The Truth and Priti Patel

The day after the Liverpool taxi bombing, Priti Patel did the “responsible minister” act, saying it was too soon to judge and we must let the professionals do their work. Three days later, she got bored with that crap, and told us that’s what we should expect from a failed asylum system. It was left to a senior official to point out that most UK terrorists were born here.

This is a pattern. Patel suggests that it’s our generous habit of putting migrants in hotels which is attracting them to cross the channel. Her officials put the record straight. push factors (losing home and job, threat to life and safety) are far more powerful than pull factors (staying in hotels, scrounging off benefits).

But she’s the perfect minister for Johnson - “Forget about the facts. Just energise the base.” Take her gobsmacking appearance before the home affairs committee, where she describes her position: “I’m an ethnic minority home secretary coming into a department where it didn’t feel that comfortable.” She’s talking about Windrush, and a passing Martian might suppose that she had some fellow feeling with the victims of that scandal, and would make some effort to try to put it right. Think again.

But, like Johnson again, she has ferocious energy. Not for getting stuff done, but for getting herself in the news. I had to work hard to condense my latest poem about her down to five verses, but every bit of the information I covered came from news in the previous month. (See Wonder Woman, in Poems from the News) She just can’t help it.