Amber Rudd shouldn’t resign as home secretary – she needs to clean up her own mess first

If Amber Rudd does manage to survive as home secretary, it will be through no great effort of her own. Telling a select committee of the House of Commons on one day that there were no targets for deportations, only to have to return to the chamber of the house the next day to say precisely the opposite is the sort of farcical performance that would have a minister deported from their own office in normal times.

Nor was this the first or the only error of fact or judgement that Ms Rudd has committed. As the evidence seeps out of the Home Department, we learn more about her eagerness to please her predecessor and now boss, Theresa May. At no point, that is, before the Windrush generation scandal broke, did Ms Rudd attempt to “humanise” the administration of her "great" department of state. She never, until her hand was forced, showed any inclination to abandon the “hostile environment” regime implemented by her predecessor. Indeed there’s some suggestion that Ms Rudd exceeded even Ms May in her zeal for taking on the sponging illegal immigrant of popular mythology. Even yesterday, she found it difficult to stick to the official line on the EU customs union.

Like Ms May, she likes to sound, look and act tough. The Tories and much of the press like that. Until, that is, things went wrong, and she looked as though she might find herself repenting at leisure on the back benches. Since then, we have heard nothing but contrition and a gushing forth of the milk of human kindness, or, as she puts it, her faith in a new “compliance environment” for her civil servants and a modest task force to sort out the accidental deportations.

So why keep her where she is? One reason is that she has, as far as can be detected, shown some genuine intent to fix the mess, if only to save her own skin – though even here there have been mishaps, such as the underqualified call centre staff deployed to manage complex and sensitive human tragedies. A further reason is that it seems unjust that she should have to carry the can for a policy that was overwhelmingly devised by Ms May and her advisers during her imperious and lengthy reign at the Home Office, and, since Ms May entered No 10, was merely sub-contracted to Ms Rudd.

It is also – just about – credible that Ms Rudd didn’t realise that there were local targets for deportations being pursued at a time when there were none for national deportations (though the infamous 100,000 cap for net migration does in fact represent a partial national target for migration). While Ms Rudd has shown herself far too ready to blame civil servants for following a policy that a Conservative-led government has dictated, it is also wrong to suppose that she can be reasonably held personally responsible for every decision made by a regional officer or Border Force official.

Ms Rudd’s allies plead that sacking her would not solve very much, and the reluctant conclusion must be that that is right. Dumping Ms Rudd and substituting her with some other of Ms May’s collection of underpowered and overpromoted ministers makes little sense. A weak and vulnerable Amber Rudd has more of an incentive to repair the damage to people’s lives than any conceivable replacement. Is the country crying out for a new home secretary or, rather, simply and earnestly, for the Windrush generation to win justice? Gavin Williamson and the other ambitious chaps around the cabinet table may have to wait a little longer to edge closer to No 10.

Bad as the migration scandals are, nor is the record of Ms May and Ms Rudd much more impressive across the rest of the Home Office’s responsibilities. Knife crime is showing a worrying trend upwards, and too little has been done to aid the places – mostly poor and deprived – and help the communities where the stabbings and gang violence threaten to become normalised. As has sometimes been remarked recently, if the knifings of teenagers were in Chelsea rather than Tottenham, would they have persisted for so long?

The migration cap was always bogus, and David Cameron urged Ms May to soften it, to little avail. Even now, when it has become a joke for the best part of a decade, Ms May makes her ministers cling to it as some sort of aspirational symbol. For Ms Rudd to protest that the government doesn’t have the sort of “targets culture” the Blair-Brown governments supposedly suffered from is ludicrous.

With Brexit, with a discredited migration cap, despite all the public attention and concern, with tales of injustice and arbitrary deportation – the “deport now, ask questions alter” approach – British migration policy is as big a mess as it has ever been. What will happen to migration targets when free movement of EU citizens ceases on 29 March next year? What will happen to EU citizens in the UK who wish to marry someone from the EU – and vice versa? How many visas will be issued to India or China in return for trade deals? Should there be, as Boris Johnson has urged, an amnesty of illegal immigrants? Should the British-born children of illegal migrants be deported or deprived of schooling and NHS care?

Certainly, Ms Rudd should answer questions about what she and her predecessor knew, and when, about the injustices meted out to the Windrush generation; but they also have to present the country with an immigration policy, to borrow a phrase, that works for all. Apologies, and even resignations, are not enough.