What Can A Home Secretary Actually Do These Days?

We live in quite a farcical age. One where the home secretary has to tell the police they should be investigating low-level crime. It’s no secret that so-called petty crime, especially in London, has become a growing problem in recent years. It’s also no secret that consecutive Tory governments haven’t at all helped the situation. A system they are supposed to control, and a culture they should theoretically influence, has instead manipulated and defeated them. Sheer cowardice—the fear of civil servants who are supposed to be driven by a sense of public duty, not their own eccentric biases—is damaging Britain. Such a rise in crime is a symptom, not a cause, of an activist civil service that feels free to paralyse ministers, leak to the media, all while expressing loyalty to supranational institutions and avoiding punishment. Of course such a complaint is largely seen as taboo or as itself a form of activism, yet it is the truth.

Let’s take the example of former home secretary, Suella Braverman, who was in a ridiculous position. Her plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda was recently ruled unlawful by the UK Supreme Court. Yet, even if the government changed domestic legislation, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) can still in principle void British policy decisions. The idea that only Brexit was needed to take back control was misleading. Indeed, it could be argued that many Brexiteers themselves failed to understand this in 2016, and are now puzzled that the government’s hands are still tied to the continent.

Now of course, hypothetically, a simple Act of Parliament is all it would get to take Britain out of the ECHR. Yet, despite having an 80-seat majority, most of her parliamentary party don’t want to—despite the fact that failure to tackle immigration is bound to cost them dearly at the next election. Indeed, following her removal from government, Suella’s complaints in a bombshell letter accusing Rishi Sunak of duplicity can only raise serious questions. She states that tackling immigration was the price for her support, and that he failed to honour his word. She even went further, accusing him of illegitimacy and claiming that they had agreed to “deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol” and “reduce overall legal migration.” Neither, of course, was delivered.

 Then of course it gets even better, because the civil servants who technically serve the government oppose their policies. Indeed, the Home Office’s former asylum boss recently joined Amnesty International, which campaigns against the Home Office’s policy. Emma Haddad, profiled in The Telegraph, is described as deliberately challenging and obstructing the Ministers she is supposed to serve.

In other words, democratically elected government ministers no longer run their own departments. Civil servants have taken it upon themselves to create their own regime. In Haddad’s case, this involved telling case workers that illegals who lied on their applications should be granted asylum anyway. Now you might argue that ministers should grow a spine and fire the underlings who disobey them. Which of course they could do, but it’s not without consequences. Because of our insane employment laws, such firings can result in lengthy legal cases. This happened with Sir Philip Rutnam, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, who resigned after claiming a smear campaign had been orchestrated against him.

He was accused of briefing against the elected Conservative government to the media, an allegation the Tories didn’t bother to investigate. Instead, in a predictable act of weakness, the prime minister asked his advisor to investigate his own minister (Priti Patel), rather than stand up to the blob. The result? Patel was found to have bullied staff and Mr. Rutnam was given compensation for unfair dismissal, even though he resigned. Yes, really.

So Suella could have indeed fired every civil servant under the sun who tried to stop her policy (although there are rumours that she was overly obsequious at times), but the result would have been court case after court case. And there’s no chance of changing employment law that makes this madness possible, because nobody in parliament is determined enough to consider it. Indeed, as a neutral spectator, it can be observed that modern Tories are allergic to passing laws that benefit their voters.

Being the home secretary these days is incredibly strange. You are supposed to hold one of the Great Offices of State, yet the system that apparently serves you actually hates you. What’s more, our current system is subversive, as we have an unelected House of Lords, judiciary, civil service and media obstructing anybody who wants to improve anything. On top of that, there are so many rules, regulations, committees and inquiries, that it takes a Herculean effort for one part of government to find out what another part is doing at any particular moment. This is why one minister’s department fights illegal immigration, whilst another government minister’s department funds pro-migrant NGOs. You know, the same NGOs who take the government to court.

The cynic will say this is all planned, that the Rwanda deal was meant to fail. Yet cabinet splits over immigration, coupled with civil servants attempting to oust right-leaning ministers, would suggest otherwise. And the idea that governments want to be sued, by the NGOs they finance with taxpayer cash, is absurd. It’s quite easy to say that the Conservative government is useless, weak and indifferent—which is indeed true. However, the real situation is a lot more complicated. There are some ministers of good quality, who in a better system and previous age might have been able to get things done. Yet the lack of support from their centrist colleagues, coupled with the sclerotic system in which they find themselves, makes their work completely impossible.

Moreover, all of the above is intensified by the lack of joined-up thinking among the centre-right. Their current position is that labour shortages require an increase in work visas. Yet their own policy of keeping a majority of young adults in education past 20 causes labour shortages. If you want more workers, perhaps keeping 18 to 25-year-olds out of the workforce isn’t a particularly great idea. In fact, Lord William Hague recently wrote an article where he indulged in precisely this kind of cognitive dissonance without realising it. In his view, young adults should be required to do national service for years, yet he also expressed dissatisfaction at the gaping number of job vacancies to be filled. Does he not realise that his first idea would make the facts underlying his second complaint far worse? 

Overall, the entire role of ‘minister’ is now itself a mystery. Do they have power? Well, on paper they do. Are they willing to use it? When it comes to legislating against their domestic enemies, absolutely not. Some may argue that a Labour victory next year might change this dynamic, as a left-leaning civil service will be more amenable to them. Yet just a glance at Sir Keir Starmer—and his failure to deliver a conference speech without disruption from his own extremists—might suggest otherwise. Woke might be unpopular but it’s still winning a culture war nobody can yet reverse. Without right-leaning ministers who have a parliamentary majority—and are willing to legislate their own voter’s wishes—this will continue indefinitely. 

One thing that marks governments of the anglosphere is the lack of proportional representation. Now I know this isn’t a fan favourite on the political Right, but the lack of it makes a government complacent. It is exceedingly rare that coalitions will have to be made. As a result, the two main parties are always guaranteed some plausible shot at power, and there’s no meaningful pressure on them to implement substantial change. The reason Sweden, Denmark, and Italy have seen enviable changes to immigration policy—or new parties enter government coalitions—is because of the preferential system, which is a basic version of PR. The fact that every vote counts means that the centre is forced to rise to insurgent challenges, rather as businesses are in the private sector, thereby forcing all parties—not just those on the fringe—to compete for votes more rigorously.

In my opinion, this is one way to make a government implement their voters’ wishes, but it’s not enough. There needs to be a complete dismantling of the legalistic compensation culture that makes sacking civil servants so difficult, and a brand of conservatism which understands that changing the country means changing the law. The fact that there have been five Tory governments implementing liberal-lite policy for almost 14 years is a sad testament to a monumentally wasted opportunity.