Getting rid of Suella Braverman, if you are Rishi Sunak, is not as easy as it might first appear.
The home secretary has already handed the prime minister several opportunities, none of which have been taken up.
As well as the current row over whether Braverman deliberately defied No 10 over an article attacking the Metropolitan police, the prime minister has this week refused to endorse her claims that rough sleeping is sometimes a “lifestyle choice”.
The flagship criminal justice bill has been delayed amid resistance from some cabinet ministers over Braverman’s measures to stop tents being given to homeless people. Ministers have also refused to repeat Braverman’s description of pro-Palestinian demonstrations as “hate marches”.
Plus, she has form for breaching rules. Braverman was sacked from the same cabinet position last year by Liz Truss because she sent an official document from her personal email to a fellow MP, in a serious breach of ministerial rules.
But Sunak’s dilemma over whether to sack her, according to well-placed MPs, goes back to last autumn when he was standing to become leader of the Conservative party.
Braverman was, and remains, a darling of what party stalwarts call the traditional right of the party – or the hard right for many commentators. Insiders say Sunak was desperate to guarantee Braverman’s support and those of her allies to see off a challenge from Penny Mordaunt and was willing to guarantee her a return to a senior cabinet post.
At the time, Keir Starmer accused Sunak and Braverman of striking a “grubby deal”.
Since then, support for Braverman from hard-right groupings within the parliamentary party has strengthened. As well as the Common Sense Group of MPs, run by Braverman’s ally Sir John Hayes, she can also rely upon some support from the New Conservatives, which was set up in spring.
The calculation that Sunak’s team must make is this: can they afford to enrage those on the parliamentary party right who now see Braverman as their main standard-bearer?
One of her supporters says it would be a high-risk strategy, and he might only survive the backlash if he was prepared to install another hard-right figure into a great office of state.
As disclosed in the Guardian on Tuesday, many in No 10 wonder whether Braverman is goading Sunak to sack her. This would be in the hope that martyrdom would cement her position as the darling of the right in a leadership contest that could come as soon as next year.
Allies claim she is reflecting the views of a “silent majority” who are too often ignored at Westminster.
The approach has certainly boosted her profile among Tory activists who will pick the next Conservative leader. Polling by the grassroots website Conservative Home suggests her net approval rating among activists has jumped from 21.6% to 43.5% this month, bringing her closer to leadership rival Kemi Badenoch.
Fellow rightwinger Esther McVey said that the opposite was true – and that her interventions were designed to make her unsackable.
“It’s not a great platform to go forward to be leader having been sacked, because you get sacked because you’re not doing your job properly,” she told the Mail. “If you really did want to be leader, what you’d be doing is resigning on a principle.”
That opportunity could come on Wednesday, when the supreme court is due to rule on the legality of the government’s deal to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Braverman is closely tied to Sunak through his promise to “stop the boats”.
If the government loses, there will be pressure from Braverman’s backers to leave the European convention on human rights. At this point, it is possible Braverman could call on Sunak to make it a pre-election promise and quit if the idea is ruled out.
