Home secretary's success in finding solution to long-running legal dispute is likely to boost her wider political ambitions
Theresa May, the home secretary, was winning rare all-party plaudits on Sunday for sticking to her guns and doggedly finding her way through the legal thicket that allowed her finally to remove Abu Qatada from Britain.
Calmness, sheer determination, thoroughness and prime ministerial were among the many plaudits being sent her way.
Six home secretaries have tried to get rid of the radical cleric, and she was both fortunate and strong enough to be there when he finally ran out of options. Notoriously, the Home Office is the graveyard of political reputations, the department where ministers discover either their civil service or the law render them frustrated, powerless or railing about a department that is not fit for purpose.
She can point to Abu Qatada's departure as a political achievement the public genuinely cares about. The wider political story is that she is the practical home secretary that gets things done.
In an administration that is determined to show in its final 18 months that it is delivering on its promises, she is the stellar performer for the Conservatives.
A generous former Labour home secretary, Lord Reid, admitted: "There is nothing we would have liked better than to be in Theresa May's position this morning."
It will do wonders for her wider political ambitions with the Tory party faithful once David Cameron stands aside, and it was hardly surprising that she used her moment of triumph to appear at length on The Andrew Marr Show and then on Sky News.
Asked directly if this feather in her cap increased her chances of becoming prime minister she was typically blunt: "Well I have done my job, and now we get on with the rest of our Home Office work. The first lesson is when you want to achieve something keep at it."
However, the Abu Qatada story is quite a subtle one. She made mistakes in the legal process, expensive ones, but she also rejected the advice of those who said she should go outside existing human rights laws to throw him out.
Despite successive setbacks, she did not play to the rightwing gallery by throwing him out. Many Tories were demanding she went for a temporary derogation of human rights laws.
Instead she went back to the Jordanians and to the British courts to close the final loopholes, including ensuring that a group in Jordan would be monitoring his treatment. The redrafted treaty with the Jordanians can also now be used in other similar cases.
She also made clear that she was not going to rest on her laurels and would be seeking to pass legislation to prevent this happening again – mainly by seeing if she can reduce the number of appeals.
Nor did she resile from her personal commitment to withdraw from the European convention on human rights, a battle she will now have to fight in the Tory manifesto process.
She was also not shy about pointing to the progress she was making in the rest of her brief, pointing to falling immigration numbers, the decline in crime and police pay reforms.
She should enjoy these few summer days. They will not last. The Home Office, and the issues its building handles each day, is built to bring hubristic politicians to their knees.