Priti Patel’s pursual of Windrush cases only adds to her fractious and incompetent legacy

Editorial: In a government lacking in competent, media-savvy performers, but with some promising talent in the ranks below, Ms Patel should not think her position secure, in the short or the long run

It was suggested that the internal Cabinet Office enquiry into the home secretary’s behaviour will fall short of meriting her resignation, but neither will it be complimentary

A good day to bury bad news, it might be said. The birth of a baby boy to Carrie Symonds and Boris Johnson was terribly jolly news given their recent experiences with Covid-19, and all the additional anxieties that entailed for their families and friends. It dominated much of the news for a while, adding a little light to the shade of the continuing coronavirus crisis.

In the circumstances, then, it was much to the advantage of the home secretary that various disobliging stories about her conduct and the performance of her department were somewhat overshadowed. However, the severe doubts about her suitability for high office persist.

The most outright shameful revelations were those that accompanied her appearance before the Commons’ Home Affairs Committee, reminding us precisely why we need parliament to hold the executive to account even in a national emergency. A naive observer might have assumed that after two years of intense scrutiny and seven years since the first warnings were sounded within government, the Home Office might have finished with any outstanding Windrush generation cases and moved on. After all, it has better things to do now than to waste time trying to throw British citizens out of Britain.

But no; as our reporting indicates, more than 1,000 people are yet to have their cases considered, and altogether some 3,720 cases with the Windrush Taskforce are still in progress and unresolved. Certainly, as the Home Office pleads, some cases are complex but the overall numbers involved are so trivial that a tough and decisive home secretary, as Ms Patel fancies herself to be, would have cut the Gordian knots and consigned the episode to history.

She has not, however, and remains mired by bullying allegations at the Home Office and at International Development, whence she had to resign after unauthorised meetings with Israeli ministers and business people.

Her former Home Office permanent secretary, Sir Philip Rutnam, is pursuing his claim for unfair dismissal, which will, if it proceeds to a hearing at an employment tribunal, see a serving cabinet minister appear as a witness in a court of law – embarrassing, to say the least. She would have to stand down temporarily in any case while she deals with that crisis. In a confused spin exercise, it was suggested that the internal Cabinet Office enquiry into her behaviour will fall short of meriting her resignation, but neither will it be complimentary. More ominously, from her point of view, the enquiry is still “continuing” and has not yet received a final prime ministerial judgement.

In a government lacking in competent, media-savvy performers, but with some promising talent in the ranks below, Ms Patel should not think her position secure, in the short or the long run. Her strikingly rare appearances at the coronavirus press conferences are memorable only for her observation that shoplifting is coming down, and the non-apology she extended to health workers for the lack of gowns and face masks.

Not good enough, therefore, on the big issues, and there are also multiple other failings on the new points-based immigration system and trouble brewing with the police. It is rumoured that Mr Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings does not rate Ms Patel, and that she is on borrowed time. So she should be.