Scones Apparently, Patel's star is waning among the activists at the conference. Although, no doubt, on the small stage with the small audience (only Johnson gets the big one) she will be cheered in a good Conservative manner.
This is a paragraph from an email that drops into my box each morning. It's the Stephen Bush "Morning Call" from the New Statesman but I'm not sure if it is "reprinted" on their website. Worth a look though. So ...
The central reason why Patel's stock is not as high as it once was among Conservative activists is the perception that her department is failing: that she is unable to prevent more people coming here on boats in search of a better life, that we have de facto decriminalised most crimes other than murder and speeding, that the Metropolitan Police is poorly run, and so on.
This cannot be a surprise. That trite old saying that "If you fail to plan you plan to fail" may be annoying but it's still accurate. And this government has unequivocally "fails to plan".