Delingpole: Priti Patel – We Wanted Another Maggie, We Got Miss Whiplash

priti patel (1)
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James Delingpole

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel is threatening to get tough on the woke hate speech laws left over from the Tony Blair era.

According to the Express:

A source in the Home Office has confirmed that Home Secretary Priti Patel is looking at how to reform hate speech laws which were brought in by Tony Blair’s Labour government to initially tackle racism and homophobia.

Yeah, right. I’ll believe it when I see it. In the days before the Conservatives won their 80 seat majority, I used to be a big fan of Priti. If ever she got to be Home Secretary, I thought, she would finally introduce some of the robust, unapologetic conservatism which moribund Britain has been so sorely lacking since the Margaret Thatcher era.

Instead, she has proved as ineffectual as such dismal predecessors at the Home Office as Theresa May. And in one key respect, she’s actually much worse.

So far, Patel has ducked out of doing anything to deal with the migrants arriving by rubber boats from France (well, unless you count rounding them up and putting them up for free in fancy hotels as a deterrent); she has failed to deal with statue smashing gangs of Black Lives Matter sympathisers; she has failed to deal with the Extinction Rebellion loons; she has failed to take on the Muslim rape gangs.

Perhaps then, we’re entitled to be a bit sceptical about this alleged plan to “reform hate speech laws”. That phrase “looking at” sounds pretty feeble. It’s the sort of thing I might say to get my wife off my back: “Yeah, I’m looking at putting the bins out anytime soon now”; “Yeah, I’m looking at quadrupling my income this year”. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen though.

The Home Office has had a really bad run recently. Statistics show that deportations are down 79 per cent. The Reading terrorist, who stabbed three people to death in a park last summer, had been convicted 7 times for 19 offences but still hadn’t been deported due to a “legal barrier”. It seems like MPs and judges are the only people in the country who don’t accept that murderous terrorists should be held indefinitely until deportation is possible (i.e. possibly forever).

But in one respect, Priti Patel is proving to be the most robust Home Secretary ever. If there’s one area where she’s as hardcore as hardcore can be it’s anything to do with the government’s coronavirus policy. Under her command the police have become so brutally thuggish towards lockdown and vaccine sceptics she has effectively abolished the traditional British right to peaceful protest. She wants to install compulsory quarantine hotels where travellers must stay for two weeks in abject misery (and claustrophobic confinement, all at great expense) if they dare return from abroad. She announced last week that she is increasing to £800 the fines for people caught attending house parties.

In their wholesale disregard for civil liberties, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have proved themselves to be the most fascistic administration in modern British history. And Priti Patel has acted as their more than enthusiastic enforcer.

Before she became Home Secretary, Priti Patel looked as if she might possibly be Britain’s next Margaret Thatcher.

Instead, more’s the pity, what we’ve ended up with is Miss Whiplash.

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