Don’t be afraid of our ‘Britishness’
In rousing speech on migration, Suella says we should be proud of our culture, values and history
SUELLA Braverman warned yesterday that multiculturalism is a ‘recipe for communal disaster’ as she hailed Britain’s role in leading the abolition of the slave trade.
The Home Secretary said the UK should not be afraid of its own ‘Britishness’ and reiterated a vow to control migration better.
In a wide- ranging speech, intended to appeal to the Tory Right, Mrs Braverman also poked fun at Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s bungled attempts to define a woman.
Mrs Braverman received a rapturous applause from delegates at the National Conservatism Conference in London yesterday, where she spoke of her desire for migrants to integrate into British society.
She said: ‘The British identity isn’t simply interchangeable with liberal values. Britishness is so much more than that – some of it unquantifiable, but all of it to be celebrated and cherished.
‘ The unexamined drive towards multiculturalism as an end in itself, combined with identity politics, is a recipe for communal disaster.’
Mrs Braverman spoke movingly as she described her mother and father’s journey to the UK as young adults from
Mauritius and Kenya respectively, through ‘legal and controlled migration’.
She said: ‘They spoke the language, they threw themselves into the community, embraced British values.’
Net migration to the UK was estimated to be at 504,000 in the year to June last year, an increase of 331,000 on the previous 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The latest figures are expected to be published next week, and may show net migration has reached a million, including large numbers of refugees from Ukraine. The Home Secretary said she was a ‘proud Spartan’ for Brexit because she ‘wanted Britain to control migration’.
She said high-skilled workers support economic growth, but added: ‘We need to get overall immigration numbers down.’
Mrs Braverman said: ‘We cannot have immigration without integration. And if we lack the confidence to promote our culture, defend our values, and venerate our past, then we have nothing to integrate people into.’
In a clarion call to patriotic Tory voters, she said: ‘We have a nation, but more than that, we have a national character to conserve.’
The Home Secretary also referred to the UK’s previous involvement in the international
slave trade, which has seen statues toppled and protests across the country in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in recent years.
The former Tory leadership candidate, who is among the bookies’ favourites to eventually replace Rishi Sunak, said: ‘The defining feature of this country’s relationship with slavery is not that we practised it, but that we led the way in abolishing it. We should be proud of who we are.’
She added: ‘White people do not exist in a special state of sin or collective guilt. Nobody should be blamed for things that happened before they were born.’ Mrs Braverman’s speech was twice interrupted by environmental activists, who were swiftly bundled out.
Undeterred, the Home Secretary joked: ‘It’s audition day for the shadow cabinet.’
She mocked Sir Keir, who has come under pressure to define his party’s position on gender identity and recently claimed that 99.9 per cent of women ‘of course haven’t got a penis’.
Mrs Braverman joked: ‘Given his definition of a woman, we can’t rule him out from running to be Labour’s first female prime minister.’
Fellow Tory MP Danny Kruger echoed Mrs Braverman’s comments on migration. He told delegates: ‘I want the UK to be the most genuinely generous country
‘A special state of collective guilt’
in the world. The basis of that generosity is that we control our own borders.’ It came as Labour described the Government’s handling of the asylum backlog as ‘pathetic’.
Sir Keir said between 1 and 3 per cent of applications by those who arrive on small boats have been processed from last year.
■ Rishi Sunak will warn European leaders at a gathering in Iceland that the international system for preventing unlawful migration is ‘not working’.
He will tell the Council of Europe meeting in Reykjavik today that both European communities and the world’s most vulnerable are ‘paying the price’.