Well that's a bit of a worry.
Do we really want Norman Tebbit in the Treasury?
The role of exchequer secretary is not a particularly powerful one – it’s actually ranked below the chancellor, the chief secretary to the Treasury, the paymaster general and the financial secretary to the Treasury. This is probably why the Conservative MP for Witham, Priti Patel, has just been given the role.
Still, though, it’s a bit of a worry. I mean, do we really want someone who was once branded the ‘modern-day Norman Tebbit’ in the Treasury?
In case you didn’t know already, here’s what Ms Patel thinks about the world…
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.
She’s not the only one of course; yet if this criteria were applied to other elections her friend Boris, among others, would not not have entered office.
No wonder that Priti Patel has been called the ‘modern-day Norman Tebbit’. It’s good to see David Cameron is cracking on with modernising the Tory Party.
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12 Responses to “The ‘modern-day Norman Tebbit’ is now a Treasury minister. Be afraid”
David McKendrick
No MP should be allowed to enter office unless more than 50% of registered voters vote in their constituency. That should cut the members in the Commons and would be equivalent of writing “None of the above” on the Ballot paper.
David McKendrick
In China they ave the death penalty for relatively minor crimes but this certainly does not act as a deterrent.