Read on Twitter
"They" in this case being the incredibly woke bloke who was chair of the joint intelligence committee, worked for John Major and was appointed to his position by David Cameron. This casual mainstreaming of conspiratorial talk is just unnecessary and damaging. https://twitter.com/JacobYoungMP/status/1329731618664280065
The list is a fascinating bit of projection, because the real reason Downing Street wants to protect Priti Patel is that there is no-one in the parliamentary party who can quite replicate her political strengths and value to them: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/11/boris-johnson-s-decision-protect-priti-patel-huge-risk-everybody-involved
The explicit arguments are, as you'd expect, given that you can't really say "she's important to our electoral coalition, OKAY?" out loud, are all designed to fit in a tweet or a two-minute interview, and collapse under any kind of serious scrutiny: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/11/boris-johnson-s-decision-protect-priti-patel-huge-risk-everybody-involved
The big policy problem (and political risk) is, of course, that we have a report that basically says 'the Secretary of State did not lead effectively and the department is not well-run' and there is no plan to change or improve either of these things: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/11/boris-johnson-s-decision-protect-priti-patel-huge-risk-everybody-involved
