Norman Baker described working with Theresa May at the Home Office as being ‘like walking through mud’. But his sudden resignation is really about trying to save his majority given the collapse in support for the Liberal Democrats after they joined the Tory-led coalition. Baker did not resign over trebling tuition fees, hiking up VAT or introducing the hated ‘bedroom tax’. He voted to keep his ministerial salary intact until a few months before the general election. Now he has orchestrated a walkout designed to make him look different from the Tories he has voted with for the past four and a half years.

Baker’s record at the Home Office is not good. He weakened ASBOs by removing the criminal sanction for breaching them and refused to introduce powerful dog control notices despite pleas from the police, the RSPCA and the families of children mauled by dangerous dogs.

But he and his party are complicit in a much wider failure. A long series of catastrophes has affected every one of the Home Office’s key policy areas, and the Liberal Democrats are just as responsible as the Tories.

The summer was marked by endless cases of people left stranded after the Passport Office built up such a vast backlog that delays in issuing new documents dragged on for months. The Tories and Liberal Democrats weakened controls on suspected terrorists by removing powers that force them to remain in particular locations, then saw two dangerous suspects evade justice by running away – one jumped in a black cab, the other disguised himself in a burka.

Last month we discovered how the Home Office’s failure to coordinate with other parts of government let 500 foreign criminals loose after they failed to deport them. They have dramatically failed to meet their own government’s immigration targets, and relations between the government and the police have not been so bad in living memory.

Just this week, the home secretary Theresa May has been forced to apologise for her personal failure in appointing a chair of the child abuse inquiry who commands the confidence of victims. Astonishingly, she has not even met with victims’ representatives to discuss the appointment, so the inquiry has still not started four months after she was pressured into setting it up.

The Home Office’s failure to tackle child abuse was at its most stark after the National Crime Agency took no action over a list of 2,300 suspected paedophiles for 14 months. It has since emerged that one of those suspects, a deputy headteacher, was left free to continue secretly filming boys in the school changing room.

Baker stayed on through all of this, and voted with the Tories at every opportunity. We have a home secretary who is in office but out of control, and Liberal Democrat ministers up to their necks in responsibility for what has gone on. Baker’s resignation is not about saving his conscience, it is about saving his political skin.

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Steve Reed MP is a shadow Home Office minister. He tweets @SteveReedMP

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Photo: Liberal Democrats