PRITI HORRENDOUS . . . AND ‘MORALLY CORRUPT’
Monday, November 6, 2017
PRITI Horrendous [Patel, International Development Secretary] is in a deep mess. It turns out that she went to Israel on what she called a holiday and met some Israeli ministers without telling the embassy.
When first asked about it, she said she had told the FCO — by speaking to Boris — and that it was only a couple of meetings. It is now clear that she lied. She had not told Boris, and in fact had a whole series of meetings, including with PM Netanyahu.
All but one of them were also attended by Lord Polak, who for three decades has been the mainstay of the Conservative Friends of Israel. Thus she spent a week there on a programme put together by Polak, without telling the FCO or even her own Department, attending meetings at the highest level, accompanied by the principal pro-Israel donor lobbyist in the UK.
She has been forced to publish a statement. It lists a raft of meetings, and then says that as a result she commissioned policy work in DfID [ Department for International Development] about working with the Israeli Army in Palestine!
So by her own admission, she has directly linked undeclared meetings to subsequent policy-making. She could not be more compromised.
Tuesday, November 7
QUITE the most extraordinary day. Our PM [Theresa May] did not know when she saw Netanyahu last week that Priti
Outrageous had seen him in Tel Aviv; and she did not know until this morning that Patel had recommended DfID pay for the Israeli Defence Forces to do ‘humanitarian’ work in the Golan Heights (which is not Israeli), against long-standing DfID policy.
In my view, Priti Patel’s comments are deceitful, morally corrupt and improper. She has engaged offline with a foreign government over issues of policy. It is contemptible. She is quite despicable.
Then things get even hotter. Her personal statement was billed as the full record of all the people she saw in Israel, yet she failed to include in her list of meetings the people she subsequently saw in London when she was back.
So she lied — to the public and also to the PM. They are all saying she will be sacked tomorrow, but she is somewhere in Africa.
Wednesday, November 8
PP is such a brassy monster that on return she has clearly threatened the PM both with a challenge to her version of events — ‘Yes, PM, you did know’ — and with a threat about Brexit — ‘If you mess me around, I’ll cause you difficulty.’ As a result, she is demanding that she be allowed to resign rather than be dismissed. She should be sacked. Finally she is dismissed, but it will be called a resignation. Nothing in the exchange of letters [with the PM] even mentions Israel and the deep impropriety of her actions, merely an apology about her lack of transparency. The Conservative Party and the PM remain in total denial, and once again brush it under the carpet. It reeks; it stinks; it festers; it moulders — all rotten to the core.
This [ is] exceptional pro- Israel infiltration into the very centre of our public life. What is the point of having a guardian of ethics in Whitehall when they fail to put their foot down on this wickedness?
Thursday, November 9
BORIS is in Washington from where he texts me to say they (whoever ‘they’ are) are blaming me for briefing against Patel.
I reply she did a pretty comprehensive job of destroying herself without the need for others to assist. I said she is lucky not to be in the Tower of London.