LONDON: Britain’s senior-most Indian-origin minister Priti Patel has resigned from her Cabinet post amid a political storm over her unauthorized secret meetings with Israeli politicians while on a holiday in the Jewish country.
Patel’s position as international development minister had become increasingly untenable after it emerged that she had two further meetings with Israeli officials that were not disclosed earlier.
The 45-year-old minister resigned last night after a meeting at Downing Street with Prime Minister Theresa May, who had summoned her midway from a tour of Africa.
In her resignation, Patel again apologized and said her actions “fell below the standards of transparency and openness that I have promoted and advocated”.
It follows a week of controversies around a dozen undisclosed meetings she had with other Israelis, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for which she had been forced to apologize.
Her departure from the Cabinet marks an abrupt halt to the meteoric rise of the Gujarati-origin MP, often touted as a potential future leader of the Conservative party and a prime ministerial candidate.
She was elected as a Conservative MP for Witham in Essex in 2010 and gained prominence in the then David Cameron-led Tory government as his ‘Indian Diaspora Champion’.
She went on to be appointed to junior ministerial posts, treasury minister in 2014 and then employment minister after the 2015 general election, before May promoted her to secretary of state in the department for international development (DfID) last year.
A longstanding Eurosceptic, Patel is among the most vocal supporters of Brexit and had steered the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign in the lead up to the June 2016 referendum in favor of Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).
Earlier this week, Downing Street had said that May had accepted Patel’s apology over a series of meetings while she was on holiday in Israel in August without reporting them to the Foreign Office.
But new revelations of further meetings with Israeli officials following that visit had made Patel’s position within the Cabinet very precarious.
It is understood that she met Israel’s public security minister Gilad Erdan in the UK Parliament complex in early September and an Israeli foreign ministry official Yuval Rotem in New York later that month.
The British premier was reportedly told about the unreported New York meeting during Patel’s apology conversation at Downing Street on Monday but only learned about her unreported meeting with Erdan after the talks.
Ministers are required to tell the UK Foreign Office when they are conducting official business overseas, but it emerged that British diplomats in Israel were not informed about any of Patel’s meetings which included a meeting with Netanyahu and other political figures as well as charity organizations.
Opposition parties had been calling for Patel’s resignation as minister in charge of DfID and the country’s aid budget if it emerged that she had breached the ministerial code of conduct and failed to follow established protocol.
In a letter to May, Labor’s shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett had called on the premier to either call in her independent adviser on ministerial standards to investigate, or “state publicly and explain your full reasons for why Priti Patel retains your confidence”.
In her apology statement on Monday, Patel had attributed the unreported meetings to “enthusiasm”.
Her conduct had already led May to direct her Cabinet Office to look into tightening the ministerial code of conduct to avoid any such incidents in future.
It was widely believed that the delay in dismissing Patel was because the prime minister was more at ease keeping pro-Brexit MPs close at hand to prevent them doing too much damage as opponents of government decisions on the Tory backbenches.
But with her departure now, May has lost a second senior minister within a week, after Sir Michael Fallon stood down as defense minister amid allegations of inappropriate behavior towards female journalists.
Another of her close Cabinet allies, first secretary of state Damian Green, is also under investigation over misconduct allegations and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has been under fire over his handling of a case involving a British Iranian jailed in Tehran.-PTI
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