Comment

A Right-wing woman determined to crush crime: No wonder Priti Patel has had trouble in the Home Office

What an extraordinary row there has been over the alleged bullying of Home Office officials. I should own up to being a friend of Priti Patel, but it sounds to me as though those officials may not like being given orders by a woman. Even worse she ordered them to deal more firmly with the criminals on the streets and the trade in illegal immigration into the United Kingdom.

I am sure that, if I had been Home Secretary, then I as a working class Thatcherite would have been treated in the same as was Priti Patel.  

I was saddened last week by the death of Lord Stoddart, the Labour member for Swindon from 1970 to 1983, who served his party both as a whip and spokesman on trade and industry in the Commons and in the Lords as a whip and spokesman on Energy until 1988.

Stoddart then fell out with Labour over his support for Brexit, becoming the Chairman of the Campaign for Independent Britain in 1985, and sat on the Opposition back bench as an Independent Labour peer. From there he was often on his feet, full of good sense and sharp comment and I am but one of many who will be saddened that he did not live to celebrate Brexit Day. I, for one, will raise an extra glass of good English sparkling wine to his memory that day.

Within the Labour Party, the row over anti-Semitism refuses to go away despite all that Sir Keir Starmer does to calm things down. His efforts are undermined by his record of support for Jeremy Corbyn at the last General Election and his apparent willingness to serve in a government led by Corbyn had Labour won.

To my mind, and to many others, Labour’s attitude to anti-Semitism would look ambivalent if Corbyn continued to receive the Labour whip, but the Left and its paymasters in the major trades unions are demanding just that. The struggle will be a test of Starmer’s commitment to decent values.  

I was also both sorry and surprised that the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, allowed Boris Johnson to get away with answering Prime Minister’s Questions from his self isolation in No 10, rather than deputing a senior colleague to take his place. Will that now be the normal practice, I wonder, if the Prime Minister were to be in Washington or Moscow?

There are few enough good things to have come out of the Covid pandemic, but one is that many of the parliamentary groups of members with particular interests have been able to persuade extremely busy scientists and other experts to come to virtual meetings which do not waste their time travelling to Westminster. It was at one such meeting recently that I learned a great deal about the nature and prospects of the several potential vaccines to defeat Covid-19.

There are still great uncertainties, but at least there is a glimmer of hope that there may be an end to my self-imposed exile from Westminster early next year.  

No doubt sportsmen and women devoutly share that hope of an end to the lockdowns. Without the income from ticket sales for live events, the viability of very many sports are being undermined. Even in the midst of Lewis Hamilton’s excitement and pride at his record-breaking run of Formula One Grand Prix wins, he must have some worries about the future of racing without live spectators. 

I first saw a Formula One race at Silverstone just over 70 years ago when the pre-war giants such as Fangio were being challenged by upstarts like Hawthorn and Moss and protective clothing was no more than a leather helmet and gloves. Rather a far call from the immaculate organisation of today, but the quality, skill and nerve of the drivers is just the same.

Stirling Moss was rightly awarded a knighthood in recognition of his career and I hope that those who arrange such matters will not hesitate to recognise the unsurpassed achievements of Hamilton, with a similar award in the New Year’s Honours List.

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