Lest you believe that political hypocrisy is only an American political crop, take a gander at a big story breaking in Great Britain: the UK immigration minister who drew fire for a harsh crackdown on illegal immigrants is resigning for employing an illegal immigrant as his cleaning lady:
Britain’s immigration minister, already under fire for what critics said was an overly harsh crackdown on illegal immigrants, resigned Saturday — after it was learned that his cleaning lady was an illegal immigrant.
Downing Street announced that Prime Minister David Cameron had accepted the resignation of Mark Harper “with regret,” calling it “an honorable decision.”
Harper, 43, a Tory MP representing the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, became immigration minister in 2012. He was widely criticized last year for a government advertising campaign that sent mobile billboards into racially mixed neighborhoods warning illegal immigrants to “go home or face arrest.”
In his resignation letter, Harper contended that he never broke the letter of any law, saying he ran numerous background checks on the foreign woman he hired as a cleaner in 2007. He said that as he was preparing to push a new immigration bill in Parliament late last year, he tried to find copies of her documentation, “given this focus on these matters.”
“Unfortunately I was unable to locate them,” he wrote. On Thursday, he wrote, he was informed that the woman did not have indefinite clearance to remain in the country.
“I consider that as Immigration Minister, who is taking legislation through Parliament which will toughen up our immigration laws, I should hold myself to a higher standard than expected of others,” he wrote.
There is always an explanation in these matters, but to use that awful, overused, trite journalistic phrase:
It doesn’t pass the smell test.
But The Telegraph’s Iain Martin gives a good explanation for why he’s quitting now:
If the creators of the Westminster satire The Thick of It had decided to devise an episode around an ambitious immigration minister discovering that his cleaner did not have a right to work in the UK, fans of the show would probably have dismissed the plot as far-fetched.
Surely any half-sensible minister responsible for immigration – particularly a minister as bright as the fast-rising Tory star Mark Harper – would check properly that his cleaner was not an “illegal”? After all, this is the Tory who identified himself so closely with the infamous “go home” poster vans, commissioned to travel around reminding illegal immigrants that they should not be here.
If Mr Harper was telling other people to “go home”, shouldn’t he have gone home and checked that his cleaner was squeaky clean and eligible to work in the UK?
Mr Harper’s swift and honourable resignation yesterday suggests that he understood immediately that his position was so inherently ridiculous that he had no choice. As he said in his letter to the Prime Minister: “Although I complied with the law at all times, I consider that as immigration minister, who is taking legislation through Parliament which will toughen up our immigration laws, I should hold myself to a higher standard than is expected of others.”
Last night supporters of Mr Harper were already saying that it is unfair that he had to resign, and that perhaps his departure could have been avoided. He does seem to have been particularly unlucky in carrying out checks but being caught out because they were insufficiently rigorous. The cleaner’s documents are reported to have been fakes.
Still, the Prime Minister had to accept his resignation. If Mr Harper had attempted to tough it out, he would have rapidly become an object of opposition and media ridicule stretching on for days if not weeks. Any opposition, particularly this close to a general election, likes to encourage voters to believe that an administration in its final months is tired and prone to scandal. Ed Miliband and his colleagues would have mined a rich seam of Mark Harper jokes.
Twitter is abuzz:
Here's more on "decent", "honourable" Mark Harper, who has just resigned over employing an undocumented immigrant. http://t.co/kKbMz76WYn
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) February 8, 2014
Mark Harper, the Con immigration minister who's just resigned.. I once sent him by birth cert to prove I wasn't born yesterday 😮
— Emperor von Bears (@halfabear) February 9, 2014
More on "decent", "honourable" Mark Harper who resigned over employing an undocumented immigrant – RT@OwenJones84 http://t.co/BHOb1pNmCk
— Dev Raval (@D_Raval) February 8, 2014
Having just resigned, Mark Harper MP, who was behind the "go home" lorries, has one final message: pic.twitter.com/efu5ojHGLz
— Ian Jones (@edwinmandella) February 8, 2014
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.