Priti Patel targets party leaders in EU debate
London: Britain’s senior-most Indian-origin Cabinet minister Priti Patel today launched a direct attack at her Conservative party leadership in her campaign to get Britain to vote to leave the European Union (EU) in the June 23 referendum.
Without directly naming Prime Minister David Cameron or Chancellor George Osborne, she accused them of ignoring the common man.
“It’s shameful that those leading the pro-EU campaign fail to care for those who do not have their advantages. Their narrow self-interest fails to pay due regard to the interests of the wider public,” the British Prime Minister’s Indian Diaspora Champion wrote on ‘The Daily Telegraph’ website.
Patel, who is part of the Cabinet as UK employment minister, also attacked her party leadership for failing to meet its election pledge on immigration.
“Promises have been made that now cannot be delivered. Only a year ago, the Conservative Party’s election manifesto pledged to bring net migration down below 100,000 a year… Membership of the EU means that we Conservatives cannot even honour our own promises.
“This only undermines trust in politics and highlights how the EU damages democracy,” she wrote.
Her comments came as other Conservative party leaders, including former London mayor Boris Johnson, also called on Cameron to admit defeat over the issue.
In an open letter addressed to Cameron in ‘The Sunday Times’, Johnson writes: “Voters were promised repeatedly at elections that net immigration could be cut to the tens of thousands. This promise is plainly not achievable as long as the UK is a member of the EU and the failure to keep it is corrosive of public trust in politics.
“It’s government policy that ‘EU migrants should have a job offer before they come here’. But the EU did not agree to letting the UK implement that policy during the renegotiation of our membership.”
