For the past 10 days or so, the government has struggled to provide any convincing answers for its treatment of the Windrush generation.

It was just one of those things that could have happened to any government. Nobody’s fault. Especially not Theresa May’s or Amber Rudd’s. Just something that had got a bit out of hand.

What had started as a few helpful hints to remind people to talk in West Indian accents on their holidays had mysteriously snowballed into a large-scale deportation and detention policy.

On Tuesday, at a lunchtime event organised by the Open Europe thinktank, Jacob Rees-Mogg – the Tory MP and chair of the European Research Group (ERG) – came up with rather a different explanation.

The Windrush scandal was nothing to do with the prime minister and the home secretary pursuing a racist agenda with “Go Home” vans and “hostile environment” legislation to pursue arbitrary immigration targets.

No. It was worse – far worse – than that. Windrush was a direct result of the government’s commitment to socialism.

Rees-Mogg claims Home Office 'socialism' to blame for Windrush injustices - as it happened Read more

A hush fell over the room as Rees-Mogg expanded on his theory. The state had put the interests of the collective ahead of those individuals who had come to the UK perfectly legally prior to 1973, and it had been more convenient for the Home Office to make them prove who they were and show their papers.



“This is socialism,” he repeated, just in case anyone had missed it the first time. Rees-Mogg is never quite sure if he exists unless he has an audience – any passing queue will do – and can’t bear the thought of any of his insights going unreported.

It was like this. May and Rudd had been part of a 1980s KGB sleeper cell that had managed to infiltrate the Tory party. Over the years they had just bided their time, pretending to champion free-market capitalism as they tramped the streets, poking campaign leaflets through letterboxes, in the hope of winning a nomination to stand for parliament.

But now they had risen to the top, they were unleashing socialism on an unsuspecting country. If only someone had told Jeremy Corbyn about this, he would have joined the Conservatives too. Britain was in the middle of a Red Terror that no one but Rees-Mogg appeared to have noticed.

Not that he was greatly concerned to find himself in a Tory party that had been hijacked by a new breed of casually racist commies. But that was mainly because, in many ways, Rees-Mogg evidently considers himself to be its real leader.

He is polite in a rather superior, condescending way about the prime minister, while consistently damning her with faint praise. She is his useful idiot and he is willing to turn a blind eye to her militant socialist tendencies just so long as she delivers on the real prize of his hard Brexit.

Tories are now kowtowing on Windrush. It doesn’t fool us | Hugh Muir Read more

“The prime minister is an enigmatic figure,” he said, when asked if he thought she was really committed to Brexit. His enthusiasm for her was about as warm as hers for Brexit, but he would allow her to stay for now to keep Labour and the Tory remainers at bay. Though at the first sign of her making any more concessions to Brussels, he would have her summarily removed. The power behind the throne.

Rees-Mogg’s solipsism is such that he no longer thinks to question his infallibility as he runs through his greatest Brexit hits. So he misses the solecisms, errors and blatant contradictions that punctuate his appearances.

The event was called A Brexit Compromise but the only compromise he’s willing to make is for Britain to hand over the £42bn it is legally obliged to pay in the transition period. His preferred negotiating tactic with the EU appears more akin to blackmail. And so it continues.

His will is the will of the people. He speaks, therefore he’s right. Being Jacob Rees-Mogg – L’Etat, c’est moi. Enough of socialism, time for the return of the absolute ruler.