Priti Patel's feud with her own officials has deepened after the Home Secretary privately described her department as ‘not fit for purpose’, and civil servants labelled her management style as ‘moronic’.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Ms Patel considered writing a letter to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, in which she planned to lambast the officials’ failure to get a grip of the migrant boat crisis.
The letter was not sent but officials got wind of it and hit back, telling this newspaper her behaviour is ‘erratic’ and ‘self-serving’.
Pictured: A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, by a Border Force vessel, following a small boat incident in the Channel, Saturday November 20, 2021. Priti Patel's feud with her own officials has deepened amid the migrant crisis
Priti Patel's feud with her own officials has deepened after the Home Secretary (pictured earlier this week speaking in London) privately described her department as ‘not fit for purpose’, and civil servants labelled her management style as ‘moronic’
One stated bluntly: ‘She hates us and we all hate her.’ Another official said: ‘What’s become abundantly clear is that she is out for herself and only interested in how this plays out publicly.
‘If we actually worked collaboratively, then we could get things done, but instead we just have cloud cuckoo land public statements from the Home Secretary and we all look and think, “Well, that won’t work”.’
The phrase ‘not fit for purpose’ was used by John Reid, the former Labour Home Secretary, in 2006 to describe the scandal-struck immigration directorate.
News of the civil war within the Home Office came as around 600 migrants completed the journey across the Channel yesterday. More than 25,000 have crossed in small boats this year – triple the number of 2020.
An ‘exasperated’ Boris Johnson has
