The home secretary, queen of the anti-woke, is gone, again. Her grandstanding infuriated many colleagues, yet most of them share the same sinking life-raft of current Tory thinking. “I wouldn’t use her words,” each minister says, but they share her thoughts. Reshuffle from what to what?
The tide is going out on the conservatism they were bred on, the last ripples of Thatcherism that nurtured them leaving them all marooned on an extremist island. Suella Braverman’s backers, such as the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Sun, which 20 years ago seemed to have a direct line to the beating heart of Tory middle England, are now adrift. And there is no sign that sacking her and reviving the Greensill-tarnished David Cameron will help: austerity’s author arrives to great public alarm as his policy crushes public services. Only 24% of voters feel favourably towards him, with nearly twice as many against.
