AIBU to be wondering where Priti Patel is...

[FritataPatate]

.......during this time of crisis. Home Secretary?
And for that matter. not heard from Rees-Mogg for a while.
Thankfully.

Yes you have. That is very evident from what you wrote. Again, the majority of this thread are not suggesting she should be participating more widely in covid briefings. Noting that she isn't is something quite different. You have therefore misunderstood. There is no getting round this.

As for not being able to defend herself, pull the other one. She's the Home Secretary, has an extensive platform and anything she wished to say in relation to accusations of having gone AWOL or running scared would be widely publicised. She certainly doesn't need inept attempts at white knighting.

My hope is that she was about to be booted, but they can’t do that in the middle of a crisis, so she’s been put on ice.

I dislike politiceering threads that prey on people (especially women) who are unable to defend themselves

No idea why women should be a special case, a useless politician is a useless politician, regardless of their sex. I don’t want Patel doing anything at all, I particularly don’t want her anywhere near government.

@Alsohuman - well because it's MUMSnet. A platform mainly for women.

@VegetableMunge - No I can't see that at all. She has an child at home, she may be self-isolating due to a health condition , she may be ill herself, her husband may have an important trial, one of her parents may be ill or have died.
She's not in charge - someone else is, there is clearly a reason for it and it's very likely to not be political.

Patel has been massively criticised for her refusal to submit to scrutiny by the select committee. She clearly wishes to evade Yvette Cooper, sensibly enough. A medical reason not to participate would be the best rebuttal to that criticism and would also enable her to try and delegitimise criticism and play for sympathy. It's therefore vanishingly unlikely that if she or a family member were ill, she wouldn't say so.

Equally, she is not someone whose expression and attitude are going to play well in a pandemic and mere weeks ago she implemented a policy describing the care workers the nation was clapping for earlier as low skilled. These are all very sensible reasons for the Tories keeping her as far away from the public covid campaigns as possible.

But somehow we're supposed to pretend none of this is relevant or a likely explanation and it's actually a medical thing she's just chosen to attract more criticism by keeping quiet about? Nah.

But you're speculating at a time when everyone needs to pull together. So basically to use a term that I've not used for a long time - you're just being a bitchy and why? The only reason you can be doing this is to further another political agenda and that is not pleasant.

Patel is a shil that is of no use right now

Stop being such a massive fucking hypocrite underneaththeash. You're trying to squash political criticism that you don't like and are using the crisis to advance that agenda, whilst pretending not to be. This makes you unqualified to moralise.

We are both speculating, but unlike you I have a rationale for mine and have drawn conclusions that are based on actual facts. The only basis you've got is that you find criticism of Patel unpalatable and for some reason have decided people are going to listen to your attempts to shut it down.

Additionally, we do not all need to 'come together' by not critically examining the behaviour of our leaders and in fact if anyone were going to pay any attention to your bleating, that attitude would actually be harmful. Scrutiny now is more important than ever.

We are pulling together. We’ve all put our lives on hold. In the meantime the Home Secretary evades a select committee and engages in a spat with someone whose job is to hold her to account. If pointing that out is being bitchy, so be it.

@VegetableMunge I’ve clearly hit a nerve!

The only thing you've hit is the bottom of the barrel when you scraped it.

Meanwhile, Priti Patel is incompetent, obnoxious, understandably afraid of Yvette Cooper and the Tories are clearly in damage limitation mode at the moment by sidelining her.

If she’s that awful that her own party won’t let her near the press, why did they give her such an important cabinet position?!

Because she was originally appointed before the election when so many competent ministers had resigned and Johnson was desperate for people with any cabinet experience at all who could be relied on to back him. After the election, I guess he thought it would be a bit blatant to reverse all his emergency appointments and thought she would be relatively harmless if left at the Home Office. Yet another example of his serious lack of judgment.

She has an child at home, she may be self-isolating due to a health condition , she may be ill herself, her husband may have an important trial, one of her parents may be ill or have died.

Really, when you have to resort to this sort of speculation, you are revealing your desperation. If any of these excuses applied, whether in relation to appearing before the select committee or in relation to the way she's hiding from the public anyway, do you seriously imagine we would not have heard about it?

And how on earth is a person holding one of the most important offices in government "unable to defend herself"?

@underneaththeash,
commenting on people not doing enough as some random lay person things(sic) they should do, is just a bit crap.
We live in a democracy, though; she was elected and is therefore answerable, no?
We're living through unprecedented situations: lots of policing issues, surely guidance is needed from our Home Secretary?

@DippyAvocado - shh you're not allowed to cast aspersions of St Boris of Johnson but in truth, he's rubbish as are most of his self-serving cabinet. But hey he GOT BREXIT DONE and previously had had enough of experts. Nuff said.

According to the Torygraph she’s about to front up the daily briefing. I’m looking forward to it already.

Seems like she was busy doing her usual thing of sorting out ways to show exactly what she/the Government really thinks of the surviving foreign-born healthcare workers come next January.

Telling them to fuck off because they aren't wanted.

Honestly I think the care worker thing is the main reason her contribution has been minimised lately. Any half competent journo is going to want to ask her if she still thinks they're low skilled.

According to the Torygraph she’s about to front up the daily briefing. I’m looking forward to it alread

This will be interesting

Questions on the police
Brexit
Immigration and care workers

To give her her due, she’s put the ridiculous chief constable who thought his officers were going to set up road blocks and rummage through people’s shopping trollies back in his box.

Even a stopped bellend is right twice a day.

I wish the press were that interrogative vegetable/choma. Now more than ever they’re acting like the fourth arm of government rather than the fourth estate. Massive lack of scrutiny.

Is Parliament still running?
Maybe she's pushing loads of new laws through whilst nobody is looking.
she worries me, all this Police with new powers has been going on since November. So, we either had the virus back then and weren't told or it's a huge coincidence.

Patel gets a bad press, bit like Abbott, PP actually said carework is an incredibly skilled job.
It is the classification of the 26k limit that classes anything under this as unskilled.

But of course she should front the briefings and appear in from of the select committee, says much about her character that she feels unable to do either....so far!

It doesn't. There is provision for a few jobs on the skilled list to be paid a lower salary now, and the policy statement says that will continue in a small number of areas. But even if it were going to be torally impossible to obtain a skilled worker visa for a role paying under 26k, she's the Home Secretary and it would be her department's policy. She cant have it both ways.