IF Priti Patel was a Labour Minister, the reaction to the Allan inquiry into her conduct at the Home Office would be very different.

The liberal establishment from the BBC to the Guardian, and including Twitter, would ride to her rescue, claiming her treatment by public school mandarins was “racism”.

The Sir Humphreys would have been dismissed as stale, white bigots, intimidated by the idea of not only a woman, but a woman of colour, daughter of Ugandan-Indian immigrants, daring to criticise their work ethic. She would be hailed as a heroine standing up to conscious and unconscious male bias.

But she’s a Tory, so she’s rubbished by the entirety of “woke-land”. You’d have thought they would welcome someone like Patel putting a load of entitled Oxbridge-educated mandarins in their place, but the Left believe they own the black, Asian and ethnic-minorities, and a BAME Tory doesn’t compute.

Rev Dr John Cameron, St Andrews.

WHAT a contrast between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer in the ways they have dealt with the cases of Priti Patel and Jeremy Corbyn respectively.

The Home Secretary has been clutched to the bosom of the Prime Minister despite the clear evidence against her delivered by the Head of the Standards’ Committee in the inquiry into the allegations of her bullying.

Jeremy Corbyn, reinstated into the Labour Party by the NEC after their investigation into his part as leader of his party in relation to anti-semitism, found himself exiled from the parliamentary Labour Party by Starmer, who judged Corbyn’s statement deficient in the appropriate sentiments over his presiding over anti-Semitic allegations.

What a contrast between the way Johnson treated Priti Patel in relation to the proven allegations of bullying against her as opposed to how he dismissed Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain for misogynistic bullying tactics when there was significantly more evidence of their bullying of male victims within Parliament.

It is in situations of this kind that you can establish whether an individual is a person of principle or just someone driven by expedience.

On an axis where one end is principle and the other end is expedience, where would you place Johnson and Starmer on that spectrum when you compare and contrast their performances?

Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs

HIS rare (and belated) decision to part company with Cummings and Cain aside, our Prime Minister has long shown a canine-type loyalty to his senior colleagues, both at Number 10 and when he was the mayor of London. He probably sees Patel as indispensable, and wants to keep up the ratio of female-to-male members of his Cabinet, but in deciding to keep her on merely reinforces his view that the ministerial code of conduct can be ignored on a whim.

S.Montgomery,

Glasgow.