The UK’s Home Secretary, a rising star in the UK’s Conservative party who is seen as a future prime minister, seems to be a real piece of work. Jonathan Pie rips into her for suggesting that people who live in tents are really making a ‘lifestyle choice’, rather than because they are homeless for reasons beyond their control, and thus deserve no assistance or even sympathy.
Braverman has also sided with far-right counterprotestors who clashed with police when they tried to disrupt a massive protest march of hundreds of thousands of people in central London protesting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and calling for a ceasefire.
The march took place amid heightened tension between the Met police and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, who last week accused the force of showing bias when it came to demonstrations and of favouring left-wing causes and what she called pro-Palestinian “mobs”.
…The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, pinned the blame for the violence on Braverman who he claimed had stoked the tension and stirred up people on the far right. “The scenes of disorder we witnessed at the Cenotaph are a direct result of the home secretary’s words. The police’s job has been made much harder,” he said.
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, also called for Braverman to resign. “The far-right has been emboldened by the home secretary. She has spent her week fanning the flames of division. They are now attacking the police on Armistice Day. The home secretary’s position is untenable. She must resign.”
With Downing Street coming under pressure from Tory MPs from across the party to remove Braverman, Sunak last night condemned the “violent, wholly unacceptable” scenes. He said both the far right and “Hamas sympathisers” had been responsible.
…Braverman did not comment last night. Dozens of Conservative MPs have been bombarding the whips with demands for her to be fired. Senior government sources indicated that the prime minister had not wanted Armistice Day commemorations to be overshadowed by the dismissal of a senior cabinet minister but that he was still considering sacking her.
She seems to be a perfect specimen of the current breed of vicious, hate-stoking, right wing extremist politicians, ruthless and ambitious, and willing to attack the poor and marhinalized. Sunak may not risk firing her in case it serves to increase her appeal with the right wing base and she uses that to threaten him for the premiership.
We are clearly on the wrong timeline when horrible people like Braverman view themselves as the pinnacle of virtue.
Standing by for SailorStar to turn up and slam the misogyny of this video.
And this is only scratching the surface of her most recent bouts of awfulness…
Yep, I see the Tories are still carrying the torch of Thatcherism. Has any Tory apologist rushed to admit Braverman’s words were inappropriate, but “our social and economic doctrine remains sound!”?
You’ve not got the story of yesterday’s clashes quite right. The fascists who clashed with police around the Cenotaph were not trying to disrupt the march calling for a ceasefire in Palestine. The Free Palestine march was nowhere near the Cenotaph -- it was about a mile to the north. Most likely many of the fascists were spoiling for a fight with ceasefire marchers, but there weren’t any to be found, so they turned on the police instead.
The Palestine march was never going anywhere near the Cenotaph. The only person who said it was is Suella Braverman. Yet more evidence that she’s largely to blame. Vile woman she is.
The Tories now also give women and people of color the opportunity to be horrible. Progress?
They’ve been progressive on that front for decades. Arguably more so than the supposedly lefty Labour Party. The UK has had three women as PM, one Jew and one Hindu -- ALL of them Tories. Just goes to prove that women and minorities can be evil c**ts too, and white men don’t have a monopoly.
So… more appropriately then, Cruella Braverman?
A white dye job on half of her hair would complete the look.
Ah, yeah, no. They weren’t “counterprotestors”. In order to “counterprotest” something, you have to, ideally, approach within a mile of where the actual protest is happening. The intended route of the protest was published in all major media outlets well in advance, and was about a mile and a half from the Cenotaph at its point of closest approach.
The far-right thugs who rallied at the Cenotaph in the morning before 11:00 had no intention of “trying to disrupt” a march that wasn’t even due to start for about three hours, otherwise they’d have massed somewhere else, much, much later.
