With Sajid Javid now settling into the Home Office, talk amongst some Tory MPs has turned to who was responsible for leaking the documents that led to his predecessors downfall.
As the Telegraph reports, some cabinet ministers are demanding an inquiry into how Whitehall leaks resulted in what they consider to be the “targeted killing” of Amber Rudd's leadership of the Home Office.
They say that friends of Amber Rudd are furious about the way civil servants were able to undermine her by apparently leaking documents about immigration policy, forcing the Home Secretary to quit on Sunday evening.
A leak on Friday said Ms Rudd was made aware of targets for deportations last June, days after the former Home secretary told MPs on the Home Affairs committee that the targets did not exist:
One Cabinet minister described Ms Rudd's forced resignation as a “targeted killing” by the civil service, saying: “Definitely there should be a leak inquiry.”
Tim Loughton, a Tory member of the Home Affairs select committee said he would raise it with his colleagues on the committee saying: “This needs to be looked into.”
Nigel Evans MP, the former deputy speaker and a senior member of the backbench 1922 committee, added: “There needs to be an inquiry. They need to work out where these leaks are coming from.”
Friends of Ms Rudd said: "Everything she has done in the past six to nine months that was important - there were pre-leaks to spoil it."
It is worrying of course if supposedly impartial civil servants have resorted to leaks of this nature to undermine their political boss. Are there not whistle-blower processes that would have done the job more formally? Perhaps though, if Amber Rudd had been on top of her brief and not tried to brazen it out she would still be Home Secretary today.
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