Braverman off hook as PM can’t risk a full-on war with Tory Right
Suella Braverman will remain Home Secretary after Rishi Sunak decided not to sack her, concluding she did not breach the ministerial code in how she handled a speeding fine.
The Prime Minister also declined to ask for a formal investigation from his independent adviser on ministerial interests, who had been consulted in the past 48 hours.
Ms Braverman did express regret for asking civil servants to help after being issued with a speeding fine and apologised for the “distraction” her actions had caused.
Mr Sunak has clearly been vexed by events at home overshadowing his charm offensive at the G7 in Japan.
Faced with repeated questions about Ms Braverman’s speeding fine, the Prime Minister testily asked journalists if they had any questions relating to the global conference.
Little wonder, then, that it now appears the Home Secretary will not face an investigation.
Mr Sunak could have referred her to Sir Laurie Magnus in a move that would have significantly upped the chances of her being ousted but chose not to, despite Ms Braverman also facing questions over whether she breached the ministerial code by not declaring work with the Rwandan government from before she was an MP.
The Prime Minister usually likes to take his time over such decisions, so his unusually swift response to what many of his MPS regard as a storm in a teacup is telling. Talk of a “witch-hunt against Right wingers in the Conservative Party” is taking hold in Westminster after it emerged that Boris Johnson has been referred to police over further alleged lockdown breaches, seemingly opening another chapter in the partygate saga.
That the leak again appears to have come from the Cabinet Office has enraged the Right wing of the party, which has accused “the blob” of turning against Brexiteer Tories.
The Prime Minister has, therefore, wisely decided to avoid a full-scale war with the European Research Group (ERG), which appears to be supporting Ms Braverman, its former chairman. The Home Secretary is a bigger threat to Mr Sunak’s premiership than she once was because the anti-cancel-culture caucus of the party has fallen out of love with Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, after she watered down the Retained EU Law Bill.
Conservatives on the Right have long been looking for a figure who channels the courageous spirit of Margaret Thatcher and in assuming the mantle of the Left’s new public enemy number one with comments such as: “White people do not exist in a special state of sin or collective guilt”, Braverman, 43, seems to fit the bill. With supporters in the Common Sense group and the ERG, Ms Braverman poses more of a threat to Mr Sunak from the backbenches than from the front bench, where she is a convenient “fall girl” for controversial policies.
His moderate allies insist he should have got rid of her because she is “a liability” with “terrible political judgment” but like her predecessor, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary is what one Cabinet colleague describes as “Rishi’s resident … sponge”.
Moreover, since one of Mr Sunak’s five “deliverables” is stopping the small boats, it would hardly have been a good look to get rid of the woman in charge of that key, potentially election-salvaging pledge.
As he faces criticism for what the Right sees as his “un-conservative” brand of Toryism, Mr Sunak will also have wanted to avoid further riling those MPS very vocally clamouring for tax cuts, the scrapping of VAT on luxury goods and an end to net zero.
Similarly, with Boris Johnson’s supporters furious at the news of yet another police referral and accusing No10 of being behind the leak (a claim Downing Street denied yesterday morning) there was little capital for Mr Sunak to side with a civil service thought by some to have a vendetta against the Government. Not least when he is facing criticism for being an (albeit hardworking) technocrat in thrall to the Treasury orthodoxy that “captured” him when he was Boris Johnson’s chancellor. As one Tory source told the Daily Mirror on Tuesday: “Sunak is letting Tories get decimated by the blob on his watch… It’s time for Sunak to grow some balls.”
Mr Sunak has scored his biggest successes as Prime Minister when he has been at his boldest. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, selfdestructed after he threatened to block her gender self-identification proposals in Scotland, for example.
By being the braver person, he appears to have beaten the Home Secretary at her own game.
‘Sunak is letting the Tories get decimated on his watch by the blob’
After all that, the Prime Minister ruled that Suella Braverman did not breach the ministerial code over her handling of a speeding fine. Following the exit of Dominic Raab, and the Home Secretary’s previous resignation over sending an official document from her personal email, the Government’s critics had scented blood. Could another minister be forced out for reasons altogether bemusing to the public?
This time, Rishi Sunak concluded: no. He said that he had consulted with his independent adviser on ethics, Sir Laurie Magnus, and judged that no further investigation was necessary. “A better course of action could have been taken to avoid giving rise to the perception of impropriety,” he wrote in a letter to Mrs Braverman, but “you have provided a thorough account, apologised and expressed regret”. He may hope that this will assuage concerns that Tory Right-wingers are being picked off in a Whitehall witch hunt, but why did it take so long?
The brouhaha raises one matter of process and one of substance. It is correct that the Prime Minister is the arbiter of whether a minister should be required to resign. Proposals to elevate his ethics adviser to a more powerful role would be undemocratic. It is also right that Mrs Braverman will now be left to get on with her job. The scale of the task facing her will become apparent today, with the release of the latest net migration figures.
They will expose the chasm between the Government’s tough rhetoric and the reality of an immigration system running out of control. That, in the end, will be how most voters will judge her performance as Home Secretary. Will she be able, or allowed, to do anything about it?