Amber Rudd’s resignation rattles Theresa May’s delicate cabinet

THE most delicate balance in British politics is between those who backed Brexit and those who voted against it. So the resignation on April 29th of Amber Rudd, the home secretary and the most prominent Remainer in the cabinet, threatens to be highly destabilising for Theresa May’s already-wobbly government.

Ms Rudd quit after a fortnight of revelations about her department’s treatment of the so-called Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants, who came to Britain between 1948 and 1971. The Home Office’s recent policy of creating a “hostile environment” for illegal migrants has ended up ensnaring legal ones, including Windrush arrivals, many of whom lack the paperwork to prove their citizenship. Thousands are thought to have been denied access to housing, health care or work; some may even have been wrongly deported.