Priti Patel’s secret meetings

The latest bad news came when it emerged earlier this week that cabinet minister Priti Patel held 12 meetings with Israeli groups and officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while she was on vacation in the country in August — and that she hadn’t told the prime minister or colleagues about it.

When news broke about the trip, Patel insisted that “Boris [Johnson] knew about the visit.” Her department was later forced to clarify the statement, saying “the foreign secretary did become aware of the visit, but not in advance of it.”

Patel apologised, saying the meetings “did not accord with the usual procedures.” Others went further, saying Patel was in clear violation of the ministerial code of conduct.

Steven Fielding, professor of politics at the University of Nottingham, said that in normal political times both Patel and Johnson would have been fired. But these are not normal times. “It’s a multilevel crisis,” Fielding said. “We are left with a party that is divided over the biggest decision this country has to make, with a prime minister who has no authority and a government that has no majority in the House of Commons.” But he predicted the government will “stagger on,” because it fears losing to Labour if it faces an election.