Theresa May and an 'understanding' on Abu Qatada

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/19/theresa-may-sketch-abu-qatada

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Unlike omnibuses – you wait for ages then three arrive together – omnishambles just keep coming for this government, one after the other, regularly and frequently.

Poor Theresa May was obliged to appear at the Commons on Thursday to explain the latest: the screw-up over dates that allowed lawyers for Abu Qatada to refer his case back to the European court of human rights.

Mrs May is pretty tough. Home secretaries are like rodeo riders on bucking broncos – there is little elegant about the performance, but the audience gasps with admiration at anyone who can stay in the saddle at all. And Mrs May has been there for almost two years.

But she was distinctly evasive on the matter of dates – had she not checked the deadline before she made her victory statement on Tuesday? Hadn't scores of people – officials, the BBC, the Home Office cleaning ladies – not warned her that she was jumping in a day early?

The timing had been based on an "understanding", she said. Her officials had been conducting talks with the court "on the basis that the date was Monday". What she apparently couldn't say was: "I was certainly right and they are certainly wrong." That would be what Francis Bacon called "a hostage to fortune", indeed a hostage shackled to a radiator in some Middle East hellhole.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, tried to be merciless. "On the Tuesday night deadline, the home secretary was partying – with X Factor judges," she spat. (Theresa, in a glamorous black silk number, attended a party hosted by a Tory showbiz agent). The government benches erupted into furious if inflated rage. Yvette said she knew there had been some confusion, but even she had never realised that the confusion would be on this scale!

Theresa came close to losing it, and implied that Yvette didn't actually, really, deep down, want to see Abu Qatada back in Jordan. So Labour wants weirdy beardy terrorists strolling round our streets as the Olympics approach! Cue more shuddering outrage, this time from the opposition.

Meanwhile, it was clear that Theresa was fighting on two fronts. Behind her, many Tories are desperate for us to get out from under the Strasbourg court, with its quaint belief that human rights apply to everyone, even the unpopular.

Sir Peter Tapsell stood up – no, he arose. "Britain should withdraw from these legal processes!" he thundered, and his words hung over the chamber like the black clouds outside. Charles Walker favoured the approach demotic: "Get this scumbag out of the country … and give the metaphorical two fingers to the ECHR!" he yelled – and it wasn't near closing time.

Dennis Skinner asked sarcastically if the home secretary knew what day it was. "Yes," was the only fitting reply, and that is what he got. Keith Vaz was subtler, even silkier. How was it that a north London firm of solicitors had managed to out-outwit the "very expensive" lawyers employed by the Home Office?

And if she'd looked more carefully, she would have seen that the timing actually began the next day. But she would no doubt explain at Mr Vaz's select committee next week – "you'll keep for later" was his message.

But Theresa has survived worse, and will probably survive this.