Her plan to axe own department
PRITI Patel may be the first minister ever to have been put in charge of a department she wanted to abolish.
She got her first ministerial job just four years after her election as an MP for Witham, Essex, in 2010.
Patel was promoted after the EU Referendum to run the Department for International Development – which in 2013 she said she wanted to abolish for a ministry more focused on international trade.
The right-winger has voted against legalising gay marriage and campaigned against the smoking ban.
Born to Ugandan Indian parents in 1972, she went to a girls’ comprehensive school in London before studying at Keele University and the University of Essex.
The mother of a boy, eight, is married to marketing consultant Alex Sawyer, who she used to pay £25,000 as her part-time office manager.