Sajid Javid outside the Home Office in Westminster, London, after he was appointed as the new Home Secretary. April 30,2018. Stefan Rousseau/Press Association. All rights reserved. There is something bittersweet and something definitely fishy in Amber Rudd’s resignation. Many have celebrated it as a victory against Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’. At the Guardian they have probably uncorked a bottle of anti-Brexit prosecco. David Lammy MP whose relentless campaign for the Windrush generation has moved even usually xenophobic MPs and perhaps the Daily Mail has celebrated, posting a photo of himself next to The Wire’s Omar Little.
The ‘Windrush fiasco’ as herself called it, exploded under Amber Rudd’s watch, but it was not of her own making. The political responsibility for the appalling and dehumanising treatment of the Windrush generation lies squarely with Theresa May: the bad management of the story is on Amber Rudd. The hostile environment is May’s flagship policy, the one that arguably made her a darling of the likes of The Sun and Daily Mail and landed her the PM job. The hostile environment is May’s flagship policy, the one that arguably made her a darling of the likes of The Sun and Daily Mail and landed her the PM job.
The Guardian has been publishing the stories of the Windrush generation for months. There is no way Amber Rudd or anyone in Cabinet can claim they just found out about them last week, but they didn’t act on them. Why? Because those stories were the wanted and expected outcomes of their own immigration policy, not isolated cases or bureaucratic errors, those stories were exactly what the hostile environment was all about, until they no longer were, and the Windrush stories turned into a scandal and a fiasco.
