UK’s prime minister Rishi Sunak has sacked his home secretary Suella Braverman, the vicious, right wing extremist who had been pandering to the basest attitudes and Islamophobes with her comments about how being homeless was a lifestyle choice and suggested that charities be prohibited from giving them tents, and that demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza were “hate marches” and made up of pro-Palestinian mobs bent on desecrating national monuments. She had already been sacked once as home secretary by Liz (“loser to a head of lettuce”) Truss, the short-lived predecessor to Sunak as prime minister, a sacking that she also seemed to have sought.
I suspect that she was actually seeking to be fired as a means of increasing her profile as a possible alternative to Sunak for the party leadership, to portray herself as a bold truth-teller that the party establishment wants to silence. For that reason, I predicted that Sunak would refrain from firing her but I was wrong. He must have felt that having her in the cabinet was a greater liability than having her outside. Her supporters within the party are already rallying around.
Shortly after Sunak sacked Braverman after accusations that her rhetoric had inflamed tensions over violent Armistice Day protests, the latest in a series of challenges to the prime minister’s authority, she said she would “have more to say in due course”.
There is widespread expectation that she will unleash another eviscerating newspaper article, positioning herself as a figurehead for right-leaning Conservative MPs.
…One MP who supports Braverman said Sunak had misjudged both his MPs and voters by removing her: “Suella is popular. The political establishment might tut about her views on protests, but our constituents agree. Rishi might have created a problem for himself. She will become a rallying point.”
Supporters of Braverman expect much of this to be focused on positioning for a likely post-election leadership battle, but some believe a handful of MPs could be sufficiently disgruntled to submit no-confidence letters in Sunak.
I was also surprised that former prime minister David Cameron, who had resigned in the wake of the Brexit referendum, has returned to the government as foreign secretary. Having a former prime minister return as foreign secretary in not unprecedented (it has happened twice before) but it is unusual. Cameron had resigned from parliament in 2016 and to more easily allow him to be in the cabinet, the government fast-tracked his appointment to the House of Lords yesterday, which means that he is not in a position to pose a challenge to Sunak. But it does strengthen Braverman’s potential claim that Sunak, far from being a change candidate, is part of the old guard leadership that wanted the UK to remain part of the EU.
It looks like UK politics is entering another period of turmoil. The current parliament will end on December 17, 2024 at the latest and the election “would be expected to take place 25 days later, not counting weekends or any bank holidays that fall within this period”.
Liz Truss’s tenure did not outlast a head of lettuce. This time we’ll have to see if Braverman’s NON-tenure will outlast a head of lettuce.
Old guard leadership… it was Caneron who introduced the ( informal) norm that a minister may lie brazenly to parliament without consequences.
Instead of lying by omission or by carefully phrased answers that appear to answer a question without actually doing so, Cameron lied, and lied consistently.
All the tory MPs went “aha”. Previously there was some consensus that being caught in a lie was grounds for being forced out of the government.
But from now on, having a majority in parliament meant being infallible- if you have a majority, those who make accusations will never get a majority for kicking you out.
And now Britain can never go back to the pre-Cameron values. Everyone has seen that lying works.
Behold the power of Pie, and tremble!
So, Sunak was a braver man than you thought.
It was quite cleverly done.
I keep reading that the polls show that a majority of the UK public now think brexit was a bad idea so we will find out if the polls are wrong again or that this may help the Tories
@John Morales
Where did you read bravery In Mano’s OP ? It seems to have been a normal calculation as to which option gives Sunak a better chance of holding to power. if he was brave he wouldnt have hired her to begin with,
Deepak@7- Reboot your pun detection apparatus.
Matt G @8: Yes, it was a pun. Like most puns, it was silly, and not very clever.
“Does Sunak’s re-shuffle change the Brexit dynamic?”
https://youtu.be/Mu00sEh_wwI
Well… cf. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/24/david-cameron-launches-tory-campaign-to-stay-in-the-eu
Basically, the Tory anti-Brexiteer. 🙂
PS xohjoh2n made a similar, but terser punny @5
“David Cameron has said he wants to support Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “at a hard time”, after making a dramatic comeback to government in a major cabinet reshuffle.
The former prime minister has been appointed foreign secretary and accepted a peerage to take the post.
He replaced James Cleverly, who became home secretary after Mr Sunak sacked Suella Braverman.”
