Blue-on-blue hits different when it comes from an older vintage. It seems at least one Tory grandee didn’t think much of Suella Braverman’s incendiary departure letter to Rishi Sunak yesterday. Michael Howard, who famously served in the Home Office from 1993 to 1997, today hits out at his successor, writing an article for today’s Daily Telegraph, headlined ‘Suella Braverman is guilty of shameful insubordination’. Ouch.
The onetime Tory leader writes that her ‘insubordination’ was intolerable and ‘the government is better off without her.’ Referring to her Times op-ed about the Armistice Day pro-Palestine march, Howard says that ‘I can’t remember another occasion when very senior police officers have accused the Home Secretary of exacerbating tensions’, adding ‘it is totally unacceptable for a senior minister to refuse to agree to changes in a piece that was about to be published.’ He concludes:
Thinking of the common good requires one to put the common good before personal ambition and pique. Mrs Braverman has failed to live by those words.
And for good measure Howard has now gone on Radio 4’s Today programme and accused her of being motivated by ‘personal ambition and a sense of pique’. ‘I think Suella Braverman will be forgotten’ he told Nick Robinson. Given the current theme of ex-leaders returning to frontline politics, perhaps he’s angling for Suella’s job in the next reshuffle…
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