‘Acrimonious’ Patel in hiding – and avoidance of parliamentary scrutiny not the strangest aspect
Home Secretary Priti Patel has refused four times to answer questions from the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs, sending ‘acrimonious’ responses to invitations and claiming she would deign to appear toward the end of April.
Such arrogance on the part of Patel is hardly new – she has only appeared once before the committee since she was appointed to the position last July.
Far stranger is Patel’s entire invisibility during the coronavirus crisis, in spite of the fact that her department has oversight of the ‘lock-down’, including the police response.
Yet Patel has appeared on the nation’s television screens to issue platitudes, let alone to answer questions.
Last November, she appeared in a car-crash a BBC interview in which she blamed people and their local councils for poverty:
Are Patel’s handlers afraid she would be equally disastrous now?
Is she afraid she might be questioned about the multiple ‘tsunamis‘ of bullying accusations against her, including legal action brought by a former senior civil servant?
Is she hiding from questions about her incompetence over the Streatham terror attack by an early-release prisong in February?
Or is it simply the towering arrogance endemic in Boris Johnson’s supposed ‘government’?
Priti Patel has ample reason to run from scrutiny – but the invisibility of a Home Secretary during a national crisis is no less bizarre for that.
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