What is Suella Braverman up to? Framing migrants as an existential threat to western civilisation, assailing multiculturalism, while talking darkly about the numbers of children had by foreign-born mothers; this week the home secretary was to be found delivering a speech to a rightwing US thinktank that sank to a bleak new low. Braverman has form when it comes to introducing extreme rightwing views into the mainstream, but this speech was especially egregious. It was riddled with the same tropes found in the “great replacement” – a far-right conspiracy theory that suggests Europeans are being replaced by outsiders with the complicity of elites.
The speech also moved Britain’s officially sanctioned anti-LGBTQ backlash up yet another notch. It was never going to stop at trans people. After the government’s delaying of plans to ban conversion “therapy”, Braverman pointed the finger at LGBTQ refugees, saying that it is currently too easy for them to seek asylum, even though official figures show they represent a tiny fraction of those who hope to find refuge in the UK. LGBTQ Britons who became accustomed to perpetual progress after the 90s should now prepare for worse to come.
That her speech was signed off by No 10 makes it the official position of the British government, but Braverman’s US appearance looks more like a freelance expedition. The Tories are heading for a potentially cataclysmic defeat, perhaps by next spring or summer. A long, arduous stretch in opposition fills many a parliamentarian with dread, and it could hardly have escaped Braverman’s notice that the rightwing lecture circuit in the US is flush with cash. Donald Trump, too, has an alarmingly high chance of reclaiming the presidency next year, and his camp will no doubt be impressed by British political figures humming similarly toxic tunes.
Braverman craves the Tory crown – a fact that is hardly a secret considering she stood for the leadership last year. But should the parliamentary rump that remains after the defeat allow her on the shortlist of two, her outlook will find a receptive audience among the Conservative grassroots. Polling in 2020 found that half of Tory members believed that “having a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures has undermined British culture”. The British right has undergone a similar process to its US equivalent, as extreme figures have successfully deployed so-called culture war issues as blunt instruments to radicalise conservatives. GB News has been a key conduit for this process, but consider the role of the Spectator, a supposedly respectable rightwing magazine that has published articles defending Greek neo-Nazis, printed pieces that promote the great replacement theory, and commissioned columnists to argue there isn’t enough Islamophobia in the Tory party. Political monsters do not arise from nowhere: they are built, brick by brick, in a collective effort. Whether Braverman herself is the next Tory leader or not, Bravermanism is the future of the British right.
But Bravermanism is built on lies. In her diatribe, Braverman talks of “British values”. She is far from alone in bandying around this phrase, but what does it actually mean? There is no such thing as a coherent set of British values that bind us all together. Braverman and I are both British, but as this column underlines, I find her values repellent. I should hope, and expect, that the feeling is mutual.
According to Braverman’s own website, the three key British values are “a belief in equality, democracy and respect for the law”. Is that so? Thanks in large part to Conservative policies, the UK has one of the highest levels of inequality among developed countries, and as the Tories never tire of showing us, Braverman and her party are ideologically opposed to policies that would promote equality by redistributing wealth and power. The record of Braverman’s government on democracy is no better, whether it is disenfranchising citizens by making voter ID compulsory, undermining the right to strike, or allying with despotisms such as Saudi Arabia. The party’s purported support for the rule of law is laughable from a government that gave us Partygate and the unlawful proroguing of parliament, and that openly committed to breaking international law in a “very specific and limited way” over Brexit.
We should be honest: there are elements of Britishness we revere and some we abhor. Some of us admire how the NHS enshrines public need over private profiteering, celebrate how our rights and freedoms were secured by citizens rebelling against authority, and indeed champion our diversity. Others, like Braverman, are roused by empire, hostility to perceived outsiders, and the profit motive. We inhabit different moral universes: our interpretation of Britishness is not the same.
Those who attempt to sanctify national identity have dangerous motives. They leave minorities under perpetual suspicion, forcing them to try to prove their loyalty. They seek, too, to delegitimise dissenters who challenge the status quo, treating them as alien to their own culture. Consider how McCarthyism hauled suspected leftists before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and the grim implications of allowing the modern Conservative party to define “Britishness” should become clearer.
Braverman’s ambition is not matched by talent, but if any good came of the Boris Johnson era, the enduring myth that the best and the brightest rise to the top was finally given its last rites. Braverman is on a mission: to reshape the right in her authoritarian and intolerant image, hopefully with her at its helm. Whether the mantle of leadership falls to her or someone else, on the battleground of ideas, she has already won.
• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
