That Suella Braverman ever graced one of the great offices of state should forever dispel any illusions about our political establishment. She owed her grip on the Home Office to the tawdry cynicism of Rishi Sunak, whose thin technocratic veneer poorly disguises a man who burns with political ambition but doesn’t have the talent to match. Braverman’s endorsement of his leadership candidacy was important because, knowing that the average Tory member would probably view Genghis Khan as a milquetoast liberal, a chastened Sunak needed to bolster his right flank to prevent Boris Johnson from returning. This short-term advantage came with a heavy long-term cost; a pattern that has defined Sunak’s benighted premiership.
But while Braverman’s pantomime villain persona makes her downfall all the more satisfying, it would be a mistake to treat her sacking as a symbol of Sunak’s newfound moderation. That she crudely exploited Britain’s most extreme political sentiments in the name of self-advancement is undeniable. Decrying immigration as an existential threat to European civilisation was to summon a “great replacement” conspiracy theory beloved by the far right. She compared migrants to a hurricane – that is, a natural disaster that inflicts death and destruction. Her claims that most child grooming gangs were “almost all British-Pakistani” – disproven by Home Office research, which found most were actually white – were designed to foment racist division and hate.
Her demonisation of Britons who object to the government’s support for Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza – not least defaming them as “hate marchers” – played a pivotal role in whipping up the far-right mob that stormed the cenotaph on Armistice Day, members of which then racially abused peace protesters. Her demagoguery was always contrived, like she was rattling through a checklist of cliches for any hard-right chancer who aspires to be prime minister. But this made it no less offensive or her words any less harmful.
Braverman, though, is but a crude distillation of the poison that courses through the Tory party’s veins. Take David Cameron, dragged from exile to take up his position at the Foreign Office, and still presented as the torchbearer of Tory moderation. He is easily the worst of this latest run of prime ministers: his slash-and-burn cuts resulted in human misery on a mass scale, tearing at the country’s social fabric and leading to the political turmoil we now find ourselves in. Moreover, his scapegoating of migrants paved the way for Braverman. Twelve years ago, he declared “for too long immigration has been too high” and that migrants’ failure to integrate had provoked “discomfort and disjointedness” in communities. His immigration minister, James Brokenshire, declared that “uncontrolled, mass immigration makes it difficult to maintain social cohesion, puts pressure on public services and forces down wages.”
This toxic rhetoric always sought to redirect blame from the consequences of Tory austerity on to the classic scapegoat – the demonised foreigner. Yes, Braverman has since added an extra layer of cruelty. But was Cameron’s vicious denunciation of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party as “security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating” any less vitriolic than Braverman’s oratory?
The same can be said of Theresa May, whose rebrand as a moderate speaks to a widespread political amnesia in our national discourse. It is difficult to dissent from the Telegraph columnist who favourably quoted a description of May as “a remainer who hates immigration”. Indeed, her only consistent principle appeared to be an antagonism to anyone settling here from abroad. Her “citizen of nowhere” speech in 2016 – claiming the real elite were rootless metropolitans – foreshadowed Braverman’s own denunciation of the “luxury beliefs” of a “privileged woke minority”.
And what of Boris Johnson, who triggered a surge in hate crimes after comparing Muslim women to letterboxes and robbers before he was even ensconced in No 10? It used to be that there was a separation between the centre-right and what lay beyond. But Johnson’s Islamophobic comments and support for Brexit led far-right extremists to begin chanting Johnson’s name with affection, and even won the approval of far-right criminal Tommy Robinson and the extremists of Britain First. This, too, foreshadowed the approving far-right mob who congregated at the cenotaph, encouraged by our former home secretary’s divisive rhetoric.
Sunak’s own image as a tech nerd belies a man with politics firmly to Johnson’s right. From demonising trans people, to raging against green policies, to using the bully pulpit of the premiership to vilify opponents of Israel’s massacre, his fundamental difference with Braverman is to do with style rather than substance. Witness how his ministers paraded around Tory conference indulging far-right conspiracies about 15-minute cities, or spreading mistruths about scrapping nonexistent meat taxes.
Braverman has now exited the stage – but Bravermanism is now the core of modern Toryism. She promises, with appropriate menace, that she will “have more to say”. Her role, though, is merely to replace the dog whistle with the loudhailer. Her colleagues may seek more subtlety, but the content remains the same. Bravermanism is simply contemporary Toryism when it is honest – stripped away of the trimmings and frills to reveal the ugliness underneath.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
