𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Brexit is in danger and Labour is putting jobs at risk and presiding over an illegal immigration disaster of its own making, according to Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel. She speaks with dismay of the “pain” she says Sir Keir Starmer’s Government is inflicting on Britain. The “job” of the Conservative party today, she insists, is ensuring Labour is out of power at the next election.

As Boris Johnson’s Home Secretary she laid the foundations for the scheme to send illegal arrivals to Rwanda for processing. Sir Keir declared this “dead and buried” in his first press conference as Prime Minister. Since then more than 30,000 people have come to the UK via small boats.

The MP for the Essex seat of Witham is contemptuous of Labour’s pledge to “smash the gangs” responsible for the crossings.

“What an utterly ridiculous slogan,” she says.

The problem, she argues, is ever since Labour scrapped the Rwanda scheme the country has lacked a “deterrent”.

“This Government has failed,” she says. “It is totally insincere and disingenuous when it says it is trying to deal with this problem. It’s not.”

She claims other countries which could launch schemes of their own are now in touch with Rwanda and says Labour’s treatment of this “great Commonwealth country” is “appalling”.

The Government should be “building detention and reception centres in this country and doing it fast,” she says, adding: “They need to get out of their little dogmatic, ignorant corner and they need to start taking on board some of the remedies and the actions that Conservatives suggested and put in place previously.”

She is also outraged at Sir Keir’s readiness to forge closer ties with the European Union. Dame Priti worked with James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party in the run-up to the 1997 election and was a leading member of the 2016 Vote Leave campaign.

Labour, she claims, is “totally unwinding Brexit”.

There are reports the Government is willing to have common rules with the EU on fresh meat and dairy and accept the oversight of the European Court of Justice.

Sitting in her Portcullis House office, which has a sweeping view of the Houses of Parliament, she says: “My fears are they will just tie us back down to a lot of the sclerotic regulation of the EU… They will take us back into the institutions of the EU which we fought very hard to break free from.”

She is afraid Labour will “sacrifice fishing” and argues making the most of Brexit freedoms is “more important than ever,” if Britain is to “thrive and succeed” in a world wracked by instability.

Dame Priti has lost none of her trademark energy since moving to the Opposition benches.

This self-described “massive Thatcherite” has lived a British version of the American dream. Born in London in 1972 to Gujarati parents who came to the UK from Uganda, she entered Parliament in 2010, just as the Conservatives returned to power under David Cameron.

Theresa May appointed her International Development Secretary and Mr Johnson – who would later make her a Dame in his resignation honours – handed her one of the toughest jobs in politics, running the Home Office.

Her campaign for the Tory leadership in the wake of the Tories’ summer election disaster did not succeed but her zeal for politics is as strong as ever. For Dame Priti, bringing the Labour era of government to the swiftest possible end is a priority for the good of the nation.

Sir Keir’s team, she says, is part of a “national demoralisation project,” adding: “They don’t stand up for our values, they really don’t.”

She points to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s shock decision to strip millions of pensioner of support with their heating bills, saying: “I think the winter fuel policy is completely nasty; it’s cruel; it’s vindictive.”

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s overhaul of workers’ rights will, she warns, result in “more unemployment”.

“Every time they are in power you see the economy go into reverse gear,” she says.

Describing a country suffering under the “pain of Labour,” she says: “We do care about the public, our country, people’s jobs and livelihoods… We’re in touch with people every single day who have concerns and anxieties about what is happening under this Government.”

An immediate challenge for the Conservatives is avoiding another setback in next month’s local elections. Polls now put the Conservatives behind Labour and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Dame Priti puts Reform’s success down to widespread disillusionment with politics but argues that when you are choosing who should run your local council “the reality is you need people with skills and experience”.

When asked if she would like to see two of her erstwhile comrades – Mr Johnson and former Business Secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg – back in the Commons, she says: “I’ve got a lot of fondness for my former colleagues, I really have, because quite frankly we fought for Brexit together and all sorts of things and I like conviction politicians.”

Despite the challenges facing the country and the Conservatives, she gives every sign of enjoying the battle. She remembers how Lady Thatcher and Ronald Reagan helped defeat Communism and bring the Cold War to an end, and she wants to take their values forward in this decade.

“It’s in our DNA,” she says as she compares the UK and the US. “We are countries of hope, opportunity, the freedom to succeed.”

But in Britain today, she claims, people are wondering “how they ended up with this awful Government”.

Overturning Labour’s massive majority is a Herculean task for a Tory party now facing intense competition on the Right but Dame Priti is more than up for the fight. She wants to be back in a Government that will stand up to Russia and China while standing up for parents, pensioners, farmers and business people.

As Labour has already discovered, Britain has not heard the last of this veteran Brexiteer.