Suella Braverman, Britain’s “most hated” politician

She stirs up emotions. She rushes. She provokes. And perhaps she will soon be the new leader of the Conservatives: Suella Braverman, Britain’s Home Secretary. At least still.

The 43-year-old is a highly controversial and controversial figure in her Tory party. She portrays herself as a representative of the right wing of the party, is one of the ultras of the conservatives and repeatedly causes outrage with her statements.

Braverman has diligently added to her controversy account in recent years: a few days ago she wanted to ban charities from distributing tents to homeless people who had chosen life on the streets as a “lifestyle”.

Suella Braverman rants about “tofu-eating Wokeratis”

After dropping out of the race to succeed Boris Johnson to become home secretary last year, she raised concerns about government plans to relax visa requirements for people from India. “The largest group of people overstaying are Indian migrants,” she said – triggering diplomatic tensions with New Delhi.

The right-wing conservative figurehead insulted demonstrators as a “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating Wokerati”, repeatedly railed against irregular migrants, spoke of an “invasion” and most recently of a “hurricane”. The fact that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had brought her into the cabinet at all had already been heavily criticized. Because just a few days earlier she had resigned from the same post due to sending an official document from her private email address.

The portal “Politico” headlined on Thursday that Braverman was “the most hated woman in British politics”. Hardly anyone in the Interior Ministry has caused as much controversy as she has.

Braverman’s parents are immigrants

Suella Braverman, née Sue-Ellen Fernandes, named after the character from the series “Dallas”, is the only child of Christie and Uma Fernandes, who both came to Britain in the 1960s. Christie’s father is of Indian descent and lived in Kenya, her mother comes from Mauritius. Little Sue-Ellen came into contact with politics at an early age: her mother worked as a nurse and was a conservative local councilor. She ran for parliament, unsuccessfully.

Braverman, who shortened her name because teachers simply turned Sue-Ellen into Suella, studied law at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and became president of the university’s Conservative Association. Fellow students told “Politico” that Braverman didn’t quite fit into the more left-liberal university and wasn’t very popular either.

She later studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and is therefore fluent in French. In 2018 she married manager Rael Braverman, whom she described as a “proud Jew and Zionist”. The couple has two children. In 2021, she became the first minister to officially take maternity leave, which required changes to British law.

A guest article causes a scandal

In 2015 she managed to enter the House of Commons and made a pact with the Brexit ultras. Three years later she became junior Brexit minister under Theresa May, before holding her first cabinet post as attorney general under Boris Johnson just two years later. A companion described her in “Politico” as “indestructible”: “She wouldn’t be here today and would continue to fight if it weren’t for her.”

She caused a stir early in her career: in 2019, she left the government due to May’s Brexit plans, and Jewish groups accused her of “cultural Marxism.” She was filmed saying it was her “dream” to watch the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda. Given her parents’ migration history, that sounds paradoxical.

“What we have today is a completely different scenario,” she said in an interview with the “Daily Mail”. People would embark on a dangerous journey, paying thousands of pounds, believing they were “reaching an Eldorado and staying here forever”, staying in a hotel and funded by the taxpayer. “My parents did not get on a boat to cross the English Channel, nor did they enter illegally.”

But now Braverman seems to have overshot the mark. In a guest article for The Times newspaper, the hardliner accused the London police, for which she is responsible, of being blind in her left eye. She criticized the fact that pro-Palestinian demonstrations were not banned and accused the police of tolerating violations of the law during the “hate marches” against the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Labor opposition: Braverman ‘out of control’

“Right-wing and nationalist protesters who carry out attacks are rightly punished harshly – but pro-Palestinian mobs that engage in much the same behavior are largely ignored, even when they clearly break the law,” she wrote and spoke of a “double standard” in police leadership. Many saw her statements as an attack on the independence of the police – including within their own party.

The British government’s former general counsel, Conservative politician Dominic Grieve, described Braverman’s comments as “unacceptable.” He told the BBC that the Home Secretary had thrown the government into chaos. Conservative MP and Justice Committee chairman Bob Neil said Braverman’s position in government was untenable.

The opposition also criticizes Braverman. The Labor Party, which is well ahead in all polls, described it as “out of control”. According to party leader Keir Starmer, at a time when tensions should be reduced, Braverman is stoking tensions and undermining the police. “She is doing exactly the opposite of what most people in this country would expect from an interior minister,” said the opposition leader.

Prime Minister Sunak under pressure

Braverman’s comparison of the pro-Palestine protests with those in Northern Ireland caused further anger. She described the marches as “assertion of the dominance of certain groups… of the kind we are more familiar with in Northern Ireland”. A source close to the interior minister told the Guardian that the remark was a reference to the activities of “dissident republicans” there.

With her guest article, Braverman put Prime Minister Sunak under massive pressure – and put her career as Home Secretary at risk.

Sunak’s spokesman had to be asked whether the prime minister had the impression that Braverman still respected his authority, to which he answered “yes”. The head of government continues to have “full trust” in his party colleague. However, in an interview with the news channel Sky News on Friday, Secretary of State for Education Robert Halfton did not want to confirm this.

Will Suella Braverman be fired?

Sunak is weakened by the affair surrounding his home secretary. Braverman has the “license to say the unsayable” commented BBC chief reporter Chris Mason. “How do we know she has this license? If she didn’t have it, she would have been fired.” The fact that Sunak lets them have their way shows his weakness. As a representative of the right wing, she seems to be of great importance to him.

The choice comes at an inopportune time for the prime minister. Sunak actually wants to advance political projects and leave the chaos and scandals of his two predecessors, Johnson and Truss, behind him. Now the Braverman scandal has once again brought Downing Street to the brink of a government crisis.

However, the Prime Minister has left a loophole open. His spokesman confirmed that Braverman’s op-ed in the Times was not approved by the government. The matter should be investigated, he stressed.

The reported on Friday “Times”, that Sunak is currently reconsidering the future of his cabinet and could bring forward a planned castling in the cabinet to sack the home secretary. Accordingly, Cabinet Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden should be her successor.

“Suella Braverman is making headlines. Not for the first time. And not for the last time either.”

However, political observers consider Braverman’s latest controversy to be well-considered and calculated. The 43-year-old has been rumored for some time to be preparing for a future candidacy for the Tories’ party leadership. Others suspect that her statements are a deliberate strategy to appeal to voters from the right-wing spectrum before the next parliamentary elections.

Quite a few assume that Braverman will claim the party leadership after the next election, which is expected to take place in 2024. If she is now fired by Sunak, her name will not be associated with an election defeat, it is said in London.

“These ambitions are real,” said BBC chief reporter Chris Mason. If Rishi Sunak stumbles over the problems with Braverman or fails miserably at the next general election – as current polls predict – Suella Braverman’s candidacy for the Tory leadership is likely to be certain.

“Suella Braverman is making headlines. Not for the first time. And not for the last time either.”

Sources: news agencies DPA and AFP, BBC, Sky News, “The Guardian”, “The Times”, “Daily Mail”, “Politico”, “The News”