Priti Patel’s declining power within government leaves her exposed

If Priti Patel were a currency she’d be looking very much like the Russian rouble right now: unloved, badly devalued and with no early sign of a recovery in her political fortunes.

On a generous reading, the home secretary can’t win. For years she has made the working assumption that all inward migration is bad and the Tories’ target voters appear to hate it. So she’s made things as difficult as she can. The grassroots applauded. She was popular.

Now, though, the British public seems moved, possibly temporarily, by the plight of the Ukrainian people, and there has been a great outpouring of compassion and calls for them to be given shelter. Compassion is not something that Patel “does” in the normal course of affairs, and she has been caught out. In a U-turn she has abandoned all pretence of accessible visa centres and the deliberately cumbersome bureaucracy designed to keep the refugees on the side of the Oder-Neisse line.

Instead, Ukrainian refugees can now do everything online and deal with the biometrics when they arrive in Britain. The downside for Patel is that some unhelpful people might wonder why this more humane procedure can’t be made available to other refugees…

Patel has reportedly had a difficult time in cabinet, “squirming” while trying to justify the chaos and delay in the response to the invasion of Ukraine. She’s been openly attacked by some of her own backbenchers. She has also found herself up against Yvette Cooper as shadow home secretary. When Cooper was chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Patel only had to deal with her occasionally. Now she is back on the front bench, Cooper can shred Patel every week. She does this even when Patel doesn’t turn up in the Commons to plead her case.

Meanwhile, Patel is losing those to the right of her – they do exist – who cannot comprehend why refugees and economic migrants are continuing to cross the English Channel in dinghies. Led by Nigel Farage and some of the more difficult MPs, her failure to “control our borders” has been boiling their blood for many months. It doesn’t matter to them that the movement of people is practically impossible to stop under international conventions on refugees, human rights and the law of the sea.

Post-Brexit, our former European partners are under no obligation to help the UK out, and Patel has to pay the French to try and prevent the little boats heading out to sea. As with Ukraine, but for the opposite reason, no one is satisfied with Patel’s performance. She is the reverse Goldilocks of immigration – some think her policy is too hard, others think it too soft, and few think it just right.

Patel’s flagship Nationality and Borders Bill was designed to deal with all these problems and more, and spark a few politically useful culture wars with the Labour Party on the way. So was the Borders Police, Crime, Sentencing and Crime bill, sponsored now by Dominic Raab. However, she has had great difficulty in getting the legislation through parliament, and has come under intense pressure particularly on the right to asylum enshrined in international law, and the arbitrary removal of British citizenship.

In many ways, Patel has had enjoyed a charmed political life. Forced to resign as international development secretary under Theresa May for unofficial meetings with Israeli politicians, she supported the Leave side in the referendum, which unexpectedly won, and was then propelled into the Home Office by Boris Johnson. She was censured by the independent adviser on ministerial conduct after an inquiry into allegations of bullying, but survived when Johnson told his MPs to “form a protective square around ‘The Prittster’”.

Since then Patel has muddled through multiple migration crisis, found herself on the wrong side of the “taking the knee” movement, was kept away from the Downing Street Covid-19 briefings, and was blindsided by Sadiq Khan over the sacking of Met commissioner Cressida Dick.

The clearest indication of her declining grip on power is how her department has been losing control over key policy areas to other parts of government – coordinating Channel migration to the royal navy, and Ukrainian refugees to the Department for Levelling Up and Michael Gove. Politically, the most accurate gauge of her declaring popularity among the Tory grassroots is her standing in the ConservativeHome members’ poll rating senior Tories. She’s fallen from fourth place and a net approval score of +79.7 two years ago, to being fourth from the bottom and a score of +4.2 now. YouGov estimates that 57 per cent of British adults dislike her.

The next ministerial reshuffle isn’t due for some months yet, and Patel will almost certainly get her bill on the statute book and will make it to the summer recess. But there doesn’t seem to be much protecting “The Prittster” these days.