July 21, 2024 - 1:30pm
The US high-school movie Mean Girls launched a famous meme based around the slogan “You can’t sit with us.” This concerned the exclusion from a friendship group of someone for the infraction of a behaviour code, in this case a ban on wearing sweatpants on a Monday.
At present, Conservative MPs seem to be re-enacting the scene via their posture towards Suella Braverman, who has just denied that she is on the verge of defecting to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Her various infractions include writing an article published two days before the general election which sought to explain a Tory massacre that had not yet occurred. This is deemed somehow to have contributed to the extent of the actual massacre which then took place.
Braverman had previously exposed the insincerity of Rishi Sunak’s belated posturing as a mass-migration sceptic, following her sacking from the role of home secretary in his government. She believes she deserves to lead the party, but must know that there are too many obstacles in her way. Instead of folding in behind the better-positioned Robert Jenrick, a former Home Office colleague and friend from their Cambridge University days who now shares her staunch agenda on immigration control and integration, she has singled him out for ridicule.
Describing Jenrick as being “from the Left of the party”, she added: “He voted for Remain in the Brexit referendum. He was a big, kind of centrist Rishi supporter. I remember talking to him about leaving the ECHR a year ago and him looking horrified by that prospect.”
Leadership frontrunner Kemi Badenoch was reported to have told the inaugural meeting of the new Tory Shadow Cabinet that Braverman was having “a very public nervous breakdown”. Now Tory MPs are briefing journalists not exactly that Braverman can’t sit with them but more that she soon won’t sit with them, predicting that she will defect to Reform, with whom she appears to share many policy positions. Yesterday, for her part, she warned that the Tories risk becoming “centrist cranks”.
The general briefing against Braverman seems to be rendering her friendless among her peer group. Even before the election, she had been relegated by party whips to the most dismal and cramped office they could find in Portcullis House, the Parliamentary building where most MPs are based. There, she cut an increasingly lonely figure. Now her erstwhile supporters are deserting her for other leadership contenders, such as Jenrick and Badenoch.
Whether victims of bullying tend to behave in errant ways that serve to catalyse their own mistreatment is a debatable point, though groups going through collective setbacks — a heavy election defeat, say — are definitely more likely to single out a member for rough treatment. In Elizabethan times a poor harvest would lead villages to seek to identify a witch in their midst who had brought about the misfortune, thus enabling them to face the future with renewed confidence.
Conservative MPs who think Braverman is on a trajectory taking her into the arms of Farage may well be right, but they are extremely foolish to do things that make such an outcome more likely. For all their ridicule, the awkward fact is that she is one of very few of their number who retain any credibility in the eyes of the millions of voters the party lost to Reform or abstention on 4 July.
In the eyes of such people, Braverman was sacked for being right — about Sunak not being serious in regard to stopping the boats, about his complete failure to reduce gargantuan legal immigration volumes, and about the dangers of permitting pro-Islamist “hate marches”. Indeed, Sunak’s dismissal of her as home secretary was followed by a surge in support for Reform, taking it to double-digit poll ratings for the first time.
Would Reform want such a quixotic character as Braverman? I am told that the party’s former leader Richard Tice has reservations, but that Farage himself is much keener. She is still easily one of the best-known politicians in the country. Her recruitment would broaden the current “five white guys” demographic of Reform MPs, but it would also send a giant signal to right-of-centre voters that the insurgent party is the one with ideas, courage and vitality.
Of course, Braverman and Farage are both big personalities, and there could well be a falling-out further down the line. But right now Reform is looking to sustain its newfound momentum, and getting Braverman on board would be just the job. A wiser cohort of Tory MPs would be throwing arms around her shoulders, not advancing self-fulfilling prophecies about her imminent departure.
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SubscribeIf Braverman has any sense she will follow Lee Anderson into joining the Reform Party.
This could lead to a steady stream of Tory MP’s deserting the Tories as it is confirmed the ‘One Nation’ Tories are still in control of the party.
Disruption now is the only way to fix our politics .. the ‘UniParty’ is certainly not going to do that for us.
If she sees her chance of leadership with the Tories disappearing from under her, she’d have nothing to lose from joining Reform, and potentially everything to gain.
Rishi Sunak found room for both of them, but Suella Braverman, who was so incompetent that even Liz Truss felt obliged to sack her, would reportedly defect to Reform UK if she were not made Leader of the Conservative Party instead of, for example, Robert Jenrick, who was so bent that even Boris Johnson felt obliged to sack him.
Meaning that Braverman would have to challenge for Leader of Reform, or what would be the point? If she had left the Conservatives for not having made her Leader, as they are certainly not going to do, then she could not very well join another party except to become its Leader. Nigel Farage may therefore refuse to let her in. Indeed, if she did not now defect, then she has presumably been rebuffed.
