Rishi Sunak (left) fired Britain's Home Secretary Suella Braverman this week. Photo / AP
Rishi Sunak (left) fired Britain's Home Secretary Suella Braverman this week. Photo / AP
OPINION:
In the UK, Cabinet minister Suella Braverman was sacked on Monday. Now, she has delivered a scathing resignation letter accusing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of betraying the nation. While much of the pointed letter needs no interpretation, other parts can be read as coded messages for a leadership bid. Camilla Tominey reports.
There are plenty of killer lines in former Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s resignation letter to Rishi Sunak.
The accusation that the British Prime Minister has “manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one” of her key policy pledges is certainly up there, along with the suggestion that he has “no appetite for doing what is necessary” to stop the boats, amounting to a “betrayal” of the British people.
And then there is the final twisting of the knife, with the assertion that the “uncertain” Prime Minister’s prevarication over the pro-Palestinian marches lacks “the qualities of leadership that this country needs”.
Yet this isn’t simply a case of a former Home Secretary exacting revenge on the Prime Minister who sacked her. It is also undoubtedly an unashamed leadership pitch.
For why else would the grassroots favourite remind everyone that Sunak was “rejected by a majority of party members during the summer leadership contest”?
In making repeated references to his “wishful thinking”, his putting off of tough decisions to “minimise political risk” to himself, and his supposed lack of “bravery”, the central message of the excoriating 1,300-word, two-fingered salute is clear: Sunak is weak and I am strong (There’s a reason she uses her married name rather than her maiden, Fernandes, and it’s not just for the love of her husband, Rael, with whom she has two children).
Since she failed to make it to the third round of the last Tory leadership race, some may dismiss this rather brazen attempt as lacking in self-awareness, to say the very least. But that was then and this is now.
In July 2022, Braverman may have been Attorney-General but was virtually unknown outside of the Westminster bubble, where she is probably best remembered as a former chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG).
The role of Home Secretary has since propelled her to far greater heights of political power and indeed, public recognition. That puts her in a completely different league when she inevitably comes to making another run to become Conservative leader.
Britain’s now former Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Photo / AP
Moreover, her repeated interventions on everything from immigration to police “bias” to transgenderism have won her a new legion of fans.
A poll of Telegraph readers found that two-thirds thought Sunak was wrong to sack her on Monday. Having replaced her predecessor Priti Patel as a hate figure for the Left, she has emerged as a poster girl for the Thatcherite Right, frustrated with a high tax-and-spend centrist administration that, as Braverman points out, has broken most of its 2019 manifesto pledges.
There may still be a year to go until the next general election, but this is Braverman positioning herself as the right-wing candidate to succeed Sunak when the time comes.
She appears to have taken an early gamble on Sunak losing the next general election so badly that it will not just result in his resignation but a total reset of the party.
With a safe majority of 26,086, she can be confident of surviving what many pollsters are predicting will be Armageddon for the Conservatives come 2024.
It cannot be a coincidence that having warned she would have “more to say”, she dropped her bombshell as the Tory Right’s revolt against the Cabinet reshuffle was gaining momentum.
The co-chairmen of the New Conservatives group of 24 MPs elected in 2019 had just published their own damning letter to Sunak, blasting him for “abandon[ing] voters who switched to us last time” when Braverman’s extraordinary salvo hit the No 10 inbox. Together with the Braverman-backing Common Sense Group, disgruntled Leavers and MPs generally dissatisfied with the leftwards direction of travel, that’s not an insignificant caucus of potential support - notwithstanding the shared concern over her penchant for speaking before thinking.
Braverman’s strategy appears to be predicated on 1997 being revisited next year. Seemingly with the sound of Michael Heseltine gloating over the return of David Cameron ringing in her ears, she has apparently concluded that the party is facing near annihilation. Arch-Remainer Heseltine, lest we forget, was Deputy Prime Minister when the Tories suffered their worst electoral defeat since 1832 under Sir John Major.
Suella Braverman seems to have taken an early gamble that Rishi Sunak is going to fail spectactularly. Photo / AP
By committing to paper her concerns about the Government’s strategy and so publicly urging the Prime Minister to “change course urgently”, Braverman is clearly planning on rising like a phoenix from the flames of what is left of the party to be able to say: “I told you so.”
With a Boris Johnson comeback looking less likely with every lucrative book, TV deal and six-figure speech, she is also banking on having little competition on the anti-woke flank of the party beyond Kemi Badenoch. If the Business and Trade Secretary remains in post until we go to the polls, then Braverman will be able to remind everyone that she foresaw disaster ahead, while her rival not only continued to back a loser but also a losing strategy.
She will also be able to see off competition from the likes of Liz Truss - who with a 26,195 majority is also likely to survive any electoral drubbing - by pointing to her past failures and insisting that she really does represent the “change” candidate to lead the party in Opposition. Indeed, her punchy rhetoric might hold greater appeal to more sceptical Tories if it is to be directed at a Labour Government, rather than her own.
As one well-placed Tory insider put it: “I’m not sure how much revenge comes into it. I would view the resignation letter much more in terms of when the dust settles who is going to be left standing? And who will be best placed to tear apart each and every policy Starmer comes up with?”
A veteran Tory added: “The right of the party aren’t going to come out and support the letter but privately they’ll be pleased. They feel sidelined and dumped on by Sunak”.
Braverman’s sign-off is equally telling. In insisting that she will only continue to support government policies that “align with an authentic conservative agenda”, she is making clear her intention to remain a thorn in Sunak’s side from the backbenches, where she undoubtedly plans to galvanise more support.
Make no mistake, the woman named after J.R. Ewing’s feisty wife in Dallas is spoiling for a fight she isn’t prepared to lose.
