How big is the problem facing Suella Braverman?

How much trouble is Suella Braverman in? Rishi Sunak’s decision to re-appoint her as Home Secretary less than a week after she was forced to resign over a security breach has proved to be the major upset of the reshuffle. Since then, opposition parties have gone on the attack with some Tory politicians also raising concerns about Braverman’s suitability for the role. 

Former Conservative party chairman Jake Berry went public last week to say that Cabinet Secretary Simon Case had been deeply worried by the incident which saw Braverman share a confidential document on immigration with an MP using her personal email. He said Braverman – who has developed the nickname ‘leaky Su’ in the media – was responsible for ‘multiple breaches of the ministerial code’.

In a bid to draw a line under the incident, Braverman has today given her version of events. In a letter to the home affairs select committee chair, Dame Diana Johnson, Braverman apologised for the breach and admitted to having used her personal email for official work not once – but six times. She stresses that none of the documents she shared were classified ‘secret or top secret’. Of the document she shared with the Tory MP John Hayes – which led to her resignation under Liz Truss – Braverman insists there was nothing market sensitive and that she was following instructions from the then prime minister to engage with parliamentary colleagues on the written statement which included ‘high-level proposals for liberalising our migration rules’. The plans were a point of tension between herself and Truss.

The admission from Braverman that this use of her personal phone for official business was not a singular event gives her critics plenty to work with to keep the story going. Already the Liberal Democrats are calling on Braverman to resign. The other problem she faces is on the question of how ‘rapidly’ she reported her security breach after becoming aware of it. For now, however, Sunak continues to support his Home Secretary, with a No. 10 source insisting that he has full confidence in Braverman at a lobby briefing today. Ultimately Sunak largely appointed Braverman to the role to keep the right of the party on side – so he will be reluctant to bow to pressure on her position.

The problem for the Home Secretary is that the row is distracting from her duties: she is also under pressure over worsening migrant centre conditions at Manston, allegations that she ignored advice on detaining asylum seekers and the wider problem of small boat crossings. Tory MP Roger Gale has said ‘someone needs to be held to account’ for the overcrowding and worsening conditions at the Kent migrant processing centre.

Today Braverman is due to face the music. She is expected to make a Commons statement this afternoon on her previous sacking and the situation at Manston migrant centre. While it’s the former that is currently leading the news, the latter has the potential to prove more fatal to Braverman’s ambitions. It’s the issue of migration that will be key to both her own fate and her party’s longer-term electoral prospects.