Britain’s senior-most Indian-origin minister Priti Patel on Thursday resigned from her Cabinet post over her unauthorised secret meetings with Israeli politicians, after a meeting at Downing Street with Prime Minister Theresa May. 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 through the proper procedure.
In her resignation, Patel again apologised 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 apologise.
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.
The 45-year-old 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 favour of Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).
She must have hoped that the storm around her undisclosed meetings in Israel would die down after a formal apology before she flew out to Africa for an official tour of Uganda and Ethiopia yesterday.
But she was unable to attend any of the scheduled meetings as she was ordered to abandon the visit and fly back to London today “at the request of the prime minister”.
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.
