FlyTheNest

HindleA wrote:According to “an ally” of Priti Patel’s quoted in a Telegraph story (paywall), the international development is not going to go down without a fight. The ally is quoted as saying:

["Patel is being made a scapegoat, it is not credible that the Foreign Office knew about these meetings but Downing Street did not. She left for Uganda after apologising and being told that she was safe - now they are bowing to pressure.

She is going to be pretty angry if she is sacked and she could do some pretty hard damage to Downing Street. No 10 is being naive, the prime minister will create an even bigger problem for herself if she sacks Priti."

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Bad election night for the GOP over the pond, not before time tbh.

The Donald apparently tweeting it was all the fault of their candidates for not following his brilliant "unbeatable" strategy

Stagger Lee wrote: [youtube]d9DjDh3yjSM[/youtube]

The Wedding Present are a British indie rock group originally formed in 1985 in Leeds, England, from the ashes of the Lost Pandas.

HindleA wrote:FFS makes it sound like using the dessert spoon for soup,or something

Peter Beaumont

Of all the meetings that Priti Patel held with Israeli ministers and officials, the meetings with Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security and strategic affairs minister, are the most unusual and potentially damaging. She met him on her visit to Israel in August, and again in September in London. (See 7.27am.)

Erdan, an ambitious and abrasive member of Netanyahu’s own right wing Likud party, is better known for working against the kind of human rights advocates familiar to DfID staffers from their work.

In his strategic affairs role Erdan in particular has displayed McCarthyite tendencies, expressing at one stage his desire to set up a database of Israeli citizens who are involved in promoting and supporting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movements against Israel or the settlements – a proposal that was opposed by the country’s attorney general Avichai Mendelblit who said he had no legal authority to collect data on the political views of Israelis.

A similar scheme targeting foreign nationals for intelligence gathering has been used to deny people entry to Israel.

In 2015 Erdan’s ministry was given powers including those to “guide, coordinate and integrate the activities of all the ministers and the government and of civil entities in Israel and abroad on the subject of the struggle against attempts to delegitimize Israel and the boycott movement”.

refitman wrote:Patel's resigned. So May wasn't strong enough to sack her?

tinyclanger2 wrote:I have a suspicion we became part of America by mistake

For the second time in less than a year, Israeli efforts to discreetly influence British policy has been disclosed.

In January, the embassy official Shai Masot was caught in an al-Jazeera sting to “take down” politicians regarded as unfriendly to Israel. This time a bigger fish has been caught: the UK’s international development secretary, Priti Patel.

Official visits to Israel by senior British political figures are common, but the sensitivities are usually acute; embassy and consulate staff carefully vet the locations and personnel visited by British diplomats and ministers.

Visits are always accompanied by diplomatic staff, with agendas designed to reflect UK policy – for example, making sure to include meetings with Palestinians and groups and individuals who may not be popular with the Israeli government.

Patel’s summer trip, organised with the head of the Conservative Friends of Israel lobby group, skipped all those protocols, despite a timetable that was highly ETC!“”