It’s time for the crocodile tears over the Windrush generation to stop. Along with the hypocrisy. And the faux national outrage. Ignore the increasingly tortuous paper trail. The leaks, and counter leaks, and counter-counter leaks. The demands for an explanation of what Amber Rudd knew, what she didn’t know, and when she did or didn’t know it.

Let us also drop the fashionable conceit that ‘Theresa May is using her Home Secretary as a human shield’. It’s not just the Prime Minister hiding behind Amber Rudd. An entire nation is hiding behind Amber Rudd.

Windrush is the outrage we demanded. ‘Another day, another shocking revelation,’ Diane Abbott claimed in the House of Commons last week. But there is nothing shocking about it – quite the opposite. Windrush was as inevitable as night following day.

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It’s time for the crocodile tears over the Windrush generation to stop. Along with the hypocrisy. Pictured: The Empire Windrush docked in Southampton

Yes, it is a crisis with several components. Ministerial incompetence being one. Both Mrs May and her Home Secretary were incomprehensibly slow to wake up to the scale of the problems. The growing list of cancelled operations, refused benefit claims and last-minute deportation reprieves should have woken the Government from its slumber.

Another is the continuing dysfunctionality within the major departments of state. It is seen as poor form for a Minister to blame their officials, and Rudd has learnt to her cost what happens to those who do.

But having spoken to government insiders, it is clear vital information on the full implication of policy changes requiring employers, NHS staff, landlords and other bodies to demand evidence of people’s citizenship or immigration status was not effectively communicated by civil servants. ‘Until two weeks ago we honestly thought this affected about ten people,’ one adviser told me.

And as ever, there is Brexit. ‘You have to understand it’s all-consuming,’ one Minister told me. ‘It’s a black hole sucking the heart out of government. It’s all anyone can focus on.’

Let us also drop the fashionable conceit that ‘Theresa May is using her Home Secretary as a human shield'. Pictured: The PM speaking during questions this week

BUT ultimately, these are side issues. Windrush has a single, dark heart. The decision by successive administrations to create a ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants entering, or planning to enter, the United Kingdom.

Contrary to liberal perception, the Windrush generation have not been the targets of a racist drive to evict them from their country of citizenship. Quite the opposite. They were supposed to be excluded from this dragnet of undesirables. That they were ensnared was a product of incompetence, rather than prejudice. Yet it was inevitable incompetence. The idea you can create an environment of hostility, without contamination of the surrounding area, is a fantasy. Doubly fantastical, when the department supposedly leading the policy was once dubbed ‘not fit for purpose’ by its own Secretary of State, and has shown precious little sign of shunning that unwanted moniker.

But again, to lay the blame at the door of the ill-named Home Department is a fallacy. The hostile environment’ policy is not a Frankenstein’s monster that has somehow burst free from a secret lab in the bowels of 2 Marsham Street to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting populace. It is the product of a national consensus. One that includes politicians of all political persuasions, the media, think-tanks and – crucially – the vast majority of the British people.

It’s not just the Prime Minister hiding behind Amber Rudd. An entire nation is hiding behind Amber Rudd. Pictured: Amber Rudd speaking during Prime Minsiter's questions earlier this week

Do we again need to be reminded of the slow, steady march of public opinion on immigration? The 900,000 votes the BNP secured in the 2009 European elections. The nearly four million votes won by Ukip at the 2015 General Election. The 17 million votes Leave harvested in the EU referendum two years ago.

It’s clear some people do. ‘Do not try to hide behind me or the Labour Party,’ Yvette Cooper raged at the Prime Minister on Wednesday. ‘She was warned repeatedly that the damage her obsession with her net migration target was doing.’ That’s the same Yvette Cooper who castigated Mrs May in 2013 with the words: ‘The backlog in finding failed asylum seekers has gone up. The number of illegal immigrants deported has gone down… this is a growing catalogue of failure. Yet illegal immigration is deeply damaging.’

But while Ms Cooper’s opportunism is glaring, it is ultimately irrelevant. Yes, she has contributed in her own small way to the hostile environment that underpins Windrush. But in doing so she was simply acting under instruction from the British people.

I still remember a meeting I had with David Cameron when he was Prime Minister. ‘If I never had to mention immigration again I’d be happy,’ he told me. Which is the private view of almost every mainstream politician I have ever met. But they have all faced up to an unpalatable but inviolate truth. The public will on immigration cannot be defied without opening a vacuum that is rapidly filled by the street-hawkers of political hate.

They are about to be forced to face that truth again. Over the past week there has been a liberal feeding frenzy over Windrush. It has seen us go from righteous rage at the treatment of British citizens, to a misguided attempt to dismantle an effective removals regime, to a stark-staring-bonkers call by Boris Johnson for a blanket amnesty for existing illegal migrants.

Now a backlash is looming. A majority of Britons think the Windrush generation has been treated unfairly. But that sense of unfairness does not trump their belief that immigration – never mind illegal immigration – must be curbed. And they have decided if the way of doing that is a hostile environment for illegal migrants, so be it.

WE CAN’T do this again. We cannot let compassion blind us to reality. The political class and the public are dangerously out of step once more. You cannot feed voters a narrative of crisis in the NHS, housing and schools, and low-wage employment, then expect them to pivot and rage against injustice towards illegal immigrants.

Out in the country, Windrush has changed nothing. When the faces of those caught up in the scandal drift from the front pages, the status quo will reassert itself. And it demands harsh medicine for the perceived problem of illegal migration.

‘This is not who we are,’ a newspaper editorial sombrely intoned this week. But it is.

Esther... and her really close ally

As the embattled Amber Rudd fights off calls for her resignation, Cabinet colleagues have been rallying to her defence.

Well, some Cabinet colleagues. The Home Secretary has managed to get herself embroiled in a legislative tug-of-war with Welfare Secretary Esther McVey over the introduction of a new Immigration Bill.

In the wake of Windrush, Rudd wants the Bill kicked into the long grass. McVey is desperate for its introduction, because it clarifies the work and benefit status of EU citizens in the UK.

So it was interesting to see Tory backbencher Philip Davies rise at Home Office questions last week to innocently ask: ‘Can the Home Secretary tell us what has happened to the long-awaited and much-needed Immigration Bill and when it might appear before the House?’

Davies just happens to be the partner of one Esther McVey. A coincidence, I’m sure.

Former Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb has been seen hobbling around Westminster after fracturing his ankle playing rugby against a team of Irish parliamentarians. ‘It was an unfortunate accident,’ he tells me, ‘although come to think of it, I do think I heard someone saying “that’s for Brexit” just before I hit the ground.’ I think they call that a hard border.