(https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67407974)
“his appointment to the House of Lords yesterday, which means that he is not in a position to pose a challenge to Sunak”
Incorrect. You can be PM without being an MP. Google Alec Douglas-Home.
sonof @#12,
While technically it is possible to be PM without being a member of the Commons, in practice it would be so difficult that Douglas-Home gave up his peerage four days after becoming party leader and prime minister and was quickly nominated to a vacant safe seat so that he could be a member of the Commons. The Commons was in recess while that process played out..
You weren’t wrong Mano, it’s just that right wing thugs gave Sunak the perfect cover for firing her -- the organized marchers managed to stay peaceful, and executed a respectful two minute silence. They disproved Braverman’s assertion with their manners.
Meanwhile groups of right wing thugs, probably emboldened by her expression, did riot at the Cenotaph (central to armistice day commemorations) and fought with police -- loudly demonstrating the truth of concerns Braverman was wrong and stirring up trouble herself.
Perfectly preparing the ground for Sunak to fire her.
@13:
It *was* difficult, because it was felt that without a Commons mandate such a person would lack legitimacy. But there’s no actual *rule* against it, and in fact no specific need to be in parliament at all (neither Commons nor Lords) though a quick grant of peerage has always been the normal way to get someone into Cabinet. Now, previous generations viewed it as increasingly bad form, but would you seriously put it past this lot to just do whatever the hell they like given there’s nothing stopping them?
xohjoh2n,
Isn’tWasn’t Suella one of that lot until this event?Perhaps there are other types of check, such as one’s position becoming (ahem) “untenable”.
@matt g
Sigh. I think it needs to be formatted.
Previously I’d have put it past a former home secretary who’d been sacked for misconduct being back in the job a week later. Previously (despite there being no rules against it) I’d have expected someone in that position to have, if nothing else, some respect for the office, some sense of how it would look… hell, I’d have expected some SHAME.
But this is the Tories in 2023. Respect, sense, shame… you might just as well expect truth from a Trump.
Braverman got sacked for saying the quiet parts out loud once too often -- I’ve read that it was actually saying that living on the street was a “lifestyle choice” that did it for Sunak, but the row over her attack on the police gave him his opportunity. In the run-up to her sacking, a number of ministers were cited as saying things like “I wouldn’t have used those words”, but few of them (and Sunak isn’t one of those) actually disagree with her in any serious way. Sunak sacked her, in my opinion, because the opposition was delighted to have her shooting her nasty mouth off while holding senior government office. Incidentally, as for:
Tosh. Polls show a huge majority wanting a ceasefire in Gaza -- the main demand of the protestors -- and Braverman personally got 16% favourable and 51% unfavourable views in a recent survey.
As for Cameron, I’ve seen his appointment described as the latest “dead cat” -- the Australian political strategist and shitbag Lynton Crosby originated the idea of “throwing a dead cat onto the table” -- doing something shocking to stop people talking about something else which you don’t want them to discuss, in this case, Braverman. But it may also indicate that Sunak has given up on winning the next election -- for which he’d need to hold at least some of the “red wall” seats in northern England which switched from long-held Labour allegiance to “Boris” Johnson in 2019, and is focused on at least saving the “blue wall” seats in the south from the Liberal Democrats, the idea being that many Tory voters in these seats voted Remain in the EU referendum and are socially liberal, so would welcome Cameron’s return. Once Sunak loses the election (which he will), he will swan off to California and probably a job as factotum to some tech lord (like former LibDem leader Nick Clegg), but as with most politicians, also cares about his “legacy” -- he likely wants to be credited by future historians with preventing the Tories suffering a catastrophic wipeout and a generation or more in the political wilderness.
Further to #19:
Voters overwhelmingly back Sunak’s decision to sack Braverman, poll suggests, but bringing back Cameron gets a majority thumbs down, although not a huge one. So if the latter was a “dead cat”, it looks to have been misconceived.
Surely he gave that up when Truss was made leader? And he must certainly have given it up before he became leader himself? If not he’s far more stupid than he appears.
sonofrojblake@21,
Self-delusion can be carried to remarkable lengths, and my guess is that Sunak only reached his limit after the obvious failure of the conference “relaunch”. If he’d given up on the next election before becoming leader, would he have wanted to do so?
I dunno -- he’s the first ever Asian PM -- can’t take that away from him. That’s something, right?
Braverman in her resignation letter (my extract):
(from the Guardian)
Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
It wasn’t a blanket license to be as cruel, stupid, bigoted and downright embarrassing to your boss or colleagues as you want to be either.
sonofrojblake@23
True.
Lol. Have you met the Tory party? Backstabbing is a very competitive sport…