Preeti's sitting pretty

Unfortunately the men in suits at Whitehall appear to still dislike strong women and object to having one as their boss.

Unfortunately the conservative cabinet seem to be lacking basic morals! The PM is very adept at shooting himself in the foot being “loyal” to yet another of his cronies. Without doubt she is guilty of being a bully. Please let karma make an appearance sometime very very soon.

GrannyGravy13

Unfortunately the men in suits at Whitehall appear to still dislike strong women and object to having one as their boss.

Have you ever been subjected to bullying as an employee?

I have watched it happening and it isn’t pretty. After several warnings I had to intervene, and the individual was moved to another department with no staff.

It is nothing to do with strength but weakness. Patel is a weak leader and manager and is not as bright as most of those she is managing.

Her behaviour is unforgivable.

There is clearly no point in having an independent enquiry on anything now if the PM is going to contradict the findings. We know that we are being gaslighted but what can we do about it? The government is cocooned in its massive majority.

So it’s not ok for the Home Secretary to ‘bully’ but it’s fine for the usual cohort of keyboard warriors on here to ‘bully’. Double standards?

GrannyGravy13

Unfortunately the men in suits at Whitehall appear to still dislike strong women and object to having one as their boss.

However did they survive Margaret Thatcher?

Ridiculous statement GG13.

Alegrias
To answer your question @ 12.50 the answer is,no.

Gwyneth

So it’s not ok for the Home Secretary to ‘bully’ but it’s fine for the usual cohort of keyboard warriors on here to ‘bully’. Double standards?

Well, no bullying is acceptable.

What bullying is going on here Gwyneth? Serious question.

petra

Alegrias
To answer your question @ 12.50 the answer is,no.

I'm sorry I misinterpreted your meaning petra.

Priti Patel is a strong woman who campaigned for Brexit, for a points based system on immigration, for greater police powers and much more which obviously appealed to the electorate who gave her party an eighty seat majority.
Some of the controlling and largely remain backing snivel servants have continuously worked against her and her frustration has been apparent.
In such a situation most of us would sometimes lose our composure. Most of us have had a forthright boss and had to toughen up, Civil Servants are not little kids straight from school, most are strong, opinionated, assertive and dare I say public school boys.
In my opinion the Prime Minister is right to back his ministers and show loyalty unless obviously a murder or crime of brutality has been committed.
I do acknowledge that bullying occurs and should be weeded out but a bullish bloke with years of experience crying bully against a minister with strong views that conflict with his or her own. Please.

Sir Alex Allan also said the home secretary had "legitimately - not always felt supported by the department".

Having worked for the Home Office for a time I can imagine that Priti, a BAME woman, would not have had an easy ride.

To me, @MaizieD, misspelling a name is a rather different thing from a SPAG error. Especially if a poster is slagging someone off (well deserved or not) at least have the courtesy to get their name right.
I’ve never commented, but it does grate on me when people who post on political threads spell Keir Starmer’s name as Kier.

For the record, I’ve only ever corrected anyone once - not on GN - and that was because the poster had corrected someone else - and made a basic mistake in their own post. Talk about pots and kettles....

Whitewavemark2 I was bullied at school, I have been bullied in the workplace.

There is a fine line between bullying in the workplace and an employee disagreeing with a strong/different management style.

We have had to let employees go who we felt were bullying, however one who had a firmer staff engagement /management style than we like, after a long and detailed conversation has remained a valued staff member.

I think it's interesting that the "it's because she's a woman" defence is being used. The Home Office was run very succesfully (if not exactly humanely) by one Theresa May for a long time. They must have been used to a woman in charge. Still I suppose it's always worth a try.

Andrew Adonis

So what’s just happened in the Priti Patel case is that Johnson decided to accept the verdict of the accused rather than the jury, and the judge has just resigned

Really disgraceful

Alegrias It’s more a general observation and happens frequently on any thread when certain posters get involved. I feel very sad that they have to resort to this kind of tactic.

LauraNorder eloquently said, good post.

The woman didn't have any backing which is why she'd felt fit to use bullying tactics. It's very difficult when you have no support as this is what it leads to.
It's not she who is weak, but others who hid behind her.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question Gwyneth.

All is lost really, isn't it? Excusing bullying, blaming the victim, ignoring independent reviews and overturning precedent.

We're going to hell in a handcart.

I have been wondering what ministers actually would have to do to lose their jobs?

EllanVannin

The woman didn't have any backing which is why she'd felt fit to use bullying tactics. It's very difficult when you have no support as this is what it leads to.
It's not she who is weak, but others who hid behind her.

Can you explain that please? She is a Conservative minister, following another Conservative minister into an office. Two conservative women held the post before her and her predecessor was a British Asian man. All seemed to run the Office succesfully without bullying. Why did she have "no backing"?

Having read up on it all there are a lot of grey areas. I’m inclined to agree with most of what LauraNorder has said. The situation does seem to have improved with the Home Office of late as well. I did note however that she has not apologised for bullying but for upsetting people - it is arguable she did not bully anyone directly but indirectly her language apparently did upset some. Really? Don’t quite know what to think.

Alegrias2

All is lost really, isn't it? Excusing bullying, blaming the victim, ignoring independent reviews and overturning precedent.

We're going to hell in a handcart.

Not half.

I agree LauraNorder

Accusations of bullying seems to be bandied about so much these days.

How do you define bullying?
In its most awful state it’s easy to recognise but there are also many people who would whine about being bullied if their boss/manager spoke to them a bit sharply.

Ms. Patel seems a strong ‘no nonsense’ sort of woman which is good in her government role.

I also think it’s likely that some civil servants dislike her and have jumped on any opportunity to try to discredit her.

If we can’t learn to stick up for ourselves by the time we reach adulthood, we never will.