They were incited to be at the Cenotaph by Braverman. Why she hasn’t been arrested for that incitement is something of a puzzle -- she’s at least as culpable as Trump was on Jan 6th. Probably her role model. It’s inconceivable that she’ll still be Home Secretary by Friday, but then again it’s inconceivable her party are going to win next year’s election, inconceivable Sunak will still be Tory leader the week after they lose, and more than conceivable that Braverman will take over from him -- the Tory party really is that evil AND that fucking stupid.
“Are there no workhouses?”
No.
Get on that Suella.
I think I have located the next tory scapegoat, once Braverman becomes party boss.
https://youtu.be/Q4PC8Luqiws
Remember, this is the woman who was back in the job a mere six days after the last time she was forced to resign in disgrace for breaching the ministerial code.
Oh, look, she’s gone aleady: Suella Braverman sacked as home secretary after article criticising police. This is probably going to require another one of those funny wikipedia disambiguation pages…
Me, #9:
I overestimated her longevity, just like I did last year when I said I’d be surprised if Truss was still PM by Christmas.
And yes, she “resigned in disgrace”, because of an action that was JUST bad enough that she could leap from the sinking ship of Truss and look contrite, but not bad enough that less than a week later she couldn’t just waltz back into the office free and clear. There’s also a lot of speculation that she’s doing the brown female Hitler act as a deliberate ploy to make Sunak look weak and bolster her case to be the next
Fuhrerleader after the inevitable election defeat. There’ve even been rumours she’s pushing for an election THIS year (!) and making it a single-issue thing about small boats, i.e. immigration, as a ploy to again make Sunak look even weaker when he doesn’t do it. Against stiff competition, she’s one of the most cynically conniving characters I can ever remember being in government. The thought of her in power is terrifying.Still, it’s good to know that there is a limit to what she can get away with… OK, that limit turns out to be inciting a bunch of far-right thugs to attack the police, at the Cenotaph, on Armistice Day, but at least there is a limit. For now.
And yes, the thought of her in power really is terrifying.
When you put it like that… picture me shaking my head.
I don’t know if I’d bet against her being PM one day, though, and then the gloves will be fully off. One thing I don’t understand is how someone who looks like her can mobilise far right thugs. I mean -- to those people, doesn’t she look like the enemy, on so many levels? And surely the ignorant racists the Tories rely on in elections wouldn’t put her into power directly? Would they? (I am almost literally whistling in the dark here, is it obvious?)
She wanted to be fired.
Now she has distanced hereself from the certain loser Rishi Sunak, and has a profile as “though”. Mark my words, she will be the next tory leader.
When even “one of them” is telling you you’re right, you really must be right, right? Besides, they’ll take any excuse.
Yeah, well, that’s the question, isn’t it? For the last leadership contest, I said from the start that there was no way the octogenarian racists in the shires who make up the membership would vote for Sunak for exactly that reason, but he always came across as a wet anyway, no matter how hard he tried. Braverman, on the other hand, is a race-and-gender-swapped Enoch Powell, except with brass knuckles and without the manners, so who the hell knows? Plus there’s the whole “we can’t be racists, we’ve got one of them as leader!” thing, which is going to have some appeal… I would have bet heavily against Sunak, but I wouldn’t bet against her.
And indeed they didn’t -- they gifted us Truss instead. Which was why the MPs resolved with great certainty not to give those fuckwits a say once they’d pulled the plug on Truss, and anointed the malleable billionaire(‘s husband) to be leader without bothering to ask the membership, since they’d proven they couldn’t be trusted.
Braverman makes me recall the first woman party leader in Sweden- the leader of NRP, the Swedish nazi party.
In the shake up, former PM David Cameron is back as foreign minister.
Before you applaud getting an experienced veteran in the cabinet, remember Cameron is the PM who normalised lying to the parliament without consequences.
Margaret Thatcher stretched the truth a lot and cheerfully lied by omission, but blatantly lying to parliament again and again is the legacy of Cameron.
By clarifying there would be no consequences for lying, and that party loyalty would always trump truth he paved the way for the pandemic of lies that was the BoJo government and which continues unabated under Rishi Sunak.