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The home secretary is a bully who should have been sacked by the prime minister for breaking the ministerial code
Priti Patel, the home secretary, is a bully. Her defence is that she had not the wits about her to notice. If she had any shame Ms Patel would resign from a high-profile, high-pressure job. But she is unembarrassed by the findings of a Cabinet Office investigation that found she had breached the ministerial code. Previous prime ministers would have sent her packing, but not Boris Johnson. He would rather lose Sir Alex Allan, his Downing Street ethics adviser who made the critical judgment, than a cabinet minister who is a Brexiter popular with her party’s hang-’em-and-flog-’em base.
This episode reveals Mr Johnson to be a shrunken figure holed up in No 10 and scared of a party he can barely control. His attempt to reset his prime ministership after weeks of infighting has failed. Instead of restoring civility and reclaiming a liberal agenda, Mr Johnson confirmed that he is a brazen leader who does not recognise the supremacy of facts. This when polls show that British voters do not trust the prime minister to deal with a pandemic that is claiming hundreds of lives a day and when he is expected to make a crunch Brexit decision that will shape the country’s future. Continue reading...