According to the lovely people composing the headlines and front pages for The Sun, it’s good-bye to summer and hello to autumn. They’re spot on: a dark, grey morning, cold and rainy, is what I’ve got here at INDEPENDENCE Daily mansions. The Met Office did not predict this yesterday. Of course, this failure makes me trust in their screaming predictions of how we’re gonna boil and frizzle in 2050 … not!

So forgive me my mental meanderings which are not only caused by the weather but also by the indoors misery of looking at the stuff the Westminster MSM want us to be upset about: “Newspaper headlines: XL bully ban and ‘Murdoch team told Sunak not to quit’.” (link).

Wading through the piles of irrelevancies in today’s online editions of our esteemed Westminster press, I came across one report in The Times – paywalled, of course. It made me sit up because it astonished me and seems to explain a lot about the ongoing disaster that is illegal immigration. Under the headline “Home Office alarm at exodus of top asylum officials” there’s a list of names which made me rub my eyes, given the introductory paragraph:

“The Home Office is facing an exodus of senior officials overseeing immigration and asylum, raising concerns over the department’s ability to implement the most radical migration legislation in a generation.” (link, paywalled)

Blimey! How bad must it be at the HO under the -female!-  Tory secretaries when so many ‘senior officials’ are leaving, just before Labour is allegedly going to come in, with another prospective female HO Sec, Ms Y. Cooper.  In case you forgot, here’s the list of previous HO Secs:

“The Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP. 2022 ~ ; The Rt Hon Priti Patel MP. 2019 to 2022 ~ The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP. 2018 to 2019 ~ The Rt Hon Amber Rudd. 2016 to 2018. ~ The Rt Hon Theresa May MP. 2010 to 2016.”

Yes, that’s right: four out of five previous HO Secs were or are female. So what do we make of this list of senior mandarins leaving the HO:

“Abi Tierney, the director-general of HM Passport Office and UK Visas and Immigration, is leaving to take over as chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU). She is a rugby fan.” (link, paywalled)

Ah – that’s a valid reason! (Yeah, I’m biased, being a Welsh rugby fan. Stop laughing!). However, HO ‘sources’, praising her a being ‘a good person’, also said that “Tierney is understood to have been overlooked for the job of second permanent secretary at the department earlier this year.” (link, paywalled). Ah. Nothing to see here then. Next:

“Cheryl Avery, director of asylum accommodation at the Home Office, is also leaving at a time when the department is struggling to provide a range of mass accommodation sites that the government has announced to cut the £6 million daily cost of hotels.” (link, paywalled)

A second lady mandarin. Is she going because the trouble of accommodating the wishes of our ‘new’ guests and the wails of all those ‘ooman roights’ lawyers, never mind the Labour-supporting Westminster press has become too hard? We’re not told where she is going. Next:

“Emma Churchill is stepping down as director-general for migration and borders, returning to the Cabinet Office. She has been replaced by Daniel Hobbs, the official in charge of the Rwanda policy and the Illegal Migration Act. Other senior staff working on immigration have left in recent months.” (link, paywalled)

Another lady mandarin … Well, I suppose going to the Cabinet Office is a promotion on the steep mandarin ladder. I note that she’ll be replaced by a gentleman mandarin. Here are two other leavers one of which left earlier:

“Tony Eastaugh is being replaced as director of immigration enforcement by Bas Javid, deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, in November. Tricia Hayes left as the department’s second permanent secretary earlier this year, replaced by Simon Ridley, who had led the Covid-19 task force in the Cabinet Office.” (link, paywalled)

Funny how ‘enforcement’ mandarins seem to be male … Were the lady mandarins too ‘soft’? Finally, another earlier retirement:

“Emma Haddad quit as director for asylum and protection last year to take up a range of charity roles, including at Amnesty International, a leading critic of the immigration crackdown.” (link, paywalled)

Yet another lady mandarin, one with interesting connections to a charity involved in criticising immigration policies. ‘Honi soit’ etc, innit like. Here’s what HO ‘’sources’ said:

“[…] the exodus of senior staff working on immigration and asylum was particularly damaging because the department was grappling with the implementation of the Illegal Migration Act, which will require the Home Office to detain and remove thousands of migrants.” (link, paywalled)

I’m sure there are many more lady mandarins with good connections to immigration charities to replace them! After all, that’s what a HO spokesperson said:

“A spokesman for the Home Office said: “The Home Office has a senior leadership team dedicated to working on the British people’s priorities, including reducing small boat crossings and cutting the asylum backlog. People naturally move roles and where senior vacancies arise we aim to fill them as swiftly as possible through fair and open processes to ensure the best people are in place to lead the department.” (link, paywalled)

I’m sick and tired of the bland, PR-Management speak! However, isn’t it illuminating that the HO mandarins who’ve been dragging their heels over illegal immigration issues are officially female, with one exception?

Being a mean, cynical and old woman, I think that there’s one good explanation for all the ‘difficulties’ the various post-May HO Secretaries had: lady mandarins not working well with and for a female boss.

I am of course not insinuating that lady mandarins don’t work well for any boss – how dare you! I wonder though if those lady mandarins fled because the thought of having to work for yet another female HO Sec – Labour’s Ms Yvette Cooper – was just too, too much. 

That’s all I have for today.A final irreverent thought: will Labour profit by gentleman mandarins replacing yon lady ones? Let me know, and have a good weekend.



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