Theresa May and the Curse of the Home Office

THE CURSE of the Home Office - graveyard of many political careers - has hit Theresa May in the shape of Brodie Clark, the head of the border agency who quit last night and is taking the Home Secretary to an industrial tribunal.

She may survive - David Cameron cannot afford to lose another Cabinet minister so soon after the resignation of Liam Fox. But she risks being wounded by Clark's legal action against her. It could leave May - one of the few women in the Cabinet - looking like a lame duck.

Speaking on BBC Newsnight last night, Jonathan Baume, the head of the top civil servants' union, the First Division Association, revealed that Clark will be accusing May of constructive dismissal from his £135,000-a-year post.

Baume said Brodie would fully answer May's charges at a hearing of the Commons home affairs committee next week. "It's wrong for the secretary of state to act as judge and jury," said Baume.

The row over the border agency's decision to relax its immigration checks to ease the queues at ports of entry in the summer was already serious. That's because May had admitted that she did not know - and nobody ever would - how many illegal immigrants had slipped into Britain as a result.

But the row suddenly took a more serious turn when May, giving evidence to the home affairs committee yesterday, accused Brodie of acting against her specific instructions.

Clark, who had been suspended last week pending a Home Office investigation, then hit back by issuing a statement completely contradicting May's account and announcing he was immediately leaving the Home Office.

"With the Home Secretary announcing and repeating her view that I am at fault, I cannot see how any process conducted by the Home Office or under its auspices, can be fair and balanced," he said.

The stand-off is highly damaging for May who is being accused by Home Office insiders of keeping too many of her decisions close to her chest, such as her approval of the border control agency pilot scheme to relax the checks. She claims Brodie may have acted illegally by applying them nationally without her authorisation.

Labour intend to plunge the knife in today by demanding the publication of May's secret orders to border control agency staff. This will run and run, and unlike the terrorists who may have slipped through the net on her watch, May has no hiding place. ·