Patel: I shield my son from the vile abuse targeting me
HOME SECRETARY ON RACISM AND ‘BURNING STONE’ OF IMMIGRATION
THE home secretary, Priti Patel, has revealed that she often stops her 13-year-old son from watching the news because of the level of abuse she receives.
Patel has recently been targeted for her stance on illegal immigration, which includes her plan to deter illegal crossings of the Channel by sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
“My son is just wonderful,” she told the Daily Telegraph last Saturday (18). “He puts up with a lot, which someone that age shouldn’t have to put up with.
“He knows what I have to put up with. There have been days when I’ve told my mother-inlaw, who my son is with a lot of the time, ‘don’t let him see any news, you have to just turn it off ’.
“He and my husband (Alex Sawyer, a marketing adviser and Conservative councillor) are the anchors in my life – they are the two most understanding people.”
The 50-year-old has been criticised by commentators and racially abused on social media. She has also been a target for the Labour party, who earlier this month suspended councillor Joy Wallace after she questioned the home secretary’s Asian heritage, suggesting that Patel’s ‘skin [colour]might be vitiligo or a strong sunbed’.
“Labour gaslights me all the time,” said Patel. “They say, ‘you are a racist, you don’t understand’. My view is, you don’t have my background or the lived experiences that I have, so how dare you?
“I was one of the first ever politically to say the Labour party has taken communities like mine for granted. Thinking people of colour are so stupid that we’re just going vote en masse for Labour. It’s so patronising.” Talking about the racial abuse directed at her, Patel said: “I take the view that well, if that’s their only argument, and that’s how they behave, that’s a terrible reflection on them actually, because I’ve been brought up much better than that.
“I’ve been brought up with a lot of values and that’s important to me. They would just love me to collapse, but my service is to my country and to the British people. I can’t spend my time worrying about what people are saying about me.”
She has previously said she was called P*** when she was growing up.
Patel said her family’s Hindu values, coupled with her experiences of racist abuse while growing up in Watford, north of London, fuelled her determination to succeed.
However, by her own admission, Patel’s stance on immigration would have prevented her parents, who arrived from Uganda in the mid-1960s, from settling in Britain. However, she insisted her policies were best for the country.
“I’m pretty unapologetic about illegal migration, primarily because our country has just been so prone to it for such a long time,” she said.
“If I’m really honest, it was that burning stone that all my predecessors left in the corner to simmer away. And I was the one who picked it up. It is deeply challenging, but we have to deal with it. It’s my duty and responsibility because no one else will do it.”
She insisted she would “not be deterred” after all the migrants due to be sent on the first plane to Rwanda won a reprieve last Tuesday (14) following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Patel called the court “scandalous” and vowed to “find ways to overturn” the ruling.