Priti Patel's flight to remember
As Ms Patel either did or didn’t press the call button for a second or third or fourth gin and tonic, she will or will not have known that she had surrendered the upper hand she may or may not have known she might or might not have had
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Your support makes all the difference.06.28am. Wheels up at Jomo Kenyatta International, the 3G signal fades to nothing and so begins the longest six hours of the International Development Secretary’s life.
Were it anyone but Priti Patel, you might be inclined to wonder at the thoughts in their head.
Why didn’t I just go the Dead Sea? All those tips on Facebook about the best places for street food in Jerusalem’s old market...Never went to a single one.
The Wailing Wall! Whhaaaaaaayyyy didn’t I just go to the Wailing Wall?
It’s fifty years since Priti Patel’s parents fled East Africa in the hope of a better life, free from persecution. Here she was, flying back to a much, much worse one. And if she doesn’t want to feel persecuted, well, stay away from the social medias Minister.
Gin and tonic. Minions the Movie. Sod it, yes, give me the giant Toblerone.
It is reasonable to speculate at this moment that at some point soon Ms Patel might be looking for a new career. Whatever she alights on, might we suggest travel agent should not make the shortlist. Rarely can anyone have seen so much of the world while seeing so little of it. To come back from Israel without the entrance ticket for the Dome of The Rock may be regarded as misfortune. To then return from Kenya without having so much as troubled the backside of a zebra with your long lens - well it starts to look like carelessness.
Online feedback is, shall we say sceptical, of the quality of in-flight entertainment on Kenya Airways. But whatever tedium Ms Patel was consuming, it should be taken in context of the fully 22,000 people who, at one point, were watching the yellow outline of KQ 100 moving its way across flight radar 24’s online tracker map.
And those 22,000 people will know what she did not. Which is that that, right above the Black Desert in Southern Egypt, she almost brought down the government.
Until then, this mad tale had been about little more Priti Patel having set up weird secret meetings with Israeli government officials right up to and including the Prime Minister and not told Number 10 about it.
And then BOOM!
New allegations emerge in the Jewish Chronicle, and the story has suddenly spiralled into realms of complexity not seen since George Clooney and Brad Pitt somehow persuaded a Chinese acrobat to break into a Las Vegas safe during a Lennox Lewis fight.
Years from now, a generation of grandchildren will be told that granny and granddad absolutely, definitely understood what was going on, when for about half an hour it looked like Priti Patel had in fact been sent by Theresa May, on a secret mission to Israel to undermine Boris Johnson, and that the Prime Minister herself has been lying about it for months.
The town of Gjirokastër in Southern Albania will always mark the spot where that turned out to be rubbish. Whatever it was that was understood to have been communicated to Number 10, was now understood not to have been communicated to Number 10. A flat out denial. The Prime Minister knew nothing about the meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu until Friday of last week.
As Ms Patel either did or didn’t press the call button for a second or third or fourth gin and tonic, she will or will not have known that she had surrendered the upper hand she may or may not have known she might or might not have had.
In the midst of all this, by the way, the Prime Minister’s face having not been seen in public for days, Madame Tussauds decided now was the moment to release pictures of their completed Theresa May waxwork.
14.48 (UK time). The 787-Dreamliner splits the clouds somewhere over Kent. In the far distance, Ms Patel may or may not be able to make out the small, very right wing constituency of Witham. Her people.
A telecommunications tower transmits a data beam to the phone in her handbag and it promptly melts.
15.08 KQ 100 somehow picks a path between the fleet of news helicopters over Heathrow. Wheels down. Safari over. In Downing Street, a wounded lion licks its lips.
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