Braverman Alienates Everyone

After Suella Braverman, inexplicably elevated to the rank of Home Secretary despite being manifestly unfit for the job, had screamed and screamed but had not convinced anyone who mattered that next Saturday’s march of those showing solidarity with the Palestinian people should be banned, one might have thought that she would stop and think before opening her mouth again.

But that thought would have been sorely misplaced: having dubbed peaceful protests “hate marches”, with her Prime Minister claiming that the protest was somehow “disrespectful”, and our free and fearless press claiming spuriously that there was a risk to Armistice Day commemorations and the Cenotaph, but having failed to convince the cops, off she has gone again.

After Sunak had tried, but failed, to pressure the Metropolitan Police into banning the march, it seemed that someone very adjacent to the PM had briefed the right-wing press, with the Daily Brexit, still called the Express, howling “RISHI WARNS MET CHIEF: YOU’LL TAKE BLAME IF PROTEST IS VIOLENT”, and the Mail following up by going Full Dacre,

“As Mark Rowley STILL refuses to ban Gaza march on Armistice Day - even after being summoned to Number 10 … PM TELLS MET CHIEF: ON YOUR HEAD BE IT”. But it was the Murdoch Times that had the latest outburst by Ms Braverman, who had already alienated anyone wanting to show concern for those being rocketed, bombed and shelled round the clock.

Empathy, she had declared, now equalled hate. Now she targeted the Police, a move that Sir Humphrey might have termed “brave”. Warming to her new platform, she frothed “Now, as we approach a particularly significant weekend in the life of our nation, one which calls for respect and commemoration, the hate marchers - a term I do not resile from - intend to use Armistice Day to parade through London in yet another show of strength”. Do go on.

“I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry of help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups - particularly Islamists - of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland. Also disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday’s march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas”. No citation.

So that’s Ulster’s unionist tradition, and the nationalist civil rights movement, duly alienated, then. With no power-sharing executive in place at Stormont, that makes the task of restoring the executive almost insurmountable. So could she alienate anyone else? Don’t ask. Because yes, she could.

Yet “braver” was her decision to slag off the cops. She “claimed that senior officers are biased in their policing of protests and employ a ‘double standard’, taking a softer approach with left-wing groups such as Black Lives Matter than with right-wing protests such as anti-lockdown demonstrations … [she] said there must not be soft touch policing of this weekend’s protest”.

This was, in case you missed it, “in implicit criticism of the Met’s management of the rallies over the past month. The public, she said, ‘expect to see an assertive and proactive approach to any displays of hate, breaches of conditions and general disorder’”. This has not met with universal acclaim.

As Paul Waugh of the i Paper pointed out, “Tom Winsor, former HM chief inspector of constabulary, is on [the Radio 4 Today Programme] saying [Suella Braverman] has broken the spirit and letter of the convention that Home Secretary should never question the operational integrity of the police. [Rishi Sunak] now facing huge pressure to sack her”.

Smearing peaceful marchers for displaying empathy. Smearing the Police for doing their job. Smearing both Unionist and Nationalist traditions in Northern Ireland. As Annette Dittert put it, that Times column was “a vicious attack on Sunak’s authority as PM. If he doesn’t sack her now, he might as well resign”.

Having missed all previous opportunities to sack her, Sunak now looks on helplessly while the far right gather for some Saturday afters, his credibility and that of his Government shredded by his wacko Home Secretary. It would be funny, were it not deadly serious. General election? Yes, and right now.

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