Amber Rudd’s resignation rattles British government

LONDON — Britain’s beleaguered Home Secretary Amber Rudd finally bowed to pressure to resign over a mounting migration scandal Sunday in a move that plunges the U.K. government into crisis.

Hours before she was due to make statement to MPs, Rudd, one of the Cabinet’s leading soft Brexiteers and a possible future Conservative leadership contender, quit as home secretary following fresh allegations she had misled the public over her department’s targets to remove illegal immigrants.

Rudd was replaced as home secretary by Sajid Javid, Downing Street announced Monday.

The crisis comes ahead of a crunch week for British Prime Minister Theresa May, with her senior team under pressure to resolve their differences over future customs arrangements with the European Union, seen by Brexiteers as fundamental to delivering Brexit.

Rudd’s departure — the fourth by a Cabinet minister in the last six months — risks further destabilizing the fragile consensus among May’s top team that has kept the prime minister in her job as she negotiates Britain’s exit from the EU. By appointing Javid, who like Rudd backed Remain in the 2016 EU referendum, May sought to maintain the Brexit balance among her senior ministers.

The resignation also reignites debate over the U.K.’s immigration policy, widely seen as one of the driving factors behind the campaign for Brexit. May, who herself oversaw immigration policy when she ran the Home Office between 2010 and 2016, is yet to outline how immigration will work after Brexit.

In the wake of revelations that legal Caribbean migrants who moved to Britain decades ago — the so-called Windrush generation — have been ordered to leave the country because they do not have the correct documentation, pressure mounted on the government over its policy to create a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants.

Rudd claimed there is no government “target” to increase deportations of illegal immigrants. However the Guardian reported she had written to Theresa May about the department’s aspiration to increase “removals” by 10 percent.

In a letter to the prime minister released to reporters on Sunday evening, Rudd wrote she was resigning “with great regret” because she “inadvertently misled” a parliamentary committee over the targets.

“I have reviewed the advice I was given on this issue and become aware of information provided to my office which makes mention of targets,” Rudd wrote. “I should have been aware of this, and I take full responsibility for the fact that I was not.”

May accepted Rudd’s resignation by letter on Sunday. The prime minister made clear her government’s policy toward illegal migrants would not change. “People who have entered the United Kingdom illegally or overstayed here should expect to face the full force of the law and know that they will be removed if they will not leave this country voluntarily,” May wrote.

Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said Rudd’s resignation was “inevitable.” In a statement posted online she said: “The architect of this crisis, Theresa May, must now step forward to give an immediate, full and honest account of how this inexcusable situation happened on her watch.”

Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, tweeted: “I see Amber Rudd is carrying the can for the person originally responsible for this scandal — Theresa May.”

Several left-leaning Conservatives were quick to express their support for Rudd. “So so sad to see Amber go — the government just got a bit less human,” said former Chancellor George Osborne on Twitter.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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