Priti Patel, Britain’s hardline home secretary, is under renewed scrutiny following the deaths of dozens of people in the English Channel — one of the worst tragedies affecting migrants bound for Britain in recent memory.
But Patel is accustomed to scrutiny. Even in Britain’s fractured political landscape, few lawmakers are as intensely polarizing as Patel, who has held key jobs in successive Conservative governments and whose name has been floated as a potential successor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
On the issue of immigration — and on Brexit, social justice, law and order and far more besides — her name serves as a Rorschach test for a divided society, reflecting acclaim and anger from each side of the nation’s cultural schism.
To her admirers on the right, she is a steadfast flagbearer for Brexit Britain; a principled patriot who, as a state school-educated daughter of Indian immigrants, is uniquely placed to move the Conservative Party away from its decades-old reputation as elitist and out of touch with the multicultural country it governs.
