Conservative Asian Female Home Secretary accused of bullying

[MsSafina]

If this were a BAME female Labour Minister, would the reaction be different? Just goes to show, it's nothing to do with gender or race but all about politics.

The evidence suggests she is a bully. Though there are white male MPs on both sides who also are and don’t seem to be being targeted.

All the evidence suggests that Patel is a bully.

However, nobody gets to the position she's in without being a bit of a bully. To be an MP, you need sharp elbows and a hard nose.

I think a lot of MPs are bullies. I think it's interesting that only Patel is getting this reputation. Rees-Mogg is constantly punching down, yet people find him funny and eccentric, rather than a bully. I wonder why that is.

I think it's less to do with her race and more to do with the fact that she is a horrible person. That's evident in every vote she's made, the constant smirk, the comments that she makes in public with no shame. I can imagine if she's willing to so awful publicly that she's twice as awful when she thinks no one can see or do anything about her behaviour and comments.

Just a few examples someone else collated as I don't have time to dig around for them:

Former career and voting record
• Formerly employed by the PR firm Shandwick, she worked for British American Tobacco (BAT) notorious for funding the brutal Burmese dictatorship in the early 2000s and exploiting child labour in Nigeria.
• In 2013, Priti voted against same-sex marriage in England and Wales.
• She voted against banning the detention of pregnant women.
• She’s been a supporter of the death penalty, BBC Question Time in 2011 that it would “deter crime”. She later backtracked on these comments in 2016.

Corruption
• In 2017, Priti was fired from her position as International Development Secretary (IDS) for conducting 14 off-the-book meetings with Israeli ministers and business people. She didn’t notify the PM at the time about these meetings causing her to lose the job. Israeli officials were undoubtedly interested to meet with her because she controlled some of the funding the UK gives to Palestinian organisations making the unofficial nature of these meeting even more egregious. There’s nothing like conducting a little freelance in foreign relations to prop up one of the notorious human rights abusers in the world.
• Before she left, however, Priti leveraged an £11bn aid budget as a trade incentive to make business deals with other countries in time for Brexit. It is illegal for the UK to explicitly use aid funds in this way, but that didn’t stop the former IDS from using the government funds to “further national interest”.
• Her legacy as IDS also includes using the same money to support big business and the comfortable middle class in foreign countries. She funneled hundreds of millions of pounds worth of the UK’s aid budget into corporate ventures. This includes setting up five-star luxury hotels and shopping malls in Nigeria and investing in Chinese online gambling and restaurant chains.
• She attended Ascot as a guest of one of the tycoons she met on her shady trip to Israel, reaping the benefits of cosying up to rich businessmen.
• As Home Secretary, she broke ministerial protocol for the second time by serving as an advisor for Viasat, cashing in a hefty £1000 an hour. The ministerial code states that former ministers have to consult the government advisory positions before taking up business appointments within two years of leaving the role. But hey, what’s a little corruption when you’re best mates with Boris Johnson?

To be an MP, you need sharp elbows and a hard nose.

There 's a hell of difference between that - which I'd define as ambition - and bullying. The two don't need to go hand in hand and mostly don't. As FatGirl lists, its her lack of scruples that makes PP a bully.

Possibly, bullying is more noticeable in women as we are meant to be gentler/kinder/conciliatory/collegiate and men are meant to be assertive/straight to the point etc. You could say that with bells on when it comes to stereotypes of Asian women.

One of the most senior civil servants quit due to her alleged bullying and is launching a constructive dismissal case with the employment tribunal. It's been delayed due to Covid. I imagine such a senior civl servant has a tough skin, so it's really something that he feels he had no choice but to quit and start litigation.

I think she'd get a softer ride from the left leaning press were she Labour and accused of bullying. I prefer if people are judged by their record in office and not whether they're BAME or female.

I posted on this ages ago and got shouted down but I agree. I'm sure she's been vile. I am also sure all the men in the cabinet have been vile. And yet....

Given that the man who is responsible for advising on ministerial behaviour resigned when this was announced I think it would be safe to assume that there is/was some hard evidence that Patel acted in an untoward manner on no few occasions, breaking the ministerial code.

As others have said, there is more to this than we yet know, with other court proceedings in the pipeline.

Either she is an overt bully or there is a concerted witch hunt underway!

Not knowing her or the others involved... we'll just have to wait and see which it is, possibly!

In the private sector, having a demanding boss and performing to expectations and impossible deadlines are fairly standard. People get restructured or moved on, or out all the time. There is no jobs for life. I don't know whether she has been vile, but I do think there is a lot of resistance to change.

