Suella Braverman has warned of a “hurricane” of mass migration and attacked the “luxury beliefs” of liberal-leaning people in a populist speech aimed at cementing her position as a standard-bearer of the Conservative right.
In a claim that will anger lawyers, judges and some within her own party, the home secretary told delegates at the Tory party conference that the Human Rights Act should be renamed the “Criminal Rights Act”.
She argued that “Britain would go properly woke” under a Labour government, with people “chased out of their jobs for saying that a man can’t be a woman” and “scolded for rejecting that they are beneficiaries of institutional racism”.
Evidence of anger at her speech emerged when a Conservative London Assembly member was ejected from the conference hall after heckling her for making his party look “transphobic”.
The 28-minute speech, which sought to rally the party around defending the rights of ordinary British people against an out-of-touch elite, came after three days of jostling between rival party factions over who might succeed Rishi Sunak if he loses the next election.
Braverman began her address with a warning that the world was facing unprecedented mass migration.
“The wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century was a mere gust compared [with] the hurricane that is coming,” she said. “Because today, the option of moving from a poorer country to a richer one is not just a dream for billions of people. It’s an entirely realistic prospect.”
She told delegates that their party stood with the “hard-working, commonsense majority against the few … the privileged woke minority, with their luxury beliefs”.
“People with luxury beliefs will flock to Labour at the next election because that’s the way to get the kind of society they want,” she claimed.
“They like open borders. The migrants coming in won’t be taking their jobs. In fact, they are more likely to have them mowing their lawns. They love soft sentences. The criminals who benefit from such ostentatious compassion won’t be terrorising their streets. They are desperate to reverse Brexit.
“For these people, I have a simple message: ‘You are entitled to your luxury beliefs, but the British people will no longer pay for them,’” she said to applause from hundreds of delegates in the room.
In an attack on the Human Rights Act, which was introduced by Tony Blair’s government, she said it had given criminals and “illegal migrants” the upper hand.
“Our country has become enmeshed in a dense net of international rules that were designed for another era. And it is Labour that turbocharged their impact by passing the misnamed Human Rights Act.
“I am surprised they didn’t call it the Criminal Rights Act.”
She claimed any attempt to change the laws had led to false allegations from Labour that she and the Conservatives were racist.
Braverman promised to bring forward laws briefed on Monday to prevent registered sex offenders from changing their identities.
“I don’t care if anyone thinks this is interfering with their human rights. It’s time to worry less about the rights of sexual predators and more about the rights of victims,” she said to cheers.
The home secretary defended the controversial Tory mayoral candidate Susan Hall, who was criticised this week by Jewish community groups for claiming Jews were frightened by the prospect of the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, being returned to office.
“If there’s any justice, Susan Hall is going to wipe the floor with [Khan] next May. They’ve already started the character assassination against Sue. The distortions. The insults. The lies. That’s what the Labour party does: it prefers smears to debate,” she said.
While Braverman addressed the conference in Manchester, the London Assembly member Andrew Boff was escorted from the premises after heckling.
A member of the capital’s assembly since 2008, he was approached by officials and police when he heckled Braverman after she said ministers must challenge the “poison” of talk of subjects such as white privilege and gender ideology. He said: “There’s no such thing as gender ideology.”
Afterwards, Braverman said Boff’s actions had been “silly” but he should not be barred from returning to the conference.
Robert Buckland, a Tory MP and former justice secretary, told the Guardian that Boff was “a Conservative of many years’ standing who is much respected” and heckling was “part of the democratic debate” at party conference. He added the treatment of Boff when he was frogmarched out was “heavy-handed, to say the least”.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the speech presented no new ideas on how to solve the government’s problems around migration and policing.
“Suella Braverman’s speech was devoid of practical policies and divorced from the reality of Tory failure over the last 13 years,” she said.
Natasha Tsangarides, associate director at the charity Freedom from Torture, said: “The home secretary revealed herself to be grossly out of touch with the millions of compassionate people who recognise that human rights are there to protect us all. Despite a cost-of-living crisis and collapsing public services, she continues to use marginalised groups as cannon fodder to win cheap political points.”
