Theresa May's last-minute tabling of a number of amendments to her own Immigration Bill was a cynical attempt to protect the government from political embarrassment.

The fact that the Home Secretary moved technical amendments at this late stage to the marriage and civil partnership notice period indicates a hastily written and ill-thought-through piece of draft legislation.

But her amendment proposing that naturalised citizens could lose their citizenship on the sole authority of Home Secretary suspicion of their involvement in terrorist activities takes the biscuit.

May's legal advisers ought to have informed her that English law presumes innocence prior to conviction.

Taking it upon herself to act as judge and jury and to rule that someone's conduct has "seriously" harmed the national interest and that leaving them in legal limbo would be for the public good is a step too far.

Presumably her decision would be informed by intelligence from the security services - the same organs that underwrote Tony Blair's false allegation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the US-led 2003 illegal invasion.

May's decision to propose this tardy amendment stems from government fears - especially in its Tory component - of a sizeable back-bench revolt by its most hard-right elements.

The Home Secretary was intent on drawing the sting of backbencher Dominic Raab's amendment to prevent the courts from ruling on whether an offender's family links are strong enough to allow them to avoid deportation.

Liberal Democrat former minister Sarah Teather's shock at Nick Clegg's decision to lead his troops into the lobby backing May's proposal is apparently heartfelt.

So is her fear that by passing legislation of this ilk Britain could find itself among a list of states that constitute "a roll call of dishonour."

Her refusal to back him and May's amendment is commendable, but she ought to be capable of appreciating just how far down the road Clegg has gone in trading his party's longstanding decency over certain issues for a Cabinet post.

The Tory-led coalition is pinning its hopes of general election success on two issues - spurious claims of economic recovery and dog-whistle efforts to whip up xenophobia and racism.

It's hardly surprising that Clegg has dropped any pretence to liberal values. He's spent too much time in David Cameron's company.

The Prime Minister's record indicates that he wouldn't know a political principle if it jumped up and bit his backside and that position and power are all that concern him.

After taking his place on the right of his party as a loyal Thatcherite, Cameron remade himself as a liberal-leaning, environmentally aware respecter of diversity to defeat David Davis for the Tory Party leadership.

He now finds himself fighting a constant rearguard action against his erstwhile allies of back-bench days on issues such as the European Union and immigration.

His weak-kneed decision to tell Tory ministers to abstain over Raab's amendment rather than oppose it, even though he views it as illegal, is a transparent bid to forestall yet another back-bench revolt.

This and May's last-ditch effort to hold the Tory Party together by pulling a particularly rancid rabbit out of a hat reveal a shambolic and authoritarian government.

The coalition may well believe that giving a single politician the right to render individuals stateless is reasonable.

Neither the court of public opinion nor the European Court of Human Rights is likely to share this view.