On their deathbed, who would want to look back and say: “I am proud of creating a hostile environment for immigrants so that some people who had lived in Britain all their lives were deported to countries they had never been to”? Who wants to take responsibility for the heartbreaking stories we have been hearing?

The closest I have heard to anyone being honest about this mess is Baroness Warsi, a former Conservative party chair. “I think we were all responsible,” she said. “I would hold myself responsible as part of the government.” She went on to describe a government obsessed with unrealistic targets. The ruining of lives, the tearing apart of families, is not the result of bureaucratic ineptitude. This is policy working as intended. The collateral damage of the 2014 Immigration Act is the rupturing of lives of those we can deem, retrospectively, not “one of us”. The idea that a person can be born here or arrive as a child, raise a family and pay taxes, but still somehow be seen as completely “foreign” comes as a jolt.

It shouldn’t. David Cameron appears to have effortlessly laundered his reputation into a chillaxing shed dweller who accidentally walked us into Brexit, but he boasted of his “deport first, appeal later” policy, of crackdowns on illegal immigration, of making Britain an unattractive place.

Theresa May spoke of making things more difficult for those who live outside “formal” society. In 2014, Michael Fallon, then defence secretary, spoke of immigrants swamping us, towns “under siege”. In 2015, Cameron spoke of those in Calais camps as “a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean”. The broadcaster Katie Hopkins referred to them as insects and asked that they be shot by gun boats. As repulsed as many were, the unsayable was not just said – it was the drumbeat of so-called policy.

These awful conversations convinced the Tories that somehow they had secured the consent of the people to enact inhumane polices. This was merely about “getting real”. Parts of Labour attempted to do the same. It was embarrassing then. It is embarrassing now.

Over the past few years, we have repeatedly been told Britain is a small island and that it is full. It’s no good pointing out that much of south-east England is full of pointless golf courses. In survey after survey, people overestimate the number of migrants here, both recent and settled. In areas of low immigration, the fear is always ramped up. Both of the main parties became obsessed with numbers. The vans, the mugs, Ed Miliband’s headstone: each promising controlled immigration in some competition of inhumanity. But, as May, Rudd et al are finding out, numbers are actually people.

The Windrush folk embody what “good immigrants” should be. Settled, hardworking, patriotic. But the act, and the public consent that secured it, was based on the “bad immigrant”: illegal, taking what’s ours.

Cruelty so often hides in plain sight. The moment at which we decided to stop trying to rescue people attempting to get to Europe passed without much notice, didn’t it? In 2015, we withdrew two British boats from the search and rescue operation in the Med.

We simply passed the buck when it came to drowning toddlers. Not our people. Not one of us. This is the country we live in. Mission? Hostile environment. Outcome? Fully achieved.

Lifelong loafer seeks Commonwealth internship

Will the man whose life has been a permanent gap year finally get an internship at 70? I refer, of course, to Prince Charles. The Queen has said it is her wish that he becomes head of the Commonwealth. It’s a non-hereditary position and it had been suggested the role could be rotated between leaders. But no. It will, instead, give Charles something to do.

Tom Bower’s recent book about Charles was a lot of fun, painting him as a misery ranting at a selection of valets, butlers and typists. Who has typists? It doesn’t matter if he really takes his own toilet seat with him on (his permanent) holiday, does it? It just fits that he might.

This handover from the Queen (is the Commonwealth actually in her gift?) is an acknowledgment Charles will be king soonish and Camilla his queen, and somehow we are to think this pompous, self-pitying man has earned it.

All this is part of the weird fantasy life of the UK. People love the Queen but they do not love Charles. We will not be a United Kingdom, that’s for sure. The Commonwealth matters more than ever for some, as it could be seen as a key trading bloc. Except, of course, it isn’t a bloc. And how much trade it guarantees is open to question. Still, here we all are, in a post-colonial delusion headed up by this ageing prince. For all the kerfuffle of babies and weddings, the royal family looks very odd and out of date indeed.

There’s no need to suffer for your art

I walked out of an art performance recently. I just didn’t like it, so I left. It doesn’t matter what it was – I can respect that a lot of effort had been put in, and that others liked it – but it was not for me.

This is the only way I can tolerate a lot of culture – talks, cinema, theatre – the idea that I don’t have to stay for the whole thing. Friends of mine often feel obliged. I say life’s too short, so I just leave quietly and they know they can find me in the bar. There is huge joy in walking out halfway through something … go on, give yourself permission.