May rudderless

Ms Rudd officially resigned because she misled Parliament over the Windrush scandal. But the real reason that she went was because the Tories had to find someone to blame for the failure of a failed attempt to unite Tory ranks and play the race card in order to mop up the UKIP vote in the run-up to the local elections.

Although the drive to create a hostile environment for those deemed to be ‘illegal’ immigrants goes back several years, the current Tory drive coincided with an attempt to conjure up the shade of Enoch Powell, the racist politician whose race-war predictions in 1968 never actually came to pass. Even the BBC, the state-run broadcaster that has given up all pretence of impartiality, joined in the fun by airing Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech – voiced by an actor – in full last month.

Powell’s rants boosted the fortunes of the fascists on the street that were later used covertly by the reactionaries and the intelligence services to undermine support for the Wilson–Callaghan Labour governments in the 1970s. But this time around the Tory attempt to appeal to racist sentiment has backfired badly.

Nobody will miss Amber Rudd and no-one really cares about the nonentity that Mrs May has appointed to take her place. The sooner they all go the better.