Suella Braverman has cited the Prime Minister’s failure to “rise to the challenge” of antisemitism and pass legislation that would deal with “hate marches” in a letter marking her parting blow as Home Secretary.
In a letter to Rishi Sunak, she writes that a “cause for disappoint” has been the PM’s “ failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7th October.”
She claims to have “become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion.”
The former Home Secretary has been embroiled in a public row with the Met over their policing of the weekly anti-Israel marches.
She wanted a law change that would ban the marches but said that the PM’s “team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.”
Braverman claims the anti-Israel marches are part of a broader radicalisation of the UK, arguing that “Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years.” In the face of rising extremism, she accuses the PM of being “uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Photo: House of Commons)
She goes on to say the PM “sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risks to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else.”
This is Braverman’s second stinging exit letter in the last 13 months. In it, she reveals for the first time that she asked the PM to agree to four written promises before backing him in the leadership election last year.
The promises were “to reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto,” to reform the ECHR framework, deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol, scrap EU laws, and issue guidance to schools that would protect single-sex spaces.
Braverman claims that Sunak has “manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these policies.”
She writes that she “trusted” the PM and accuses him of “betrayal.”
She tells the PM that “Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself.”
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