Braverman chooses Jenrick to be her shield

Suella Braverman didn’t come to the Commons to answer the Urgent Question that her Conservative colleague Sir Roger Gale had asked about the immigration processing centre at Manston. Instead she sent a junior minister, Robert Jenrick, to respond. That’s not particularly unusual: cabinet ministers often use their juniors as a shield when difficult questions are being asked. In this instance, though, Jenrick was acting not just as a defence against political attacks on the Home Secretary, but also against further flame-throwing from the minister herself. 

It was last week that Braverman told the Commons there was an ‘invasion’ of migrants coming across the Channel. It sparked the kind of row about language that any politician trying to deflect attention from a government failure normally dreams of, rather than manages to start. That presumably was why Braverman said it. Jenrick is widely seen in Westminster as the Home Secretary’s minder in her department, appointed by Rishi Sunak to keep an eye on her after he was forced by political necessity to reappoint her.