Well done Priti Patel – you’ve done a great job avoiding an anti-immigrant backlash

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The home secretary Priti Patel criticised the ‘dysfunctional’ asylum system after the Liverpool bombing (PA)

When a heinous act such as the bomb outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital has taken place, there is always the possibility of a backlash when the alleged perpetrator is an immigrant and even more if he is an asylum seeker.

Great care has to be taken in order not to stir up any social disquiet and hostile reaction against some of the ethnic communities among us.

But the home secretary (whose main role is to ensure public safety and security) obviously does not think such caution is necessary. For her, it was a golden opportunity to take a potshot at the “dysfunctional” asylum system and the “whole professional legal services industry that has based itself on the rights of appeal”.