Home secretary Priti Patel ignored warnings from at least two senior colleagues to stop targeting immigration lawyers after a knifeman threatened to kill a solicitor last month in
an attack linked to her rhetoric, the
Observer can reveal.
Lord chancellor Robert Buckland and attorney general
Suella Braverman intervened after the attack to tell Patel that her targeting of the legal profession was already believed to have inspired an incident that might have left a solicitor dead.
Both asked Patel to cease her attacks on the legal profession, warning that more violence could materialise following the 7 September incident when a man entered a law firm in London armed with a “large, heavy duty knife” and embarked on a “racist, violent attack” that injured a staff member before the assailant was overwhelmed.
Patel, however, ignored the pleas from her two senior colleagues and during her speech to the Tory party conference on 4 October intensified her targeting of
“do-gooders” and “lefty lawyers”. Two days later Boris Johnson
went even further, telling the annual Conservative conference the criminal justice system was “being hamstrung by lefty human rights lawyers”.
On 7 September a man with a large knife entered a London law firm and launched a “violent, racist attack” that injured a staff member before the assailant was overwhelmed.
A confederate flag and far-right literature were allegedly found in a bag he was carrying. According to documents about the incident, police described the knife as a “weapon designed to cause serious harm”.
Days before, on 3 September, Patel dismayed the legal profession by claiming “
activist lawyers” were frustrating the removal of migrants.