Why didn’t Sunak listen to Braverman’s migration warning?

Conventional wisdom about politics isn’t quite always wrong: it is merely shown by the passage of events to have been in error in the vast majority of cases. Consider the unhappy relationship between Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman over immigration policy. The Westminster Village – media and political practitioners alike – generally accepted that Sunak was super-smart and at heart one of the ‘grown-ups’ in the Tory party.

Braverman, by contrast, was widely mocked, accused of being a lightweight in legal matters, said to be hopelessly out of her depth in high office and depicted as a comical entrant into the first Tory leadership contest of 2022.

All of which is rather strange. Because this week Sunak is belatedly implementing policies designed to win back lost voters on the issue of immigration in both its legal and illegal forms. And everything he is doing is stuff Braverman told him to do a year ago if he wanted to retain electoral credibility on what is a totemic issue for Conservative-leaning voters.

His new Home Secretary James Cleverly has just announced a raft of measures to reduce legal immigration: higher earnings thresholds, a clampdown on bringing in dependants and the like.