If prizes were dished out for saying what the unwashed and un-woke are thinking then Suella Braverman would be garlanded in medals and have a mantelpiece groaning with trophies. The Home Secretary scored bullseye of the year when she said that multiculturalism had failed. A couple of weeks later groups of people waving Palestinian flags and dressed in the garb of the Middle East could be seen dancing in the streets of London as news broke of the 7 October pogrom by Hamas: No further questions, your honour.
Since then, she has made utterances that have shot to the top of the news agenda several times more. Demonstrations taking place ostensibly to call for a ceasefire in Gaza but serving as platforms for those who wish to eradicate Israel and wage jihad in the West have been denounced by Braverman without qualification as ‘hate marches’.
Sacking Suella would very probably cause the PM’s already miserable poll ratings to sink even further
For good measure she threw in a high-octane soundbite about rough sleepers just this weekend, claiming that for many of them homelessness was a ‘lifestyle choice’. The ensuing row obscured government plans to provide better support for those struggling with addiction issues and mental health crises.
Now Braverman is deemed to have gone to war with the leadership of the police, accusing them of allowing a feeling to grow that they do not carry out their duties without fear or favour. ‘There is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters,’ Braverman has written in the Times today.
A close reading of her article leaves open the interpretation that she may think this is more than merely a perception. She writes about Covid anti-lockdowners seeming to be policed far more harshly than BLM demonstrators were back in 2020. She also says that right-wing or nationalist demonstrators are correctly met with a stern response when stirring up trouble on the streets and yet pro-Palestinian mobs have lately been largely ignored when engaging in similar behaviour.
It seems to be an iron law in political media these days that when public institutions are criticised from the left there should be a presumption that the criticisms are valid. But when they are criticised from the right that must amount to bad faith and Trumpian populism. Yet Braverman is only saying what is widely believed beyond the Westminster village – certainly by most of those who would consider voting Conservative at the next election.
Despite a fresh establishment clamour for her to be dismissed by Rishi Sunak or at least demoted in a reshuffle, that would seem unlikely. Sacking Suella would very probably cause the PM’s already miserable poll ratings to sink even further, leaving her as de facto leader of Conservative opinion out in the country and him cast as an establishment stooge.
A bigger danger for her is that she falls foul of a sharpening public appetite for what Elvis Presley once characterised as ‘a little less conversation, a little more action please’. Talking a good game and yet under-delivering was what ultimately did it for her predecessor Priti Patel, after all.
Some Whitehall sources are today suggesting that while Braverman is a lion in the media, she is often more of a mouse in her face-to-face dealings with police leaders. At one such meeting this week she is said to have had an ideal chance to make the points she later set out in the Times and yet seemed to have failed to do so.
‘Colleagues now assume that close to 100 per cent of her activity is directed at positioning herself for the next leadership contest. That reflects badly on the PM because it must mean that she thinks he is a dud and will be gone before long,’ says one government insider.
Others’ gripes focus on Braverman not consulting other ministers before throwing her next grenade. They also complain of her failing to ‘roll pitches’ to ensure valid points she wishes to make enlist the backing of sympathetic think-tanks or campaign groups.
‘The danger is that she will actually narrow the appeal of the right and cause more people to conclude that the Conservatives are never going to deliver,’ says one influential Tory MP. The MP in question predicts that colleagues will never allow Braverman’s name to go forward to the wider membership as one of the final two in a leadership contest. Yet something very similar was once the received wisdom about Boris Johnson too.
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