No home secretary should write the article that Suella Braverman published in the Times on Thursday and expect to remain in post. The article is a reckless intervention on the most sensitive political subject of the day, and intentionally so. It plays fast and loose with her ministerial responsibilities. It is designed to stir trouble, not to help ensure calm or order. It had also not been approved by 10 Downing Street.
The article’s inflammatory language is particularly irresponsible. Protests are not “mobs”, and home secretaries should not describe them in such terms. Participants in demonstrations are not “angry” in the violent way she implies either. Calling for a ceasefire does not make you a “hate marcher”. Nor is it the “valorisation of terrorists”. There are too many heated adjectives in her article and all too few facts.
