Ooh, I know!
- 23 May 06, 12:48 PM
It's worse than you think. That was John Reid's message about the state of the Home Office this morning.
It is what I call the Sybil Fawlty defence (for those too young to remember Fawlty Towers, Sybil Fawlty used to say "ooh I know" whenever told any piece of dreadful news).
The new home secretary described Britain's immigration system as "not fit for purpose" before going on to say "there are huge obstacles to that, if you don't have a system that is computerised, if you don't have identification , if you don't know the number here, if you don't know the number leaving".
The great political merit of this is that whatever embarrassing story now emerges he can, like Sybil, say "I know… dreadful isn't it?"