@everythingcrossed

Possibly, bullying is more noticeable in women as we are meant to be gentler/kinder/conciliatory/collegiate and men are meant to be assertive/straight to the point etc. You could say that with bells on when it comes to stereotypes of Asian women.

Yes I think there is underlying misogyny and racism at play here when Asian women are deemed patronising or uppity just because they don't fit to people's expectations.

I'm quite sure the indignant race baiters would be out in force if this weren't a Tory Minister. However, good to see that any BAME Tories are promoted according to their abilities and also sacked as was Javid.

@FatGirlShrinking nails it, esp. re corruption. After the debacle with off-books meetings May was right to sack her, and Johnson should never have appointed someone with her track record to any sort of ministerial office, never mind Home Secretary. That he did shows he values agreement over Brexit and having people unlikely to challenge his views and too second-rate to be a threat way above competence, principle and probity.vso I'm not surprised (though I am disgusted) that Johnson has stood by her.

The bullying allegations have been around for ages and have been sufficiently well documented that I've no doubt the enquiry came to the correct verdict.

Sometimes accusations against female politicians are a witch hunt (in fact, I'd say they often are). But not in this instance.

I have heard a lot from people who worked directly with her and she is deeply unpleasant.

I don't think it is useful to suggest it is witch hunt because she is a BAME woman. Are you suggesting her behaviour should be excused?!

Javid wasn't sacked - he walked.

Johnson made his continued presence as chancellor conditional on sacking his own advisors and using number 10's instead (ie on accepting Cummings got to run the economy as well as the rest of the country).

Javid quite rightly said he couldn't work under those conditions and resigned. Went up in my estimation when he did.

Yes, I also know people who've worked with her directly. She is unpleasant, unfair, and not qualified for the role she is currently doing. She is only there so Johnson can point at her and say, "Look, it's a brown woman who's thinking of shipping refugees halfway across the world to sit in a detention centre until we decide what to do with them, so it must be okay!"

I'd take back Theresa May or Sajid Javid as Home Sec in a heartbeat, and I'm no fan of either's politics.

I've always said the Tories are most likely to produce the first BAME P.M. long before Labour does - just as they produced 2 female PMs. I'm guessing Patel or Rishi might be the next leader. The Tory membership and voters will judge them and treat them as ruthlessly as they've always done.

This is a tricky one. Yes, she's getting noticed by the press because if what @everythingcrossedsaid. However, I don't want her to be treated like the white male politicians who bully (basically overlooked) - the behaviour is unacceptable whoever does it. I want them to be treated how she is. So I'm not asking for better treatment for corrupt bullying female BAME MPs, I'm calling for worse treatment of the other corrupt bullying MPs, to level the playing field.

So she's untouchable because she's BAME?

I tend to think people wouldn't accuse her of smirking (I genuinely think it's just her face shape, naturally arched eyebrows etc) and how she smiles, or have a go about her speaking (people get very upset about her dropping her 'g's) if she was on the left, or male. Obviously that's just my own suspicion.

Sunak possibly. Patel unlikely - she's crossed too many people, plus while Johnson is prepared to overlook her incompetence and dishonesty (in fact for him, they're not a big, they're a feature - he likes to know that no matter how dodgy or stupid he looks, his inner circle are worse, so at least he can't look bad in comparison) I think your average Tory member in the shires has a long memory.

Sunak got lucky with timing. Because Johnson tried to spring the new conditions on Javid on the day of the reshuffle, he had to fill the position at really short notice and completely unexpectedly, so just reached for the best placed junior treasury minister - which happened to be Sunak. Sunak's made a decent fist of the job in almost impossible conditions, and isn't tainted by association with Johnson in quite the way the rest of the shower is, because everyone knows he's the "accidental chancellor."

Having said that, I'd guess Gove is actually the bookies' favourite. Patel is definitely a rank outsider.

I know quite a few Tories who are definitely unhappy with Patel, mainly because they think she's not extreme enough about deporting illegal immigrants

I don't like Patel, but the way people speak to her/ about her is insultingly patronizing and condescending. People tell her that she can't be strict on immigration because she's a woman of colour. Didn't the BAME MPs of Labour send her an open letter asking her to change her stance purely because she was a woman of colour??! Would they have done that to a middle class white Tory MP? I don't think so. She's not allowed to be a bully because of her demographic.

Yes they did. They are truly stinking hypocrites. I am an immigrant myself and am always staggered by how middle class lefties insult their own country while people like me regard having a British passport as a privilege. I think this is why they hate someone like Patel.