Smash hit

These are the crimes that police know about or that have been checked so far. The Home Office still has no idea how many other rapes, robberies or burglaries have been committed by the remaining 944 foreign criminals who have been released without being considered for deportation. “More than 50% of people released from prison reoffend within two years,” said one expert last week.

If those figures were replicated among the missing foreign criminals, hundreds of new crimes would be committed.

Clarke and the Home Office were in denial on Friday, still portraying the affair as an administrative cock-up instead of a failure of leadership. “I have apologised and I continue to apologise,” Clarke said. “The genuine shortcomings which have been revealed will be repaired and we will learn the lessons to make whatever further changes are needed.”

Not good enough, said David Davis, the Conservative shadow home secretary. The scandal, he said, had revealed how Clarke’s leadership of the Home Office had “done exactly a reversal of what the Home office’s job is — to protect the public”.

Yesterday it was clear what could be achieved when the political will was there. Police were raiding addresses across the country, rounding up foreign criminals for potential deportation.

However, for the victims who had suffered from crimes committed after these offenders were not deported, it was months, even years too late. Clarke was hanging on to office — but by his fingertips.

In new Labour’s heyday, Downing Street would have fought back to regain the political initiative. Now the party machine seemed helpless and Tony Blair was at the mercy of events. And they certainly came thick and fast last week.

John Prescott, the supposed symbol of “honest” old Labour, was exposed as an adulterer who had betrayed his wife of 44 years. Lurid pictures showed Prescott, 67, cavorting at office parties with his diary secretary, a 43-year-old blonde called Tracey Temple. No wonder Prescott’s own staff had described his department as comparable with a “pantomime horse”.

Then Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, was humiliated by the nurses who are supposed to have benefited from the billions that the government has poured into the health service.

As Hewitt attempted to extol NHS reforms to the nurses’ party conference, they heckled her so much that she had to abandon her speech.

If this was not enough, the parliamentary public accounts committee last week revealed that the Treasury was wasting £2 billion on tax credits that should not have been paid.

Meanwhile, at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, they were failing to pay £1 billion owed to desperate farmers.

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