Priti Patel’s survival speaks volumes about the state of May’s premiership

‘Extraordinary’ is perhaps the most over-used word in the Westminster lexicon. Days, statements, speeches, developments – all are routinely described as extraordinary, so often that the word is, well, ordinary. But some extraordinary things deserve the term more than others. A statement issued yesterday by the Department for International Development about Priti Patel’s holiday is more than ordinarily extraordinary.

I’ll leave aside the fairly obvious politics of all this: under any other circumstances, Ms Patel would have been sacked, and the fact that she hasn’t been is just another comment on the state of Theresa May’s premiership. Instead, I just want to draw your attention to that statement itself, that artefact, a creation of historical interest.

Consider, for a second, how such a statement comes about. Think about the sheer, gaping horror of the private office, the communications director, the special adviser, the permanent secretary when they all face up to the facts: several days after it was first reported that their secretary of state had unrecorded meetings with a foreign politician, you learn that not only were there a lot more meetings (including one with a foreign PM), but your minister has, on the record, said things about all this to a newspaper (and the Guardian, for God’s sake) that are not, to put too fine a point on it, true.