And if Braverman felt the need to join Reform, then she would obviously have had the support of fewer than five other Conservative MPs. Such fun, brothers and sisters. Such fun. Let the games begin.
Braverman is just the type of oddball that no one likes that would defect to a party like Reform, it would be a cathartic process for the Conservatives, much like having an enema.
The biggest problem is that Braverman is correct.
After Blair, Steady State Politics is leading the country to destruction. It’s why, after 14 years, we have so many unfixed problems.
Here’s a fun fact:
National Grid Plans for U.K. to Be Impoverished by Halving Energy Use Per Person by 2050
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/21/future-energy-scenarios-brainstorm
How are you going to manage on half the Energy being available? Whether it’s for Industry or Domestic consumption, the consequences will be felt.
Why is it a fun fact?
It’s been obvious for over two decades that this is the future that has been chosen for us, and the only way of improving our chances is to have a few oddballs forcing change, even if it makes the liberals uncomfortable.
Braverman is correct in what she says both about Sunak and Jenrick…and much besides.
Jenrick will almost certainly become Leader in which case there will be continuity BlueLabour, which will have no chance whatsoever of ever winning an election.
The Tories, and the Tory supporting MSM are bleating on about how bad Starmer’s Labour Government will be. However they haven’t even come to terms with how truly useless they were in their fourteen years of (mis)government, let alone are in a position to criticise things which haven’t happened.
My view is that Starmer wants two terms and his “place in political history” (he’s already got a head start on that with the election result…) with a successful government. He is not a fool and knows full well that a hard Left government will not achieve what he wants. It is likely that he will do very much better than the Tories hope.
We must remember that Labour is also a party split ideologically … there are going to be massive stresses on the Labour Party and I would n’t be surprised to see them split as the Tories almost certainly will.
We are in a time of disruptive politics … anything can happen!
Probably right but the second term will be very different, with a minute majority and splits on the left flank. A minority government propped up by LibDens and SNP and years of chaos.
I think the second term will have a very much reduced but not minute majority, especially if the first term is successful.
And I doubt if the Tories will have sorted out who they are by then; they haven’t in fourteen years.
The Tories could well fail like businesses do: very slowly at first, then very quickly.
I don’t see the first term being successful, nor do I see the Tories getting their act together and the right leaning vote being split with Reform. I expect Reform will do a lot better in the Red Wall too but not quite well enough to force Labour out.
Braverman joining Reform would solve the dilemma l faced at the recent election – she’s my mp and, despite her unnerring ability to find every available banana skin, l wanted to see her back in parliament. Unfortunately, she’s also a member of a party that l wanted to see destroyed (labour’s turn next time l hope). Ended up voting Reform while wishing her good luck. She was the only Conservative l was pleased to see win comfortably
Jenrick has been saying the right things on immigration, in particular that the Tories must “repent” their gross failure in this area.
If either he, or Braverman, becomes leader then an accommodation with Reform is foreseeable. If not, and there is no accommodation, then the Right is going to be out of power for a long time, perhaps permanently,
If Jenrick becomes leader Braverman would be best advised to row in behind him and work towards that accommodation . If he does not, and the leadership goes to a “OneNation” type, she might as well go to Reform for which she would be a notable asset.
It depends how much Jenrick was his own man.
“Tories are driving Suella Braverman towards Reform UK“. There will probably be a fight to see who gets to hold the door open for her as she leaves.
A ‘performative’ politician who amplifies rage but little else. Remember she was in charge of the Home Office when they were signing off thousands of Visas. She didn’t resign then but waited until her political calculus decided to leave the ship with her future ambitions most prominent in her decision. Integrity my posterior.
The clash of egos with Farage will be fun. She’s heading his way. She craves attention and thus the grand gesture resignation from Tories just a matter of time.
Thus the inevitable psychodrama continues on the Right. Predicted. Problem is it’s still not getting Tories/Reform beyond immigration into some of the other key policy areas where they lack coherency.
Resigning can lead to oblivion, especially if not much has changed, and she thought she had a promise from the PM. The rest is hindsight.
Wherever Braverman goes, she’ll screw up.
She had the chance to go for a strong following in the parliamentary Tory party, but has blown it over and over. In an assemblage of a range of views, loyaty and subtelty are key attributes. She simply has not currently the judgement to be a major voice, sad, but it is so. Indeed she is the very epitome of digging whilst in the hole.
Her speech two days before the election was particularly crass.
Silence, reflection, and a studied intellectual contribution to the forthcoming debate may yet help her reputation recover.