Rishi Sunak’s authority as prime minister will be in tatters unless he sacks his controversial and divisive home secretary, Suella Braverman, within days, senior Tories have said.
As anger at her incendiary claims of police bias and open defiance of No 10 grow, the expectation among most Conservatives is that Sunak will dismiss Braverman early this week, opening the way for a cabinet reshuffle that, his allies hope, could yet revitalise his premiership.
While the home secretary has some support among a rump of rightwing MPs, party whips have been overwhelmed by demands from moderate backbenchers for Downing Street to dismiss Braverman as soon as possible after Armistice Day commemorations and today’s pro-Palestinian march in London.
One former cabinet minister told the Observer that although Braverman had clearly been “trying to get fired” when she wrote an article for the Times last week, in which she accused the police of showing bias in favour of pro-Palestinian “mobs”, Sunak had no option but to dismiss her.
“Not sacking her would be utterly fatal because, at that point, as well as being an unpopular prime minister, he becomes a weak and unpopular prime minister.”
Braverman was also doing untold damage to the party’s electoral appeal, he said: “A lot of colleagues are saying that the underlying Suella message is just driving voters away in the south-east of England. That cannot be allowed to go on.”
Referring to Braverman’s recent suggestion that homeless people were on the streets because they had made a “lifestyle choice”, the senior Tory added: “That was crossing the Rubicon. When you start attacking homeless people and saying it is a lifestyle choice, that is evidently ignorant, as well as nasty.” Asked how angry he was at Braverman’s behaviour on a scale of one to 10, he answered “11”.
The rage at the home secretary’s defiance – she was asked to tone down her Times article substantially but refused – and her constant playing to what she sees as her rightwing base, is widely shared. Another senior Tory referred to her as a “monster” with views that were completely unacceptable to anyone in the political mainstream.
Braverman’s remarks about police bias were seen as not only divisive but also dangerous, stoking division ahead of today’s pro-Palestinian march and Armistice Day events. Yesterday, she met the Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, in an apparent attempt to reduce tensions.
Even party grandees have been breaking cover to say that now is the time for Braverman to be thrown out of the cabinet, and left to sink or swim on the backbenches.
Sir Charles Walker, a former vice-chair of the 1922 committee of backbenchers, said: “The cabinet would be a happier place without her in it, and the parliamentary party would be a better place without everyone having to worry about what she is going to say next.”
He added: “The home secretary’s belligerent behaviour suggests she may be more comfortable leading the Reform party than being a member of the Conservative party. She may think she has the answers, but if there were simple solutions to complex problems we would have found them by now. Politics is difficult to navigate. Those that do it best do it with nuance, compassion and understanding.”
Martin Vickers, a member of the 1922 committee executive who rarely goes public to criticise ministers, said she had gone too far, with the result that media coverage of last week’s king’s speech had been drowned out by a controversy she had caused. “We cannot have a situation where the home secretary is having a public spat with the commissioner,” he said.
Another influential backbencher in a “red wall” seat said Braverman had a right to express her view in a country that cherished the right to free speech, but added, “however, she should have done it from the backbenches where she belongs”.
Tory critics of Braverman say the timing of any decision to sack her is critical, arguing that Sunak must get rid of her before the supreme court rules on Wednesday on the legality of her policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
“He can’t wait till after the judgment because, if the government wins, it will be victory to Suella and she is strengthened. If, on the other hand, she loses, the PM would be seen as sacking her for the result of a court case about a policy he backed. So it has to be done early this week. My money is Monday,” said one.
While there is talk of a handful of pro-Braverman ministers resigning if she is sacked – believing they would then be in pole position were she to lead the party after the next general election – most MPs say she lacks wide support in the party, either in parliament or the country.
What also angers moderate MPs is that, as one put it, “a minority of headbangers” were destroying the party’s electoral hopes. “It’s entirely depressing and dysfunctional. We are being held hostage by a small number who seem to think we grow in popularity by picking on various groups and disagreeing with ‘the establishment’. The plain fact is it’s destroying us. The prime minister needs to decide whether keeping the home secretary in post, and her gang of merry men smiling, is really worth it.”
Another moderate MP said it was not true that firing Braverman would trigger resignations by her allies. “What is clear is that a majority of the parliamentary party is deeply uncomfortable with the home secretary not just because of the views per se, but because she’s just bad and incompetent,” he said. “The bigger question is, what’s the point of her? We’re not getting a political benefit. We’re not getting competence. It’s muddled. There’s no strategy here.”
Former justice secretary David Gauke also criticised Braverman’s intervention. “Suella Braverman has an agenda of her own and it is nothing to do with performing her role as home secretary or helping her party in presenting a cohesive and unified government to the country,” he said. “She is fully entitled to have concerns about aspects of the pro-Palestinian protests, but the nature of her interventions simply makes the task of the police harder.”
Meanwhile, senior Labour figures accused Braverman of having fuelled far-right violence against the police after supporters of the activist Tommy Robinson and football hooligans broke through police lines just moments before the two-minute silence on Armistice Day.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “The scenes of disorder we witnessed by the far right at the Cenotaph are a direct result of the home secretary’s words. The police’s job has been made much harder.” Humza Yousaf, the first minister of Scotland, said the far right had been emboldened by Braverman, concluding, “She must resign”.
