Is Priti Patel’s career in trouble after a week of punishing how? | Priti Patel

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Priti Patel has faced days of public and private opprobrium before the Home Office’s abrupt U-turn to halt Ukrainian visa appointments for passport holders on Thursday. But has the prime minister already lost faith in the home secretary?

One cabinet source said Boris Johnson had been perturbed by the volume of negative headlines around the low number of refugees being granted visas – and speculated that Patel’s future would again come under discussion at the summer reshuffle.

They pointed in particular to the cover of this week’s Spectator magazine – which Johnson used to edit – which featured a cartoon comparing the UK’s bureaucratic response with that of other EU nations.

“Priti is fundamentally opposed to a more liberal system, yes, but the other issue is that she just cannot do effective, fast-paced delivery,” another MP said.

Allies of the home secretary say that is deeply unfair, arguing officials are pulling 15-hour days to set up new systems from scratch and respond to changing humanitarian and security pictures. They predict a significant surge in visa numbers by the end of the week to about 5,000.

The change Patel announced in response to an urgent question in the Commons on Thursday – to remove the need for visa appointments from Ukrainians with passports – was hastily drafted over the past 24 hours when officials realized the sheer scale of the bottleneck in visa centers that are normally equipped to deal only with a handful of student or work permits.

It has been a week of punishing criticism for the home secretary from her own MPs in parliament, including claims that had to be retracted about staffing in Calais and appointment wait times. Distraught families were banging the windows of the Rzeszów visa centre’s windows when staff told them were only able to see to 100 applications in one day.

The Tory MP Roger Gale said that her behavior this week would “have been a resigning matter under any normal administration”. Another, Alec Shelbrooke, told the immigration minister, Kevin Foster, that the operation of the scheme was “a disgrace”.

On Tuesday, sources said Patel was given an uncomfortable grilling by cabinet ministers about the UK’s response at their weekly meeting. One cabinet source said it was “not a slanging match but more like an interrogation”.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, cross-examined Patel repeatedly on the details of what was on offer and how support could be accessed. “She floundered a bit,” the source said.

Others who have expressed frustration at the management of the scheme are the foreign secretary, Liz Truss; the defense secretary, Ben Wallace; and the health secretary, Sajid Javid. On Wednesday, Javid’s department organized a separate plane to bring about 20 critically ill children to the UK for treatment.

Several cabinet ministers have let their frustrations out during on air interviews when they have been repeatedly quizzed on the failures. Shapps told broadcasters that “lessons will be learned” about how the response can be co-ordinated.

A Patel ally did not deny there were tensions with the prime minister but said they did not think the home secretary had lost his confidence. “The PM just wakes up and looks at the headlines and then moans about it,” they said. “Generally they have a pretty good relationship compared to almost anyone.

“She’ll come speak to him, they see eye-to-eye on a lot. She likes him and she’s taken a lot of blows for him. But of course it’s difficult when there are just volumes of these tragic stories every single day in every paper.”

Backbenchers describe feeling as if they have been slamming into a brick wall. Patel was urged internally to hold a video conference to explain the visa system to MPs but decided instead to send a “dear colleague” letter.

There were also plans for her to do a her own statement in the chamber, but events have forced announcements to be made at multiple urgent questions in the House of Commons.

There is a widespread view among MPs and officials that a wider Home Office culture – beyond Patel – is also at fault. One Whitehall source said the Home Office officials genuinely believed its main issues was communication.

“If you’ve got people banging on the doors of the office in Poland, that’s more than a comms problem.”

A constant redrafting of the visa conditions has led to officials needing to hold thrice-daily briefings – more than any other situation has deserved since Patel took over. One Whitehall source said there was a genuine security concerns, citing discoveries of fake Ukrainian passports on sale.

“Over there are these Chechens groups, the Wagner Group mercenaries – her critics just aren’t seeing the stuff she’s seeing,” the source said.

Others named a combination of difficult delivery, inflexibility and ideology for the endless negative headlines. “Fundamentally, cutting immigration dominates people’s thinking,” a former official said. “They see their job, from when they wake up in the morning, as stopping people getting into this country.

“But actually, that’s not their job. Their job is to enforce our immigration policy – ​​which does include letting some people in. Senior people are in that building now, reading these horrendous stories in the press and they are like, argh, fuck, why is this happening again? But if the general culture is to find ways of keeping people out, it’s not a surprise really.”

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