Home secretary Suella Braverman is seemingly a bag of contradictions. She could be the poster girl for a modern multi-cultural, ethically-diverse, out-ward-looking Britain. Born to Indian immigrant parents, her Hindu mum emigrated from Mauritius and her Christian dad from Kenya. She is a practicing Buddhist and is married to a Jew. She even used the EUs Erasmus program to study abroad in France.
And yet, she has positioned herself as the champion of the far right flank of the Tory party, has used language described as "racist" to describe asylum seekers coming from France in boats as an "invasion" and suggested that sexual grooming gang members being predominantly British-Pakistani men who "hold cultural values totally at odds with British values". As a passionate Brexiteer she helped dismantle British students access to the Erasmus scheme she herself benefitted from.
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London born Suella was actually named after the character Sue Ellen Ewing from the American television soap opera Dallas. She went to a private secondary school (which was partly funded by a scholarship) and studied law at Cambridge while also doing a master's degree in European and French law in Paris.
While she was at Cambridge she president of the Universities Conservative Association. However it wasn't at university where her interest in Conservative politics was ignited. Her mother, Uma Fernandes, was a community Nurse in Brent and was a Tory councillor. The pair actually ended up competing for the same candidacy for a parliamentary seat in a by-election in 2003.
Her mother, who was the 55, had to convince her 23-year-old daughter not to contest the seat after the sitting MP died. She reportedly told Suella "You should let mummy have a chance". Instead the young lawyer spent more time on her career, becoming a barrister in 2005 as well as passing the bar in the USA the following year.
Clearly she was still aiming for politics because she ran for a Tory seat in Leicester in 2005 (coming second) and tried to get into the London Assembly (though also missed out. Eventually, in 2015 she was elected as the MP for Fareham (a town in Hampshire).
Just before the start of the pandemic Boris Johnson appointed her as the attorney general. Later that year she was widely criticised by members of the legal community for "wrecking UK’s reputation" after the Government unveiled plans to unilaterally stop following parts of the Brexit deal.
This episode fell in between her having her two children with her husband Rael Braverman a manager for the Mercedes-Benz Group. He has been described as a "very proud member of the Jewish community". Suella herself is a Buddhist and part of an order within Buddhism called Triratna. Triratna made headlines in 2020 because of a claims that one of the founders Dennis Lingwood was a "sexual predator" along side accusations of sexual misconduct, abuse and inappropriate behaviour
Her sect continues to venerate Lingwood, who died in 2018 aged 93, despite the well-documented claims he was a serial abuser. He was accused of presiding over a heavily sexualised culture within the sect and issued an apology in later life, saying he had hurt, harmed or upset fellow Buddhists.
When Johnson was eventually ousted by his own MPs, Braverman stood to be leader. However she was eliminated in the second round and went on to endorse Liz Truss. Her campaign highlighted how she planned to position herself in the coming year. She was vehemently "anti woke" said she would suspend the UK's carbon emissions target and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. According to the Guardian she also received £10,000 from a company owned but climate change denier Terence Mordaunt.
Once Truss took over she was appointed home secretary. She swiftly courted controversy when she said that it was her "dream" and "obsession " to deport failed asylum seekers to Rwanda. However, like her boss Liz Truss she barely managed to last six weeks in the role after she had to resign because she shared an official document using a personal email address. Perhaps in an attempt to insulate herself from the chaos of Liz Truss she was highly critical of her leadership (despite having endorsed her just months before). Within a week the new PM Rishi Sunak had appointed Braverman back to the position of home secretary (an appointment that was challenged by opposition parties).
Now Suella Braverman is back in the news over a speeding fine while home secretary. The issue isn't that she was going fast in her car, the issue is that she asked civil servants to look into if she would be able to have a one-on-one speed awareness course. It's thought she was hoping to avoid publicity that might follow if she were recognised by the public in the usual group session. She is thought to have been told that this was not possible and took a three-point penalty and fine instead.
Critics are arguing that asking civil servants to do things beyond their remit is a potential breach of the ministerial code. However her supporters say she simply asked for advice on whether it was something that would be possible.
But will she care if she is dismissed? There are signs and rumblings that she is already positioning herself for another leadership challenge in the result of a Tory defeat in the next election. In recent weeks she has rebuffed cabinet colleagues over easing via rules to boost economic growth and had many of her immigration proposals rejected by the cabinet. This has been seen in some quarters as her jockeying for favour among party membership (who will ultimately decide any leadership vote) and distancing herself form a potential Tory election defeat.
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