Why did Theresa May deport my homeless friend?

I’ve heard some excellent things about our Home Secretary, Theresa May. People who work in her department say she’s bright and hard-working, and that she runs around on her hamster wheel of ministerial duties as nimbly as any political hamster could be expected to.

If she has a fault, it’s said, it’s that she doesn’t have a grand plan — the Home Office wheel spins round, but to no particular end.

Well, that’s all to the good, say my sensible friends — who wants a reforming secretary of state? No good can come of a politician with ideas. It’s the one approving thing also said about Cameron: at least he doesn’t have an agenda.

Well, I’m not so sure that isn’t a stupid thing to say. There are casualties of reform — but there are casualties of aimlessness, too, and these are often the least deserving. If, for instance, the Home Office has no real idea about who or why it wants to deport, then any old sap will do.

I’ve an example up my sleeve, a man I’ll call Marc for fear of getting him into trouble again. He’s an interesting man, Marc, good-looking, self-sufficient, stubborn as a goat. He’s from France but he sleeps rough in London because, in the grand tradition of stubborn Frenchmen, he chooses to be an outsider, and also because he has a vocation.

Marc’s vocation is to appreciate art, modern art in particular, and it’s why he’s in London, home of the Young British Artist. If there’s an exhibition at the Whitechapel, an installation in the Heywood, a new Antony Gormley at White Cube, Marc will have seen it 20 times. If you visit the Turbine Hall of a weekend, the chances are that Marc has occupied a space in your peripheral vision.