Suella Braverman Goes Full Enoch

After a protest about refugees in Kirkby turned violent, with a Police van being burned out, more far-right gatherings were planned outside hotels alleged to be housing those seeking asylum. That there would be counter-protests was inevitable. So what would a responsible Home Secretary have done? What would a sensible person have done? What would Nietzsche have done?

Sadly, the principle-free opportunist that is Suella Braverman does not operate on that lofty intellectual plane, and instead she offered herself up for interview before the gentle questioning of Liam Halligan on Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) with a message that would all but encourage the far right in their mission to whip up hatred.

Halligan cued her up: “Some have been calling, in the media, those protesters against asylum seekers, perhaps, some would call them illegal immigrants, some have said that those protesters are ‘far right’. Is that a fair characterisation of those protesters?” What say Ms Braverman?

“We are all frustrated with the situation that we are currently finding ourselves in and it is clear and undeniable that there are really serious pressures on communities, and saying so does not make you racist or bigoted … because of the overwhelming numbers of people arriving here illegally, and our legal duty to accommodate them, we are now having to house them in hotels, and that is causing understandable tensions within communities”.

Any condemnation of the violence, and trashing that Police van? But there was more. “Pressures on local resources, and is frankly unsustainable”. So, as it’s on her watch, what’s she going to do about it? But Halligan wasn’t going down that road, although his next question was a good one. “So you support those protesters?” Another opportunity to condemn the violence.

Which, once more, went begging. “I very much understand peoples’ frustrations with hotels being occupied by large numbers of illegal immigrants or asylum seekers”. But, eventually, she addressed the point. “Anyone contemplating violence, harassment or intimidation should desist from doing that. It is not an acceptable way to voice your concern or frustration”.

But the organised far right, and indeed neo-Nazi, protest is not merely saying there are pressures on communities. They are there to whip up hatred, to be violent and thereby legitimise, even normalise, more violence. Small wonder Ian Dunt of the i paper called her “This monstrous moral abyss of a woman”. She had gone full Enoch Powell, but with one big difference.

When Powell gave his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968, Ted Heath sacked him from the shadow cabinet. Rishi Sunak shows no sign of sacking Ms Braverman. 55 years on, and an abject failure to condemn gratuitous violence does not even merit a ticking off. But it did earn her fulsome praise from former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage.

As Byline Times political editor Adam Bienkov noted, “Nigel Farage now tipping Suella Braverman as a future leader of a new right wing movement … ‘I think there's a possibility that by 2026 there is a realignment of the centre right in British politics and if there is I think she could be just about the most important player in it.’” But others had seen and heard quite enough.

Brendan May was one of them. “Here you go, far right thugs, a free pass from a Home Secretary who is meant to uphold both the law and public order. Get these dangerous Trumpites out of office or our own January 6th won’t be far off. Shameful legitimisation of racists here. Abysmal.”

Suella Braverman has failed to call out the far right and neo-Nazis, or indeed even to confirm that far right is what they are. She has failed to condemn the violence, preferring instead to just suggest that those thus inclined “desist”. She has failed to condemn the trashing of that Police van, or property more generally. And her party leader has failed to discipline her.

The Tories just green-lit neo-Nazi violence. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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