U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been sacked by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after a tumultuous relationship reached breaking point over the weekend with a row over Armistice Day protests.
A Downing Street source confirmed on Monday that “Suella has gone because the prime minister wants a united team to deliver the changes this country needs for the long term.”
She has been replaced by James Cleverly who had been serving as Britain’s foreign secretary, and in a surprise move, former Prime Minister David Cameron has accepted an invitation to lead the foreign office.
Braverman confirmed the sacking in a brief statement. “It has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve as Home Secretary. I will have more to say in due course,” she said.
The Conservative politician, viewed favorably among the right-wing faction of the governing party, penned an unapproved op-ed for The Times newspaper on Wednesday in which she accused the Metropolitan Police of favoritism by permitting pro-Palestine demonstrators to run riot through the streets of London while being far tougher on right-wing protestors.
BREAKING: Suella Braverman sacked.
Also breaking: the Conservative Party.
— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) November 13, 2023“Right-wing and nationalist protestors who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response, yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behavior are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law. I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard,” Braverman wrote.
I support @SuellaBraverman Sacked for speaking the truth. Bad call by Rishi caving in to the left! https://t.co/wtit5oBJPx
— Andrea Jenkyns MP ?? (@andreajenkyns) November 13, 2023On the Palestinian marches, she added: “We have seen with our own eyes that terrorists have been valorized, Israel has been demonized as Nazis, and Jews have been threatened with further massacres.”
Her remarks were praised by large numbers of the conservative commentariat and governing party members but were jumped upon by the liberal mainstream media as unhelpful and provocative.
Suella Braverman just got dumped by the New Elite because she challenged mass immigration, our broken model of multiculturalism, called out ideological bias in the institutions & consistently took on the consensus https://t.co/liUeIhMiRY
— Matt Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) November 13, 2023At the weekend, a protest group seeking to pay their respects to fallen soldiers at the Cenotaph in Central London and protect war memorials from planned pro-Palestine marches clashed with police, unrest which some officers later claimed was fuelled by Braverman’s comments.
Braverman has long been viewed as being more traditionally conservative than the current leader and has been far more outspoken on the topic of immigration, regularly expressing her frustration at being held back from controlling Britain’s borders due to overzealous human rights legislation and “lefty lawyers” who help facilitate rejected asylum seekers to game the system.
