Why did Rishi Sunak reappoint Suella Braverman? Her decision to back him rather than Boris Johnson was probably the most decisive endorsement of the recent campaign – this might well have been done with the understanding that she’d be Home Secretary.
If so, it would have been an understandable trade. She had been a Johnson uber-loyalist and if even she was not backing his return, her support for Sunak was the biggest symbol of the game being up for Boris Johnson. Her reappointment drove her critics wild and she has become the new lightning rod. Her performance in the Commons yesterday showed her doubling down. If people want to depose her, she said yesterday, then: ‘Let them try’.
Braverman’s critics say she is ungovernable, a verbal flame-thrower. Her supporters say this is precisely what’s needed: language and an attitude that matches public concern over the small boats crisis. Her move to the Home Office was accompanied by another significant move: Robert Jenrick put under her as immigration minister. He’s understood to be miffed that he wasn’t in cabinet, but as Sunak’s closest friend in politics it can only be a matter of time before he will take a top job. And given the country’s asylum issues, immigration minister always was going to be one of the most important government jobs. The Tory manifesto committed to cutting net migration, Braverman was given a personal target of net migration to ‘tens of thousands’ (more than half what it is now) and Jenrick will be there to offer a second opinion. One which, due to his personal closeness to Sunak, we can take to be closer to the Prime Minister’s line.
This morning, Jenrick has already drawn a dividing line. When asked about Braverman’s description of the small boats issue as an ‘invasion’ he replied that his boss was seeking to describe the depth of the problem. But, he pointedly added, ‘In jobs like mine you have to choose words carefully, and I would never demonise people in search of a better life.’
This might be part of a deliberate good cop/bad copy strategy (Braverman and Jenrick have known each other since their Cambridge days). Or it might signify that Sunak, having agreed to appoint Braverman in return for her endorsement, does not stand by her language and is using Jenrick to temper it.
Might Jenrick end up taking her job? He’s mild-mannered and calm – unkind souls call him ‘Robert Generic’ – and the opposite to a Patel/Braverman figure. But most Tories also realise they are exposed to public anger over the £7 million a day spent on hotel accommodation for 40,000 illegal arrivals in a country that already digests net migration of 240,000 a year. These are precisely the conditions that could foster a new Ukip-style insurgent party on the right. Traditionally, Tories have sought to address this threat by sounding fierce and controversial and being seen as the bad guys.
When Thatcher spoke about being ‘swamped’ by immigration in 1979, it caused an uproar – but killed the National Front who had been expected to do well in the election of that year. Even Labour’s David Blunkett used quite coarse language about immigration. As Attorney General, Braverman believed that public anger over small boats was more of a threat to the Tories than concern over partygate. The Tories feel very exposed here, and this feeling of exposure explains the method behind what some see as rhetorical madness.
It’s a divisive topic. Some see desperate people arriving in search of a better life, others Albanian criminals refusing to play by immigration rules and gaming the system. But everyone sees a system that’s quite clearly in collapse, with 100,000 waiting for asylum applications to be processed and some reports saying cases are being handled at the rate of two per week. It’s rank incompetence and is quickly becoming a proxy for another question: can Sunak govern?
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