Priti Patel is being falsely accused in order to weaken Boris Johnson – Brian Monteith

A coalition of the defeated has coalesced around an attempt to bring down Home Secretary Priti Patel, writes Brian Monteith.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has faced accusations of bullying (Picture: Peter Summers/Getty Images)

Is there no limit to the amount of contempt that some officials hold for members of the public and the politicians they elect?

There can be little doubt the most effective political slogan of recent years in the UK has been “Take back control”. It literally changed history, encapsulating the desire of a country to change direction. But what will taking back control from the EU of our laws, borders and taxes if all we do is allow officials to dictate to our elected representatives what can and cannot be done? What will it matter if our institutions refuse to diverge in favour of what suits our peculiar needs, instead still adopting EU laws and, more likely than not, goldplating them?

What will it matter if our public departments continue to operate behind closed doors, preferring the transparency of tar and pulling every trick in the book to avoid freedom of information requests (such as the Scottish Government not taking minutes or using official email accounts)?

I ask these questions because it is self-evident to me at least that the histrionics of the former Home Office permanent secretary Sir Philip Rutnam has little to do with the rudeness, assertiveness or intimidation of Home Secretary Priti Patel. Rather than seeking a departmental transfer, Sir Philip flounced out in the full glare of the media announcing he was taking legal action on the basis of alleged constructive dismissal, which has been spun to suggest he was being bullied by his minister.

This looks more like an official who could not bear to accept the electorate and our mandated representatives taking back control – not just from the EU but from officials who insist they know better than the government of the day. Added to this group has been the craven but all too predictable opportunism of Labour politicians looking for any opportunity to polish their Tory-bashing reputations and the defeated remainer media community – all singing embitteredly from their holier-than-thou hymn sheets.

Brexit offers us many opportunities; it can mean taking control of our taxes so we levy VAT on those goods and services we choose rather than what we are told – making them cheaper for our own people; it means we can establish genuine freeports that can import, assemble and export without being bound by the EU customs union, its tariffs and regulation, creating thousands of jobs in the process; and it means we can choose not to introduce laws such as the EU’s copyright restrictions on social media. It means deciding who can fish in our waters and what regulations must be met before that permission can be given, so that more fish will be landed and processed to benefit our people.

I could go on with a far longer list, for there are many benefits that can only now come to our country but that is not my point today. Instead I must raise the alarm about how faceless bureaucrats in government departments, the lobbyists for big corporates, taxpayer-funded quangos and NGOs, and many in the media with their own “progressive” agendas wish to subvert the whole idea of the people taking back control.

It has been saddening but all to predictable to watch how some of our once-respected bastions of objectivity and liberal pluralism such as the BBC and Guardian have reported – no, distorted – allegations without any foundation, knowing that, due to the ministerial guidance and legal process, Ms Patel is not in a position to confront the many falsehoods being spread about her. I say falsehoods because it became clear to me after just a little inquiry (which those organs of supposed veritas could have undertaken themselves) that Ms Patel could not have been responsible for the incidents levelled at her.

Further, anyone I know who has worked with Ms Patel (and I know quite a few) has offered nothing but bewilderment that a polite, conscientious and hard-working person could of all things be accused of (by definition) being confrontational to the point of intimidating and abusive. It’s a Ms Patel that no one recognises.

The reality here is a coalition of the defeated has coalesced to try to pick off a minister, so the case for much needed institutional and government reform will be damaged; if successful in running Ms Patel out of her job, the mob will then move on to others. It has found the Prime Minister, for all his personal flaws, to be popular with the voters and impervious to their criticism – so they look for an associate with the intention of weakening him by proxy. I saw it all too often with the attacks on Margaret Thatcher; when her opponents could not defeat her in debate they moved like sharks on to her ministers, her husband Denis, her children or anyone who would suffice to damn her or her arguments by their own human errors or misjudgments.

Double standards and rank hypocrisy then and now never get in the way. The Labour Party, many of whose MPs such as Diane Abbott chose to turn a Nelsonian eye to the official complaints of bullying levelled at former speaker John Bercow because it suited them to keep him in office, have suddenly become salivating hyenas demanding elevated action against Ms Patel when a legal process has already been initiated. The Guardian’s cartoonist Steve Bell sank to a new low portraying Ms Patel, a practising Hindu, as a cloven-hoofed cow with nose ring and horns – delivering misogyny and anti-Hindu bigotry at a stroke – but without a scintilla of humour. It was not satire, it echoed anti-Semitic Jew-baiting of the Thirties. Had such a cartoon appeared in a conservative paper about a person of any colour but white, the outrage from the Islington bubble, the Guardian and its fellow travellers would have been measurable on the Richter scale.

I want a Home Secretary who will publish unredacted reports on the Windrush scandal and the grooming gangs – without reference to the reputations of past officials or vested interests; who will put innocent victims and the law-abiding majority before the perpetrators and defenders of crime. In short a Home Secretary who will take back control – not just from Brussels but from Whitehall and the faceless and elite that circulate in the background.

Brian Monteith is managing editor of brexit-watch.org