Priti Patel has joined the Number 10 Policy Board. Why does this matter? Well, because...
This past week reshuffle news has mainly focused on Labour, with the ‘cull of the Blairites’ narrative predictably obsessing the papers.
One thing we almost missed with all the background noise, however, was Priti Patel joining the Number 10 Policy Board.
Why does it matter that Ms Patel is now a part of the inner circle that will work out what Tory Party policy will be going into the 2015 election? Well, because…
She wants to bring back the death penalty
In 2011 she told a BBC Question Time audience that the death penalty could act as a deterrent even if it means innocent people occasionally being executed.
She believes British workers are lazy
In 2012 she co-authored a book which claimed that British workers were “among the worst idlers in the world”. “Too many people in Britain prefer a lie-in to hard work,” the book, written by a group of right-wing Tory MPs, argued.
Ms Patel would do well to look up social mobility Tsar Alan Milburn’s report – out today, as it happens. According to Milburn, even hard work no longer provides a route out of poverty for people with jobs, regardless of how hard they toil.
She’s a dodgy counter-revolutionary tourist
In 2011 Priti Patel went on an all-expenses paid sojourn to Bahrain – all expenses paid by the Bahraini government that is – at the same time as the citizens of that country were being brutally suppressed during an uprising against the monarchy.
She has some big double standards on democracy
Ms Patel believes the government should change the rules so that unions can’t call industrial action unless more than half of those eligible to vote actually do so.
And yet, if that sort of threshold were applied to other elections,even the London Mayor wouldn’t have entered office due to low turn outs.
No wonder that Priti Patel has been called the ‘modern-day Norman Tebbit’. It’s good to know that David Cameron is still modernising the Tory Party.
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7 Responses to “Cameron appoints ‘modern-day Norman Tebbit’ to Number 10 Policy Board”
Psychjim
@Adam Smith (not the economist, I’m sure!), there hasn’t been a reliable referendum on the death penalty as far as I’m aware, though admittedly, I may have missed it. But the point about British Workers being lazy should be taken in context with the above article. If “hard work” were to guarantee freedom from poverty, the work would get done. These days work, for an enormous number of people, is merely a way of feeding themselves and their families, nothing more. “Laziness” is more likely to be the result of crushed ambition. We are raising a generation of young people believing that no amount of effort can save them. Its creating a serious rise in mental illness among the young. And their parents are fearful of their offspring’s futures! The first generation carrying such fears since industrialisation began. Hardly a motivation for working hard, wouldn’t you agree? The same complaints were levied against American workers in the early part of this century. Just before Detroit went bankrupt. Hope has been sucked away with our money, manufacturing, services and infrastructure. The likes of Priti Patel and the rest of Tory the vanguard who perpetuate the neoliberal myths in their wealthy bubbles, will choke this country of any chance of a truly democratic recovery. And the workers will remain “lazy”.
Scotty
She has just stuck the hatchet into the UK with her denouncing of Scotland. She will be a happy and accomplished person when the first innocent person goes to the gallows. Wonderful woman and a shining light into the future of our country.