How do you solve a problem like Suella? Nearly 48 hours after the Home Secretary accused the police of “playing favourites” with pro-Palestinian protesters, Rishi Sunak still has no answer to that question.
On the face of it, this is an open-and-shut case of Cabinet insubordination. Suella Braverman’s incendiary newspaper article, in which she repeated the phrase “hate marches” and lobbed in a comparison to Northern Ireland too, was published without No 10’s full approval.
It’s also not a first offence. Only last week, Braverman’s claim that homelessness was a “lifestyle choice” was another unauthorised outburst, and many in No 10 were unaware of her plans to ban charities from handing out tents to rough sleepers.
Prior to that, she had gone off-piste to tell a US think-tank that the 1951 Refugee Convention was not “fit for our modern age” – and said fear of discrimination for being gay or a woman should not be enough to qualify for refugee protection.
Last year, under Liz Truss’s leadership, Braverman suggested she wanted the restoration of David Cameron’s failed target of reducing net migration to less than 100,000 a year.
Yet despite all that, Downing Street shows no sign of wanting to make a swift decision about sacking her. “We’re looking into what happened … it’s an ongoing internal process,” was all a No 10 spokeswoman would say about the unauthorised article.
Given that it would take literally a matter of minutes to conclude whether and how Braverman defied her boss, it’s obvious that Sunak is instead playing a waiting game.
If Saturday’s march passes off without any “hate” offences or any intimidation of the Armistice Day event at the Cenotaph, he may have a freer hand to show strong support to the police, by sacking the woman who challenged their judgement. If the far-right turn up, he may similarly have grounds for saying she incited them.
Yet perhaps the real reason Sunak has not fired Braverman is because he agrees with much of her world view, even though he would express himself more cautiously. Don’t forget he summoned Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley to seek “assurances” the march would not affect the Cenotaph event.
It’s become a commonplace among some Tories to say that Braverman’s most egregious error has been the intemperate tone of her remarks, and that if only her criticisms could be made either privately or more reasonably everything would be fine.
Yet ultimately what’s most offensive to some voters is not the language but the policies themselves. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dog whistle or a foghorn if the signal is the same.
While more refined ministers may not want to say migrants “should f**k off back to France” (as Lee Anderson did) or they should be sent to Rwanda, the effect of policy is still the same. Sunak didn’t accuse Rowley of “woke” policing, but his summons sent the same message.
Similarly, Sunak worked very closely with Braverman on the Illegal Migration Act, which goes further than ever before in denying basic rights of asylum in the UK – but which relies on the legality of Boris Johnson’s plan to deport migrants to Rwanda.
That’s why Sunak’s waiting game on Braverman’s future may extend until at least 10am on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court is due to deliver its ruling. If it decides in the Government’s favour, it may not have any deterrent effect on small boats, but it would allow the Home Secretary to say she and the PM have been vindicated and need more time for the policy to work.
Whatever happens on Wednesday (and remember these are British courts, not European ones), several Tory MPs are outraged that the judges will be deciding whether UK policy complies with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which prohibits torture and inhuman treatment. For them, the ECHR is the problem and withdrawal is the solution.
But just as Sunak is more right wing than his polite image suggests, the Tory party’s drift towards hardline stances started under David Cameron, the man who likes to project himself as a moderniser. It was under Cameron that the Conservatives pulled out of the mainstream of European centre-right parties.
And it was Cameron who in 2006 vowed to scrap Labour’s Human Rights Act, which enshrined the ECHR into UK law. Theresa May, seen as another “moderate” by some these days, has long advocated withdrawal from the ECHR, despite being ridiculed by Ken Clarke for her dubious claim that a man avoided deportation because he owned a cat.
When it appeared earlier this year that Sunak himself is ready to demand withdrawal from the ECHR, Tory backbencher Jackie Doyle-Price expressed her irritation in a WhatsApp group. “Willy waving about leaving the ECHR will do zilch … Upholding the law should never be a matter for debate for a Conservative”.
But the fact is that the Doyle-Price view seems to be a minority and, as much as the “One Nation” group of Tory MPs dislike Braverman, they lack the clout to do anything. Johnson himself campaigned in 2019 for a “moderate and compassionate, One Nation government,” yet the reality was divisively different.
Sunak, Oliver Dowden and Robert Jenrick were the three “moderate” Tories to back Johnson in his leadership campaign, boasting “One Nation values” on the environment and creating an “outward-looking, tolerant nation”.
Since then, Sunak has dumped on net zero, Dowden has made a “war on woke” his catchphrase, and Jenrick has resorted to claiming Labour would fill its new towns with illegal migrants.
In fact, the story of the Tory party over the past 15 years has been the story of its Ukip-isation, with Nigel Farage prompting its shift to a referendum, then to Brexit itself. His recent hero’s welcome at the Conservative conference, plus a new poll by Conservative Home showing 70 per cent of activists would like him to be readmitted as a Tory, show how far his influence still spreads.
It’s not impossible to imagine the next Tory leader of the Opposition agreeing to admit Farage to its ranks. And it’s Farage who has led the charge on the Armistice Day march (being the first to spot and supercharge the issue on his GB News show).
Farage often gets the Tory party dancing to his tune but always shows he’s the better dancer. On Brexit, on small boats, and now on policing of marches, he can say he drives the issue but the Tories never implement the solution needed. The wider casualties are traditional Tory beliefs in an independent judiciary, police and Civil Service.
Of course, Farage’s populism has never actually been tested by the real world of government. It thrives and survives in opposition, which is why it may be the route the Conservatives pursue even further once freed of the hard choices of being in office.
So the Tories’ long drift to the right shows no sign of stopping. But with growth flatlining, debt failing to fall, inflation proving sticky, boats not stopping and waiting lists rising – and crime and housing not even among Sunak’s five priorities – it’s the country that’s drifting. Whatever happens to Braverman, that’s the problem the PM has to fix most urgently.
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