Top ministers urged Priti Patel to stop attacks on 'activist lawyers'

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Source: The Observer

Top ministers urged Priti Patel to stop attacks on 'activist lawyers'

The home secretary’s rhetoric targeting the legal profession continued despite warnings that it led to violence

Mark Townsend Home affairs editor
@townsendmark
Sun 18 Oct 2020 07.15 BST

Home secretary Priti Patel ignored warnings from at least two senior colleagues to stop targeting immigration lawyers after a knifeman threatened to kill a solicitor last month in an attack linked to her rhetoric, the Observer can reveal.

Lord chancellor Robert Buckland and attorney general Suella Braverman intervened after the attack to tell Patel that her targeting of the legal profession was already believed to have inspired an incident that might have left a solicitor dead.

Both asked Patel to cease her attacks on the legal profession, warning that more violence could materialise following the 7 September incident when a man entered a law firm in London armed with a “large, heavy duty knife” and embarked on a “racist, violent attack” that injured a staff member before the assailant was overwhelmed.

Patel, however, ignored the pleas from her two senior colleagues and during her speech to the Tory party conference on 4 October intensified her targeting of “do-gooders” and “lefty lawyers”. Two days later Boris Johnson went even further, telling the annual Conservative conference the criminal justice system was “being hamstrung by lefty human rights lawyers”.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/18/top-ministers-urged-priti-patel-to-stop-attacks-on-activist-lawyers

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1. "Doubling down" is a major part of the Tory playbook

When right wing politicians and commentators get things badly wrong they don't admit their mistake as that would be a sign of weakness. Instead they "double down" and keep in digging themselves further into a hole.

Patel appears very strongly to be very much one of those who will never admit to any error. It's been a successful strategy for right wing politicians for a while. Even if it has created a hugely dishonest, wildly arrogant and incapable generation of politicians.