Repeatedly failed to deliver … Incapable … Magical thinking … Lacking in qualities of leadership … No, that’s not Suella Braverman’s (unusually self-aware) verdict on her own time as home secretary.
Instead, Rishi Sunak is the subject of her ire. In an unusually poisonous letter, published online on Tuesday, Braverman takes exception to being sacked as home secretary for the second time. Perhaps more damagingly for the Prime Minister, she accuses him of reneging on a secret deal she says they struck to help him become Tory leader. A document exists proving their pact, she says. We will find out soon enough.
Braverman, surely, knows that she does not have the numbers for a coup. (Or for a convincing leadership campaign.) Opinion polling suggests that 70 per cent of the British public believes Sunak was right to sack her, with only 17 per cent saying he was wrong.
So her letter will maim but not kill – and risks looking self-serving. Braverman’s conduct was plainly unacceptable to any leader, regardless of promises made. As home secretary she was accused of exacerbating community tensions – by her own senior police officers.
Secretaries of state routinely disagree with their PM. But the principle of collective responsibility – a foundation stone of stable governments – demands that you either bow to pragmatism or you resign from office. What you cannot do is sabotage a PM from within, undermining their authority and damaging the Government in the process.
Not Braverman’s finest week, but a fitting coda to her time in the Cabinet.
