Why does nobody talk about the racist abuse aimed at Priti Patel?
It seems that as far as the Left are concerned, the Thatcherite mother-of-one can do no right. Had she been a Left-winger, the 49-year-old MP for Witham, with her working class roots, would probably have been a poster girl for 21st century politics. But instead Patel has become a hate figure among so-called progressives who cannot seem to see the hypocrisy in abusing her in the name of calling out the abuse of others. According to one source close to tough and resilient Patel, she does not look at much of her own social media  although she was deeply offended by a Guardian cartoon last March, depicting her as a cow with a ring through her nose with the Prime Minister as a bull sitting next to her. The drawing, by Steve Bell, prompted Trupti Patel, president of the Hindu Forum of Britain, to accuse the newspaper of crossing the boundary from legitimate reporting into blatant racism. The source added: That Guardian cartoon was outrageously racist. Priti was born four years after the Rivers of Blood speech. The idea that she has avoided any racism is for the birds. The simple fact is, the Left dont like it when the Right dont look like they think the Right should look like. They dont like it when a brown person is Right-wing. Thats what this is really all about.  Other tweetshave made fun of the University of Essex graduates accent  mocking her condemnation of an anti-lockdown protest with the words appallin distressin  while she received multiple death threats over the Home Offices handling of the Windrush scandal. The Home Secretarys tough stance on illegal immigration has also invited criticism that she has somehow forgotten her roots. While others in the Tory party have voiced their support for her hardline measures, it is Patel who seems to fall victim to particularly personal attacks. In June last year, she was forced to defend herself in the Commons against suggestions by Labour MPs that she did not understand racial equality in light of the BLM protests. Speaking clearly and calmly at the Despatch Box, she fired back: It must have been a very different Home Secretary who, as a child, was frequently called a P--- in the playground. A very different Home Secretary who was racially abused in the streets or even advised to drop her surname and use her husbands in order to advance her career. A different Home Secretary recently characterised... in The Guardian newspaper as a fat cow with a ring through its nose  something that was not only racist but offensive, both culturally and religiously.  Yet despite speaking her truth, Patel then found herself on the receiving end of a letter by 31 MPs (some white) accusing her of gaslighting others from minority communities by speaking about her personal experiences. They are trying to silence me because I dont conform to their version of what it is to be an ethnic minority, she said afterwards. They think they have a licence to speak for everybody from an ethnic minority community. That is not the case. It is simply not the case. Were all different. Were all individuals. What they are saying is racist in itself, and I dont think we should lose sight of that.  It certainly seems odd that Mings, who joined last summers round table with Patel alongside the FAs CEO Mark Bullingham and Sanjay Bhandari, chair of Kick It Out, should have so easily lost sight of their own collaboration. Not least when the Home Secretary used the meeting to reaffirm her commitment to bringing forward the Online Safety Bill, which will place a duty of care on social media firms to protect their users from hate crime on their platforms. As Chief Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Barclay said: The Home Secretary has repeatedly taken a stand against racism. She has consistently condemned racist abuse online and she has taken action as Home Secretary against some of the extreme Right-wing groups that are responsible for this.