© Hannah McKay / Reuters
Rudd has been under increased pressure to resign for more than a week since she was accused of misleading Parliament over whether her department had targets for the removal of immigrants.
In a letter to May, Rudd said she was standing down on Sunday night, once again claiming that she mistakenly misled parliament and had no knowledge of the target system.
"I feel it is necessary to do so because I inadvertently misled the Home Affairs Select Committee over targets for removal of illegal immigrants," Rudd said in a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May as cited by Reuters. "I should have been aware of this, and I take full responsibility for the fact that I was not."
Rudd's departure comes on the same day that the Guardian published a private letter to Theresa May from Rudd in January last year, in which she outlined her "ambitious but deliverable" target to deport 10 percent more illegal immigrants over the "next few years."
Rudd denied having any knowledge of the use of deportation targets as recently as Friday night, when she took to Twitter to state that she would not be resigning, so as to"ensure immigration policy is fair and humane."
Rudd insisted she was not aware of the use of "specific removal targets" in the Home Office, but conceded in her apologetic statement that she should have known. She was due to make a statement about the scandal in Parliament on Monday.
Last week, a leaked internal document revealed that the Home Office did have targets for the removal of illegal migrants. The document discussing such targets had been copied to Rudd's office, however, in her Twitter statement Rudd claimed she didn't see the notice, but she admitted that it was copied to her office "as many documents are."
Rudd reportedly phoned May on Sunday evening to reveal her intention to step down, with a spokesman for No. 10 later announcing that the PM accepted her resignation.
Reader Comments
There's a tactic the main character's army uses whereby they invade an area and purposely drive the residents out of all the villages until these massive population exoduses march (or are herded) in to targeted bigger cities which are forced to take in their fellow citizens, but it causes havoc to the city's infrastructure. The invading army are basically using the country's population as a weapon
The chapters were written at the peak of the European migrant crisis and US-led invasion of Syria. Very clever author
I bet if the author stated his point prior to the book being published - before savvy readers such as SOTTites like you discovered it - it never would have seen the light of 'publishing's day.'
Pardon my cynicism, but I get the feeling that if 1984 had never been written, and someone submitted something similar today (anticipating what the author thought the future held, and that it would occur far more quickly than the average reader would realize - well, it, too, wouldn't be published.
An example of this I've noted before is how, by WWI, the book publishing business had gotten into full swing and the PTB were too worried about having a war, creating the Fed, etc., so that they didn't have the time/people needed to monitor and censor books that might make the masses question their place in the order of things.
Thus, I dare say, if the book, "Under Fire, The Story of a Squad", by Henri Barbusse, (Read it for free, here: [Link] ) had been submitted for publication in the third year of WWII, rather than WWI, at that latter time it would not have been published, because it all too clearly showed the true horror of 'modern war' in the trenches. After reading that, I would have rather been in Vietnam.
R.C.