When Suella Braverman was sacked by Rishi Sunak on Monday morning, the departing Home Secretary promised to say more in ‘due course’. Well, just over 24 hours later, that time has come. This afternoon, Braverman has shared on social media a scathing resignation letter in which she suggests the Prime Minister needs to ‘change course urgently’:
‘In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself.
Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.’
While Braverman devotes a paragraph in the letter to praising the work she did with Sunak, the vast bulk of the letter is focused on criticising the PM. She says that she was willing to look over the fact he had no personal mandate from the Tory membership because of ‘firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities’. These include reducing legal migration, work on stopping the boats, delivering the Northern Ireland protocol and non-statutory guidance to schools protecting biological sex. She says there have been failures to deliver in these areas and her letters to Sunak and his team trying to engage on these topics have too often been ignored and disregarded.
She writes:
‘You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises. These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.’
Braverman also lays down a challenge ahead of tomorrow’s Supreme Court ruling – suggesting her advice was ignored on small boats. She says if the government fails ‘you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one’. And if the government wins, it will also be Sunak’s fault if things don’t work out: ‘If, on the other hand, we win in the supreme court, because of the compromises that you insisted on the Illegal Migration Act, the government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects.’
Now what impact will this letter have? No. 10 suggested there would be no exchange of letters – Braverman was sacked by phone – but Sunak could now choose to respond. It’s of course worth noting that Braverman was willing to find ways to live with their apparent differences prior to getting the sack. It is only after leaving government against her will that she is going on the offensive. Sunak’s supporters insist she has little in the way of supporters and her influence is overblown. When it comes to the general public, an Ipso Mori poll found that 70 per cent of those surveyed backed Sunak’s decision to axe Braverman.
However, the risk for Sunak is that Braverman manages to latch on the wider discontent over the reshuffle. The combination of axing Braverman and bringing back David Cameron has led to concern on the right of the party that it marks a wider shift in direction – away from the 2019 manifesto and towards the 2010/2015 Cameron government. The New Conservatives – made up of 2019 MPs – have already come out today to voice concern that it suggests ‘we’re going back into the politics of decline’. Should the Supreme Court decide that the Rwanda scheme is unlawful, Sunak will face more criticism from the right of the party.
This won’t be the last intervention from the former Home Secretary – more could follow in the coming days. The question is whether Braverman can successfully rally the troops behind her. While Braverman is not directly laying down a leadership challenge to Sunak, she is trying to mark herself out as the torchbearer of the right at a time when many MPs’ minds are on the leadership contest that would follow an election defeat. Now outside the tent, Braverman plans to make life difficult for Sunak.
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