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Let’s be honest, if Jacqui Smith had quietly slipped out the back door of the Home Office (instead of somebody starting a rumour that’s she’s jumping before she’s pushed) would anybody have been any the wiser?

It’s been four years since Alex Harrowell suggested abolishing the Home Office and it’s an idea that’s lost none of its appeal. What does the Home Office actually do anyway? The department could be closed, all it’s vestigial functions outsourced, and none of us would notice.

The police more or less do what they like so cutting them loose from Home Office ‘control’ is unlikely to see much difference on the ground. Home Office pronunciations on drugs seems to have little effect so some kind of computer programme that automatically generates a press release on the issue every 18 months could easily fill that role.

Does the Home Office ‘protect the public from terrorism‘ as it claims? The police and MI5 do the heavy lifting on that front with Home Office ministers merely taking the credit on the rare occasion an actual terrorist plot is actually uncovered or keeping schtum when it’s a more common false alarm. Again, the subsidiary Home Office role of stoking public fears about terrorism and foreigners could be given to some kind of automated fear generator that emails tabloid newspapers’ news desks.

You could sack the UK Border Agency and simply give its job to a rebadged British National Party. Who better to kick brown people’s doors in at dawn before violently dragging them to stinking, nightmarish hellholes, traumatising their children and deporting them to violence or death? Hell, I bet Nick Griffin’s lot would do it for free, slashing millions off the Government’s budget. Who’d notice the difference? Certainly not the people being kicked, punched, dragged, incarcerated and shot.

Simple as that. The Home Office can follow Jacqui Smith into well-deserved oblivion.