Home Secretary's Statement, 17th April 2012
The latest performance of the long-running Westminster End Farce The Deportation of Abu Qatada came to the Commons stage yesterday afternoon. Its current impressario, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, had news to impart.
She began with a flourish. Qatada has been arrested, she announced, in a manner that suggested that if MPs cared to incline their heads in the direction of the bar of the House, they would see the fellow writhing there, in chains. There were cheers. Or were these gasps of disbelief at the thought that, after nine years, this old favourite might at last be nearing the end of its run, to be replaced no doubt by another Lloyd Webber musical. There was no need to worry. As Mrs May started to unpack her statement, it turned out that, like one's bowels in Addis Ababa, this one will run and run. It may still be weeks or even months before Abu Qatada gets shown the door, for what are expensively known as the due processes of the law still have their course to complete. Mrs May has fixed it with the Jordanians that Qatada will be given a fair trial if he gets sent back there, but this is not an offer the hate-filled cleric will be in any hurry to embrace.
As is usual with performances of The Deportation, the show's erstwhile directors had turned out in force to boo and carp. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary in charge on the opening night, said that it would be churlish for him not to congratulate Mrs May for making progress, before accusing her of being belligerent in her attitude towards reform of the European Court of Human Rights. Less squeamish about being churlish, Alan Johnson, another of that statistically-significant sub-population, former Labour home secretaries, said that it was all Mrs May's fault for recklessly abandoning control orders.
The Queen of Churl though was undoubtedly Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, who was in no mood to serve as a mirror for Mrs May's semi-glory. Unable either to take the cleric's part, or to moan convincingly that the Government was taking too long - which, for the Labour Party, would be rather like a man who had crawled from London to Sydney for his dinner complaining about the delay in bringing the menu - Ms Cooper took refuge in the outrages of the day. Chief of these was that the Home Secretary's statement had been leaked to the Evening Standard at 1230. This Mrs May denied sedentarily with a vigorous shake of her head, so that her impressive locks, which bunch luxuriantly from her skull, like the contents of a hanging basket, fanned the reclining Ken Clarke beside her, who looked as if he might have benefitted from the experience.
Undeterred, Ms Cooper ploughed on, focussing her dissent on the immigration court, which was hearing Qatada's case simultaneously with the Home Secretary's statement. Lawyers, who presumably had been up to that point snoozing gently in deckchairs outside Queen Anne's Gate, had been "scrambled" to the court, she said, and the BBC was reporting that it was all a "bit of a mess". This did not strike one as the most damning indictment ever of Government policy and Mrs May responded patronisingly by mocking her opposite number's tendency to attack upon the slightest pretext.
Ms Cooper had a point though, for the BBC was also reporting that the Home Secretary's lawyers were telling the court that Abu Qatada would be on a plane by the end of the month. How was this compatible with the weeks or months of further lawyerly wrangling that Mrs May was promising the House? Perhaps, since shipping out Qatada is the nearest we will come to a killing bin Laden moment, Mrs May hopes to get it done in time for the council elections, since patience, resolution and an ability to sweet-talk the King of Jordan are precisely the qualities people are looking for in their local councillors. Ms Cooper had a different timescale to consider, urging to Home Secretary to confirm that Abu Qatada would be out of the country before the Olympics. One understands that Ms Cooper probably had security considerations in mind, but the thought lingers that she has hopes of getting hold of his tickets for the 100 metres final.
The Conservative backbencher Nicholas Boles had yet another timetable to offer. Mrs May needed to assure him that the cleric would be gone "long before there is next a Labour home secretary". Since it is axiomatic among political parties that the other lot will never return to power before the crack of doom, Mr Boles' timetable seemed unambitious, though not perhaps unrealistic.