Latest News
Suella Braverman Accuses Rishi Sunak Of Betrayal In A Harsh Letter
She sent the prime minister a scathing letter claiming that he had consistently failed on important programs and broken promises about immigration.
She said that Sunak had resorted to “wishful thinking” to “avoid having to make hard choices”.
Her outburst coincides with an important decision about the government’s Rwanda plan.
The UK Supreme Court will rule on the legality of the postponed plan to transfer certain asylum seekers to Rwanda to file asylum claims there on Wednesday morning.
An important turning point for Sunak’s government will be the major policy ruling, which may rekindle Tory MP disagreements over the European Convention on Human Rights.
Leading party figure on the right, Braverman, has called implementing the Rwanda plan her “dream” and “obsession” in the past.
In her letter, the former home secretary stated that following Liz Truss’s collapse last year, she negotiated a covert agreement to join Sunak’s cabinet in exchange for several important undertakings.
She went on to say that her backing had been a “pivotal factor” in Sunak gaining the backing of Tory MPs and gaining entry into No 10.
She went on to say that to prevent legal challenges from upending the Rwandan policy, she had pushed for restrictions on human rights legislation within the government.
Even if the Supreme Court rules that the policy is lawful, she said, Sunak’s concessions during the enactment of the Illegal Migration Act had left it “vulnerable” to legal challenges under the European Convention on Human Rights.
She continued, saying he would have “wasted a year” on the centerpiece law to prohibit small boat crossings “only to arrive back at square one” if the government lost the appeal.
“Worse than this, your magical thinking — believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion — has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible Plan B,” she wrote.
A No 10 spokesman thanked Braverman for her service, but added: “The prime minister was proud to appoint a strong, united team yesterday focused on delivering for the British people.”
He said the government had “brought forward the toughest legislation to tackle illegal migration this country has seen and has subsequently reduced the number of boat crossings by a third this year”.
And whatever the outcome of the Supreme Court tomorrow, the prime minister “will continue that work,” he said.
In her letter, the former home secretary told Sunak he had “manifestly and repeatedly” failed to deliver on policy priorities.
“Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises,” she wrote.
She added: “Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.”
Braverman was sacked from her role on Monday after opponents accused her of stoking tensions ahead of pro-Palestinian marches in London.
She lost her job days after she claimed police had applied a “double standard” to protesters, in an article for the Times newspaper.
Braverman said Sunak had failed “to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets”.
“I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation, and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion,” she added, accusing the PM of putting off “tough decisions to minimize political risk to yourself”.
In her letter, Braverman said the conditions under which she agreed to become a home secretary in October 2022 were set out in a “document with clear terms”.
Sources close to Braverman claim Sunak read and agreed to the document the letter refers to, which had been drawn up by Braverman. They say he took a copy and there were witnesses.
Braverman said the agreement included “firm assurances” on cutting legal migration, inserting measures to override the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into legislation to stop small boat crossings, delivering key Brexit legislation and issuing “unequivocal” guidance to schools on protecting biological sx and safeguarding single-sx spaces.
She accused Sunak of “a betrayal of our agreement” and “a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop the boats”.
Labor shadow minister Lisa Nandy said the letter was “just the latest installment in a Tory psychodrama that’s been playing out over the last 13 years, holding the rest of the country to ransom while the Tories fight among themselves”.
