With just 43 days in office, Suella Braverman’s forced resignation made her the shortest-serving UK Home Secretary in almost 200 years.
But after a week in the wilderness, the new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has reinstated him, prompting cries of outrage from opposition MPs and human rights activists. They point to the various controversies he caused in the few weeks before he had to resign.
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“David Cameron famously said tens of thousands, no, if not, but. So that would be my ultimate aspiration.’
Just days after his initial appointment, Braverman caused alarm in the government by reviving the Conservatives’ earlier failed pledge to reduce net migration to “tens of thousands”, from the current level of 239,000.
It looked at international students, a crucial source of income for UK universities, and overseas farm workers, who fill staff shortages.
The statement appeared to contradict Liz Truss’ plans to allow more migrants to fill job vacancies in the UK in specific industries.
The unfeasibility of the target has already haunted successive governments: David Cameron first pledged to keep net migration in the tens of thousands in 2010, but never met the target, which was kept by Theresa’s government May before being dropped in 2019 under Boris Johnson.
Suella Braverman’s back: A reminder of her first 43-day stint as interior secretary – video
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“Look at migration in this country: the largest group of people who stay the longest are Indian migrants”
Braverman took another gamble that risked upsetting No 10 in an interview with The Spectator, in which he said he had “reservations” about the UK’s trade deal with India because it could increase immigration to the UK united
Braverman said Indian migrants made up the largest number of UK visas and criticized her predecessor Priti Patel’s deal with the Indian government to ease migration last year, which she said ” it hadn’t necessarily worked out very well.”
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“I’d love to be on the cover of the Telegraph with a plane taking off in Rwanda, that’s my dream, that’s my obsession”
In a further demonstration of his knack for grabbing headlines, Braverman used his Conservative Party speech to share his strong feelings around the deportation of asylum seekers in Rwanda.
However, he acknowledged that the flights won’t happen anytime soon, with a legal dispute meaning deportations won’t start until 2023.
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Cannabis is a “gateway” drug to more harmful substances
The Sunday Times reported that Braverman was considering upgrading cannabis to a Class A drug, putting it on par with cocaine. Her parliamentary colleagues saw this as a further sign that she was eschewing government policy in favor of increasing her popularity among party members.
The report quoted a source as saying he strongly opposed calls to decriminalize cannabis, which he believed sent a “cultural” and “political” signal that using the drug was “acceptable behaviour”. “We have to scare people,” the source said.
Downing Street later distanced itself from Braverman’s comments, saying there were “no plans” to change the class B drug. The move would increase pressure on prisons and anger decriminalization campaigners, who argue the ‘UK approach has failed.
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“It’s the coalition of chaos, it’s the wakerati who reads the Guardian and eats tofu”
The soundbite that drew the most ridicule from both opposition MPs and social media commentators came in his final parliamentary speech, in which he blamed Guardian readers and soy products for the Just protests Stop Oil.
She said: “It’s the Labor party, it’s the Lib Dems, it’s the chaos coalition, it’s the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, dare I say it, the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for disruption we’ve done. We see it on our roads today.”
Suella Braverman blames ‘Tutor-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’ for disruptive protests: video
Observers pointed out that tofu was a food mainly available in every supermarket rather than the preserve of the Liberal elite, and questioned the relevance of the anti-growth coalition at a time when Truss had already largely abandoned part of his government program.