Gove, both Leavers, ministers believed. They judge that Jacob Rees-Mogg, the backbencher and favourite among Tory activists and bookies, would be blocked by Tory MPs as a too dangerous throwback to a bygone age.

Rudd has made two mistakes on Windrush – failing to spot a systemic problem during six months of media coverage, and then handling it poorly, as shown by her confusion over whether the Home Office had targets for the removal of illegal immigrants. She answered a barrage of questions at the press gallery lunch with humility and confidence, but slipped up by saying the cabinet had not yet decided whether to stay in the customs union after Brexit. I don’t think it was an act of defiance, just that she mixed up “the” existing customs union (which the government has decided to leave) with “a” customs union, which she knew the cabinet’s Brexit sub-committee will discuss next Wednesday.

Although Rudd’s words angered Eurosceptics, who see dastardly plots around every corner, most Tory MPs are backing her for now. They know that May wants to keep her because, as the architect of the “hostile environment” culture which indirectly caused the Windrush affair, the spotlight would turn to the prime minister if Rudd departed. But one more mistake and the scales could tip against the home secretary.

I hope Rudd survives. Her instincts are more liberal than May’s. She had a difficult act to follow after May’s six years at the Home Office. “Theresa was looking over her shoulder all the time,” one cabinet minister told me. That led to mistakes – such as Rudd’s half-baked plan to force companies to disclose their number of foreign workers—which left her mortified and was quickly dropped.

Rudd struggled to put her own imprint on the Home Office. Even before Windrush, there were hints that all was not well; she walked away from a tricky Sky News question over the funding of her violent crime strategy.

If she survives, Rudd will have a chance to emerge from May’s shadow. She has delayed an immigration bill on the post-Brexit regime for EU migrants so the independent Migration Advisory Committee can gather evidence. This points to her wanting the flexible, liberal regime sought by business, but opposed by Brexiteers. It would not much help May hit her discredited target to reduce annual net migration below 100,000, which Rudd refused to endorse at Thursday’s lunch.

Even if she achieves her goal of putting right her mistakes on Windrush, Rudd is very unlikely to be a Tory leadership contender now. Her liberal credentials have been tarnished by the scandal. So has her reputation for competence. As prime minister, she would need to juggle even more balls than at the Home Office. She would surely struggle to win the BAME vote; Windrush will stick long in the mind.

Politics is a game of snakes and ladders, so who might profit from Rudd’s slide? Jeremy Hunt, the health and social care secretary, might have been Rudd’s right-hand man in a leadership contest, and so might now offer himself as the main man. His stock is rising after he won a cabinet argument for more money for the NHS. But his kite didn’t fly in 2016, and some Tories might be nervous about an election focused on his record on health.

Perhaps Rudd’s demise will open a gap for Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives. She wants to fight the 2021 Scottish parliament elections but that would – just – give her time to move south in a by-election before a 2022 general election. She is expecting her first child with her partner Jen Wilson but making it clear that will not change her political career plans. What better way for the Tories to detoxify themselves than by offering the country its first openly gay prime minister?