Suella Braverman leaves her home Monday morning before she was fired by the prime minister. Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters
Suella Braverman accused Rishi Sunak of “betrayal” over promise to stop small boat crossings in inflammatory letter after sacking as Home Secretary.
Addressing Prime Minister , she accused him of “clearly and repeatedly failing to implement” key policies and said his “particular style of governing means you are incapable of doing so.”
She said Mr Sunak had failed to deliver on his promise to do “everything possible” to stop small boat crossings, failing to overcome human rights concerns about the Rwanda plan.
Ms Braverman, One of the leading figures in the right-wing Tory Party, called on Mr Sunak to “urgently change course”, telling him he had led the Conservatives to a “recorded election defeat” and that his “reset has failed and we are on the run”. timeless.”
Read Ms. Braverman's letter in full below:
Dear Prime Minister,
Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave the government. While this is disappointing, it is for the best.
It has been a privilege to serve as Home Secretary and to do what the British people sent us to Westminster to do. I want to thank all the government officials, police officers, border patrol agents and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary.
I am proud of what we have achieved together: delivering on our promise to hire 20,000 new police officers and passing new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National Security Act 2023. behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of inquiry, grooming gangs, knife crime, non-criminal hate incidents, rape and serious sexual offences. And I'm proud of the strategic changes I've made to prevent, combat, and combat serious organized crime and fraud. I am confident that this work will continue with the new ministerial team.
As you know, I have accepted your offer to become Minister of the Interior in October 2022, subject to certain conditions. Despite the fact that you were rejected by the majority of party members during the summer leadership contest and therefore do not have a personal mandate to become Prime Minister, I have agreed to support you because you have given me strong assurances regarding key policy priorities. Among other things, these were:
1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto, in particular by reforming the international student pathway and raising the salary threshold for work visas;
2. Include special “notwithstanding” provisions in the new legislation to stop boats, e.g. exclude the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act and other international laws that have so far impeded progress on this issue;
< p>3. Present the Northern Ireland Protocol and retained EU bills in their then existing form and timetable;
4. Issue clear legislative guidelines for schools that protect biological sex, protect single-sex spaces, and enable parents to know what their children are being taught.
This was a document with clear terms that you agreed to in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally accepted that my support was a decisive factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become Prime Minister.
During my year as Home Secretary, I sent you many letters on key issues. contained in our agreement, have asked to discuss them with you and your team and have made suggestions on how we can achieve these goals. I have developed legal advice, policy details and actions to be taken on these issues. This has often been met with ambiguity, neglect and lack of interest.
You have clearly and repeatedly failed to implement each of these key policies. Or your particular style of leadership means that you are not capable of this. Or, as I must now conclude, you never intended to keep your promises.
These are not just my favorite interests. This is what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto, which delivered a landslide victory. This is what people voted for in the Brexit referendum in 2016.
Our deal was not a simple dinner promise that could be abandoned when convenient and rejected when challenged.
< p>It was clear to me from day one that if you don't want to leave the ECHR, this is the way to get the job done safely and quickly. Our partnership with Rwanda will be to block the ECHR, HRA and any other obligations that limit our ability to remove those who have no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly states “notwithstanding provisions” to this effect.
Your refusal to take this course was not just a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do “your best” to stop the boats.
At every stage of the trial, I cautioned you and your team not to assume that we would win. I have repeatedly called on you to take legislative action that would better protect us from the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. Instead, you chose wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make difficult choices. This irresponsibility led to a loss of time and put the country in a hopeless situation.
If we lose the Supreme Court (and that is the outcome I have consistently argued we must be prepared for), you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament just to end up back at square one. Worse, your magical thinking—the belief that you can get through this without breaking the bank—means that you have failed to prepare any credible “Plan B.” I have written to you repeatedly outlining what a credible Plan B would entail and making it clear that unless you follow these proposals, if you lose there is no hope of escaping this side of the election. I have not received a response from you.
I can only assume that this is because you have no desire to do what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of keeping your promise to the British people.
If, on the other hand, we win the Supreme Court because of the compromises you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, it will be difficult for the government to deliver on our partnership with Rwanda in the way the public expects. The law is far from immune to legal challenge. People will not be removed as quickly as I originally suggested. The average applicant will have the right to several months of review, challenge and appeal. Your insistence that Rule 39 is binding in international law, contrary to the views of leading jurists in the House of Lords, will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted again by the Strasbourg Court.
Another source of disappointment (and the context of my recent Times article) is your failure to deal with the challenge posed by the increasingly violent anti-Semitism and extremism on our streets since the Hamas terrorist atrocities of October 7.
I am hoarse in urging you to consider legislation that would ban hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and the glorification of terrorists that threaten community cohesion. The UK is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalization and extremism not seen for 20 years. I regret to admit that your response was vague, weak and lacking the leadership qualities this country needs. Instead of fully acknowledging the seriousness of this threat, your team spent weeks disagreeing with me that the law needed to be changed.
As with many issues, you sought to delay difficult decisions in order to minimize political risk for yourself. By doing so, you have increased the very real risk that these marches pose to everyone else.
Last October, you were given the opportunity to lead our country. Serving is a privilege that we should not take for granted. Service requires courage and consideration of the common good. This is not about taking office as an end in itself.
Someone needs to be honest: your plan isn't working, we've suffered record election defeats, your resets have failed, and we're running out of time. . You need to change course urgently.
I may not always have found the right words, but I have always strived to give a voice to the quiet majority who supported us in 2019. I tried to be honest and truthful. the people who have put us in these privileged positions.
I will of course continue to support the Government in pursuing policies that are consistent with a genuine Conservative agenda.
Yours,
Suella Braverman
The Rt Hon Suella Braverman MP
MP for Fareham
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