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Analysis: Home Office tried 'to pull a fast one' on terror suspect lawyer's. All they needed to do was wait for 24 hours
Alan Johnson's wry observation that in his experience as home secretary the louder the backbenchers cheered, the greater the mire you were in provoked a thin smile from Theresa May across the dispatch box.
And well it might this week, given how the latest attempt by the government to refresh its strategy of deporting terror suspects with diplomatic assurances has turned out to be a classic case of one step forward, two steps back.
Intense preparations – including the home secretary immersing herself in the detail – have been under way for several weeks at the Home Office since her return from Jordan, and they have all been focused on the opportunity presented by the passing of the Strasbourg court appeal deadline to get Abu Qatada out of the country in short order.
Once that deadline had lapsed without any appeal being lodged by either side the European court's "rule 39 injunction", freezing the deportation, would be lifted.
As the newly released text of Mr Justice Mitting's ruling at the special immigration appeals commission on Tuesday shows, May's hopes for a swift exit for Abu Qatada were not without foundation.
The Home Office had presented the judge with a scenario for the cleric's fast-track removal. The judge found this sufficiently convincing to revoke Abu Qatada's bail, on the grounds there was now a realistic prospect of his imminent deportation.
That scenario included a provision whereby the home secretary would certify Abu Qatada's appeal against her new deportation attempt as "manifestly unfounded" and so short-circuit all his appeal rights to the immigration appeals commission, the supreme court and even a new case in Strasbourg.
The only options open to him in those circumstances would have been two hearings in the high court and the court of appeal to challenge the certification. Any further appeals would have had to have been conducted from Jordan.
Mitting said a high court hearing could have taken place as early as next Wednesday and the "long-running saga would have been over within a matter, at most, of a very few weeks".
Instead, the confusion over the deadline date has left May facing a delay of at least two months, as the Strasbourg rule 39 injunction now remains in force at least until the question of Abu Qatada's last-minute appeal is resolved.
It has to be said, though, that a challenge by his lawyers based on testing the legality of the unusual assurances given by the Jordanian government is highly unlikely to qualify as "manifestly unfounded".
But it does show how close May came to the spectacular prize of resolving, before the Olympics, the most notorious, long-running terrorist deportation case, which has dogged home secretaries for more than 10 years. All this home secretary really had to do was wait 24 hours before staging the dramatic televised arrest and detention of Abu Qatada.
But Whitehall observers say the Home Office team became so focused on "pulling a fast one" on Abu Qatada's lawyers that they lost sight of the bigger picture and suffered an unexpected but swift retaliation. She came that close.