Priti Patel arrived via the back door of Number 10.

Priti Patel has arrived at Downing Street, entering through the back door. It is understood that Theresa May has not arrived yet.

James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent

Diplomacy may be a dark art and occasionally carried out in the shadows.

But not if you are a minister of the Crown.

By holding private meetings with Israel's prime minister and other senior figures, Priti Patel broke one of the cardinal principles of government, namely collective responsibility, the idea that government speaks and acts as one once a policy has been agreed.

On one level, this is about practicalities, ensuring that one hand of Whitehall knows what the other is doing.

But on another it is also about ensuring ministers remain accountable to parliament for their public policies, something that's impossible if they are shrouded in secrecy.

It is, for example, the agreed policy of the British government not to accept Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights.

So for Ms Patel to suggest that Britain fund Israeli army work there - and even to visit an army field hospital there, as has been reported in the Israeli press - is to send a strong but secret signal that British policy towards the Golan is softening.

Only it is not.

Thus the dangers of secret meetings without officials to take a record and provide advice.

MPs are divided over whether Ms Patel did not know what she was doing was wrong, whether she just has an independent streak and likes to do her own thing without civil servants, or whether she was genuinely pursuing her own private foreign policy.

Image source, AFP

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is also in Washington. Asked by the BBC if Ms Patel should go, he answered: “I’m here to make sure we get to keep the Iran nuclear deal going.”

“We’re here to support the Iran nuclear deal.”

Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who is in Washington DC, was asked by a BBC reporter if Priti Patel should resign and her answer was “I’m going to leave it all to the prime minister”.

BBC News Channel

Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, said that whilst many will say her breaches of the ministerial code means she must go, it might not be the case.

“At the end of the day, it is in the prime minister’s gift,” she told BBC News. “Does she think this is so much of a challenge to her authority over the cabinet that Priti Patel must go, or does she really not want to lose another minister?”

George Eaton, political editor of New Statesmen said that although it would mean the loss of another cabinet minister in just a week, there were “multiple grounds” for Ms Patel to be sacked.

“You can’t have cabinet ministers essentially conducting their own freelance foreign policy,” he said.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson walks away from journalists as he is asked if Priti Patel should resign.

Civil servants who work in the Department for International Development have been told to expect a new boss, according to the Independent, external.

The website says sources inside the department have already been informed about a change of minister and are now preparing for Priti Patel's replacement.

Norman Smith
Assistant political editor

The BBC's assistant political editor, Norman Smith, said that if she is found to have misled the prime minister and/or misled Parliament, Ms Patel will have to go.

He told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "There is no reason to think that any other fate awaits her bar her dismissal, in part because it seems a rather open and shut case."

For Mrs May's "survival" she has "absolutely no option" but to sack her, he said, as to let her stay on would make the PM's "fragile and uncertain premiership" even weaker.

But he has warned that it will leave the prime minister with an "ambitious and aggrieved" politician on the backbenches.

The Jewish Chronicle is reporting that No 10 knew about Ms Patel's additional meetings in September.

Its website, external also claims Downing Street instructed her to not include the later meetings in her list of 12 published on Monday, as it would embarrass the Foreign Office.

Downing Street has denied the report: "It is not true that the Prime Minister knew about the International Development Secretary's meeting with PM Netanyahu before Friday November 3," a No 10 spokesman said. "It is equally untrue to say that No 10 asked DfID to remove any meetings from the list they published this week."

Former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Sir Eric Pickles has said he hopes Theresa May and Priti Patel can "sort this out over a cup of tea".

He told the Daily Mail's John Stevens that he likes both Ms Patel and Mrs May "a lot", and is hopeful of a resolution.