The general election may be done, but that doesn’t mean party drama has come to an end. Suella Braverman is back in the limelight today after an appearance on GB News in which she, er, refused to shut down rumours that she could defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. How curious…
The newly elected MP for Fareham and Waterlooville lamented her party’s fall from grace, telling Camilla Tominey that ‘we didn’t deliver on our promises and we were not a Conservative party’. She went on:
Whoever’s leading the party, whoever’s in the party, needs to acknowledge this simple truth: we are facing an existential threat from Reform. And we need to change ourselves to ensure that we neutralise that threat, that we bring those people back home.
But when probed further by Tominey, who quizzed the former home secretary on why she doesn’t just join Reform, Braverman was a little less decisive. In an OpEd for the Telegraph published the day before the election, Braverman slammed her own side and wrote that the ‘Reform phenomenon was predictable, avoidable and is entirely our own fault’. On that note, has she ever considered defecting to the Farage-founded party? ‘I’ve been in the Conservative Party since I was a teenager,’ Braverman told her interviewer firmly, adding:
My heart is in the Conservative Party… This is not about lurching to the right. This is just about doing what you say you’re going to do. We lacked credibility. We tried to talk tough during the election, and actually for several years we’ve talked tough, we’ve beaten our chests and we’ve tried to sound right wing. But our actual record of delivery has been one of state-ism, failed liberalism, high tax, high migration and anything but tough talk. And that dissonance was pretty obvious.
It’s not quite a definite answer, however. Pushed once more by Tominey, Braverman admitted:
I have looked at the Reform party and I’ve been listening to what they’re saying. And I have met many, many Reform voters during this campaign. People who are lifelong Conservatives – and I’ve listened to them. And they’ve said: we’ve backed the party for decades and we are furious with your party, Suella, and we’re going to Reform.
How very interesting. And while the politician remained non-committal about a possible defection or bid for the top job, Braverman did manage to hit out at certain colleagues considering rule changes for the next leadership contest. ‘There’s a serious effort afoot in the party by certain groups to cut out the members and disenfranchise members and they want to make sure MPs regain the right – the exclusive right – to choose the leader,’ she confided to Tominey. ‘That would be totally devastating to our party.’
Never one to miss an opportunity to take a pop at the current hierarchy, she added: ‘Rishi Sunak was not elected by the members.’ Ouch. Is Suella on manoeuvres? Watch this space…
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