Gerald Warner: Enjoy Theresa May’s games without frontiers, but the joke’s on us

“IT WISNAE me! A big boy did it and ran away…” That was the essence, if not quite the delivery style, of Home Secretary Theresa May’s defensive claims last week as the UK Border Agency scandal put her in the queue for the door marked “Exit”, immediately behind Liam Fox.

Her problem, of course, is that the big boy who allegedly did it, Brodie Clark, is not running away.

On the contrary, he is squaring up to his former boss and showing every intention of taking her on in a bare-knuckle fight. And why would he not, since her panic-stricken breach of the employment laws by suspending him and denouncing him in the House of Commons virtually guarantees him a £140,000 compensation pay-out, on top of a pension of up to £65,000 and a lump sum of £190,000? That is not a bad recompense for running the UK Border Agency, which might be better renamed the Royal Corps of Commissionaires, since its principal duty is to hold the door open for immigrants entering Britain.

May has for too long taken up space that might more profitably be occupied by a vacuum. Of all the nonentities in public life, she has a good claim to be the shallowest. Her irresistible rise in the Cameron-occupied Conservative Party owes nothing to talent and everything to her ability to parrot the inane mantras of the “modernisers”. After gifting Labour the catchphrase “the Nasty Party” to demonise the Conservatives, at their conference in 2002, she followed it up with her cabaret performance at the 2005 conference when the kitten-heeled harridan served notice to quit on traditional Tories (“There is no place for you in our [sic] Conservative Party”). They took her at her word, which is why Cameron failed to win a majority against that most busted of all flushes Gordie No-Mates.

May’s adaptability, such as denouncing the Equality Act in opposition and embracing it in government, makes her a natural soulmate of a principles-free premier such as Dave. The strains of government, however, have created fissures in May’s political maquillage. The affair of the asylum seeker’s cat was a foretaste of gaffes to come. Now it transpires that unknown numbers of foreigners were allowed to enter Britain during the summer with their credentials virtually unchecked. How many? The Home Secretary does not know. Did they include potential terrorists? The Home Secretary does not know. Will she resign? The Home Secretary does know the answer to that: not on your nelly.

The original script was minimalist: a “pilot” scheme had been run whereby immigration staff were permitted “under limited circumstances”, to admit European Economic Area nationals without opening the biometric chip on their passports. Clearly, Border Agency boss Brodie Clark had exceeded this remit and May was incandescent. Then some well-wisher leaked a document with the catchy title UK Border Agency Interim Operational Instruction Issue BF 01.29.11, which put a slightly different complexion on matters. This instruction told staff they should “only endorse the document and question visa-holders, when there is perceived to be a risk”. Since European Economic Area nationals do not require visas, this clearly referred to a significant relaxation of controls for non-Europeans too.

With asteroid BF 01.29.11 on a collision course towards both May and Clark, Home Office officials explained this was a longstanding health and safety measure, not part of the pilot. In fact it seems to have been devised by Gordie No-Mates’ government. That is strange, because unchecked immigration has no more ferocious critic than Labour, determined to outdo those open-borders pinkos in the BNP, at least since 7 May, 2010, as witness the righteous indignation of Yvette Cooper last week. May was so unsporting as to point out that Cooper’s party had presided over 2.2 million net immigration, a 450,000 asylum seekers backlog and the Human Rights Act. In fairness, that was before the great Enlightenment of May 2010, when May herself opposed the Equality Act.

It will be good entertainment when Clark gets into his stride, giving evidence before the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday. Entertainment, and no more. No mainstream political party will do anything about unlimited immigration: their political culture will not permit it. Tired mantras such as “racist” and “xenophobic” still haunt their consciousness; ditto Home Office officials. The latest e-petition, which deplores mass immigration, collected the 100,000 signatures needed for a Commons debate in a matter of days. As with Europe, nothing will be done. The economic meltdown may alter that. It may be the day is coming when much will be done to address the grievances of the British people across a vast range of issues, though we may be confident no politicians practising today will be involved.