The remarkable rise — and potential fall — of Priti Patel

As the home secretary is found to have breached the ministerial code over bullying, Sean O'Grady takes a look at her chequered political career so far

Patel self-consciously channels the Iron Lady, and has said that Thatcher inspired her political awakening in the 1980s ( )

The defining feature of Priti Patel isn’t so much that she is (in her own terms), a “massive Thatcherite”, though she is; nor that she is an exemplar of the benefits of migration, though she is that too; not even that she’s what you might call a “massive bully” stomping around every department she’s occupied yelling things like “why is everyone so f***ing useless?”. No, none of those are the defining thing, though are part of the portrait. Rather the key to understanding our home secretary is that she is just plain wacky. Know that and it all makes a kind of sense.  

No doubt she is indeed “furious” about reports in the media that she has been toying with all manner of “mad ideas” to deal with the migrant crisis. The home secretary’s officials have apparently looked at the idea of using wave machines to push refugee dinghies back across the English Channel, which is surely one for the coastguard to offer the benefit of their maritime experience on. There’s even a report that officials might explore building a Trump-style wall across the channel, erm, with holes in it for boats and stuff.

Then there was the claim – not explicitly refuted – that asylum seekers from Syria and Somalia might find themselves transported to some desolate inhospitable outcrop of what remains of the British empire, such as Ascension Island, St Helena, the Shetlands or the Isle Wight – places that time forgot, but at least Shanklin is bit more tranquil than Idlib or downtown Mogadishu. Failing that, these hopeless scraps of humanity could be flown out to Papua New Guinea, Morocco or Moldova.