Windrush, Syria and the miserable state of British politics

What a dismal week this has been for British politics. And it is still only Wednesday. The distinguishing feature of this political moment is its shabbiness. The two stories dominating the news this week, Windrush and Syria, each demonstrate as much. 

The Windrush scandal – it ceased being a saga some time ago – is shameful. But it is not simply a question of Home Office incompetence (some of which is only, when dealing with matters of significant complexity, to be expected) but, worse, one of Home Office vindictiveness. It is a feature of the system, not a bug within it. A system which, quite deliberately, excises humanity and common sense from its calculations and concentrates, instead, on box-ticking and raw numbers. 

Ironically, the children of Windrush are the lucky ones. Like the Gurkhas before them their story is one with which the public instinctively sympathise. They are the “deserving” immigrants – now, of course, not immigrants at all but British citizens – who may be contrasted with others who, in various inchoate but understood ways, may be considered less deserving.