Ukraine refugee crisis ‘spells curtains’ for Priti Patel

The government has faced furious criticism over its handling of the Ukrainian refugee crisis as those fleeing the war-torn country are confronted with red tape and delays if they want to reach the UK.

The brunt of the criticism has been directed at Home Secretary Priti Patel, who faced “days of public and private opprobrium” before her department finally allowed Ukrainians to apply for UK visas online rather than visit application centres in Europe, reported The Guardian last week.

Boris Johnson is reportedly “perturbed by the volume of negative headlines around the low number of refugees being granted visas”, fuelling speculation that “Patel’s future would again come under discussion at the summer reshuffle”, the paper continued.

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This week the number of visas granted to Ukrainians wishing to enter the UK has risen since last week when just 300 had been approved, but numbers remain low. Just 4,600 visas have been granted through the Ukraine family scheme, according to the latest Home Office figures.

Now the prime minister is facing calls to sack Patel from Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who branded her response to the “humanitarian catastrophe” as “utterly shameful”, The Guardian reported.

“She has answered desperation with delays; crisis with confusion; pain with paperwork,” he told his party’s spring conference this weekend. “It couldn’t be clearer that Priti Patel is not up to the job. The buck stops with the prime minister. So Boris Johnson must sack her now,” he added.

Misjudged the public mood

It seems the “mood of compassion” that the British public have shown over the Ukrainian refugee crisis could “spell curtains” for the home secretary, said political sketch writer John Crace in The Guardian.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she has “failed to read the room” despite the rest of her party picking up on the mood of the nation. She has presided over a “steadfastly old school” approach to immigration, which meant only those refugees with close family ties to the UK could apply for a visa – “if they could find a visa application centre that was open”.

“Eventually enough was enough, even for the most hardline Tory MPs,” continued Crace, although just about the only concession they could get from the home secretary was that refugees could fill their visa forms in online.

The chaos of the Home Office’s approach meant that it was practically “a failed state in itself”, said Crace. “No one had any confidence that Patel could organise an adequate humanitarian response and so no one even bothered to ask her.”

After taking flak for “a refugee policy that made Scrooge look like Oxfam”, said Tim Stanley in The Telegraph, the government has “cooked up” a new policy in the form of its new Homes for Ukraine scheme, unveiled by levelling up secretary Michael Gove yesterday.

“Goodbye Priti Patel, hello Michael Gove,” said Stanley, who called Gove’s leadership of the new project “a tonal switch from baseball bat to kid gloves”.

Gove seemed “comfortably in command of areas normally controlled by the home secretary” during his Commons performance, agreed Quentin Letts in The Times, leading one Gove loyalist to comment that they “expected more resistance” from the home secretary as he took over her “territory”.

Can Patel hang on?

Patel may be able to hang on, for now, said HuffPost, but it may be “too late to restore” her “battered reputation”.

As well as putting Gove in charge of the government’s new scheme, it is “significant” that the prime minister has appointed former Tory MP Richard Harrington as the new minister for refugees, and made him a life peer at the same time. Both moves are a “clear sign of Johnson’s unhappiness with Patel’s performance”, said the news site.

But while the past week has “left her more damaged than ever”, Patel still has some support among the Conservative right.

“Priti still has support from certain quarters – she’s good at going round the constituency parties and associations and pressing the flesh,” said one former minister.

“She’s also got support from the right wing of the party, but the general view is that it’s either the home office that’s dysfunctional or that she simply isn’t up to it,” they added.