After she unsuccessfully contested Nottingham North at the 2005 general election, the new Conservative leader David Cameron recommended Patel for the Party's "A-List" of prospective parliamentary candidates.

She was forced to resign from her Cabinet position as the Secretary of State for International Development after it occurred that she misled the public about her undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials in secrecy.

In this role, she launched a points-based immigration system, an asylum deal with Rwanda to address the English Channel migrant crossings, advocated the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States.

[18] In 1997, Patel rejoined the Conservative Party having been offered a post to work for the new leader William Hague in his press office, dealing with media relations in London and the South East of England.

[20] In August 2003, the Financial Times (FT) published an article citing quotes from Patel and alleging that "racist attitudes" persisted in the Conservative Party, and that "there's a lot of bigotry around".

[31] Along with fellow Conservative MPs Kwasi Kwarteng, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Liz Truss, Patel was considered one of the "Class of 2010" who represented the party's "new Right".

[4] The authors suggested that to change this situation, the UK should reduce the size of the welfare state and seek to emulate the working conditions in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea rather than those of other European nations.

Patel openly supported Theresa May as his successor, stating that she had the "strength and experience" for the job, while arguing that May's main challenger Andrea Leadsom would prove too divisive to win a general election.

[55] In September 2016, she expressed opposition to the construction of 28 affordable homes at the Lakelands development in Stanway, referring to it as an "unacceptable loss of open space" and criticising Colchester Borough Council for granting permission.

Patel met Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel's centrist Yesh Atid party, and reportedly made visits to several organisations where official departmental business was discussed.

[69] Patel released an apology for her actions, and corrected her remarks to The Guardian, which she said gave the false impression that the Foreign Secretary knew about the trip before it happened, and that the only meetings she had had were those then in the public domain.

[72] As a result of these further revelations, Patel wPas summoned to Downing Street once more on 8 November, where she met with the Prime Minister and subsequently resigned from her Cabinet position, after 16 months in the post.

[87] The system aims to reduce the number of immigrants to the UK by requiring visa applicants to meet a set of criteria, such as a salary threshold, ability to speak English, academic qualifications and working in an understaffed industry.

[90] In February 2022, Patel also scrapped the tier 1 investor visa for wealthy people outside of the EU who invest in the UK, in what was called the start of a "renewed crackdown on illicit finance and fraud".

[96] In April 2021, 192 refugee, human rights, legal and faith groups signed a letter which condemned a six-week consultation, organised by the Home Office, on these proposals.

[99] In June 2021, a High Court judge ruled that the Home Office acted unlawfully by housing asylum seekers in an "unsafe" and "squalid" former army barracks.

The judge found that the Home Office failed to look after vulnerable people and noted that a lack of safety measures had contributed to a "significant" risk of injury and death from fires or from COVID-19.

[102] In March 2022, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said many Ukrainian refugees had been turned away by British officials in Calais and told to obtain visas at UK consulates in Paris or Brussels.

[103][104]In April 2022, Patel visited the Rwandan capital of Kigali and signed the Rwanda asylum plan,[105] to fly thousands of migrants who cross the English Channel in lorries or on boats more than 4,000 miles on chartered planes to the African country.

[119] On 20 November 2020, Alex Allan announced that he had resigned as the Prime Minister's chief advisor on the ministerial code after Johnson rejected the findings of the inquiry and stated that he had "full confidence" in Patel.

The union's General Secretary, Dave Penman, told the High Court that "civil servants should expect to work with ministers without fear of being bullied or harassed".

England player Tyrone Mings criticised Patel as having "stoke[d] the fire" with her earlier comment, and then said that she was "pretend[ing] to be disgusted when the very thing [the national team was] campaigning against happens.

[134] Her tweet came a week after the Home Office was forced by Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft[135] to remove a video posted on its Twitter feed using similar terminology.

[136] Both the Bar Council and Law Society raised concerns about Patel's rhetoric with the Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland and Attorney-General Suella Braverman, who asked that she desist with her targeting of the legal profession.

[143] In May 2021, she was accused of viewing "activists as a security threat" by the director of advocacy at BIRD, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, who was facing challenges in the UK to get his daughter's citizenship application approved.

[144] Around the same time, on 25 May, Patel hosted a meeting with Bahrain's Interior Minister Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, who was allegedly responsible for the persecution of the human rights defenders and journalists.

Andrew Gwynne also sent an open letter signed by multiple cross-party MPs to Johnson and called for the authorities to impose Magnitsky Act sanctions on Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa.

[147][148] In May 2021, Patel was accused of lobbying Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, on behalf of Pharmaceuticals Direct Ltd (PDL), a healthcare firm, that sought a government contract to provide personal protective equipment.

[159] Following the resignation of Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party leader, The Telegraph reported on 16 July 2024 that Patel would be a candidate in the subsequent leadership election after being “urged to run” by fellow MPs.

[173][174] Patel has taken robust stances on crime, attracting media attention when she argued for restoration of capital punishment on the BBC's Question Time in September 2011,[175][176] although in 2016 she stated that she no longer held this view.