“It won’t make it through the week,” he told me at the prospect of losing another former ERG chairman from the front panel (former ERG chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg resigned last week before being sacked). Indeed, if you follow your diet of news from the mainstream broadcasters, then the conclusion is that Braverman’s days are numbered. But is this really it? I can see five reasons why Braverman survives, possibly until the next general election, as Home Secretary.
1. The Right needs a Cabinet champion
Braverman’s importance to Sunak, who begins just his seventh day as prime minister today, is her positioning in the Conservative party. Braverman is a darling of the party’s Right wing, as evidenced by the standing ovation she received at the party’s conference in Birmingham last month. The party’s base loved her – and she’s clearly in tune with them. None of this is fake—Braverman veers right to her irreducible core. Her detractors may find it strange that she dreams of a plane full of failed asylum seekers taking off for Rwanda (as she told me on my conference podcast last month), but the members in the room loved it. This makes her politically valuable to Sunak. Right-wing Tories want to see one of their own at the top of the party – and Braverman is that person.
2. Sunak’s agreement with the European Research Group
Just last week, Sunack and his then leadership challenger Penny Mordant met with the six ERG officers to discuss how they would lead the Conservative party. In a statement afterwards, Marc Francois, the chairman of the ERG, told the Telegraph: “They have both stressed to us their determination to unite the Conservative party, including in the formation and makeup of any government they lead.” The language was clear: the ERG expected at least one Cabinet position for one of its members. Braverman — as a former ERG president who had pulled out of the leadership conference the day before and endorsed Sunak — is the perfect fit.
3. Cover for huge tax increases
Pitch-rolling by HM Treasury for the November 17 Autumn Statement – which former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng failed to deliver – has already begun. As we report today Sunak is drawing up plans for years of tax increases for everyone in the country. A Treasury source warned: “It’s going to be rough.” The prospect of such large tax increases makes it imperative that Sunak and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt get all wings of the party represented in the cabinet to approve them and “dip their hands in blood”. Sunak’s cabinet is filled with moderate Tories and less bona fide tax cuters. Braverman is one – and that’s why she should stay there.
4. Completion of Brexit
In all this looms the coming battle over how to sort out the Brexit mess in Northern Ireland where the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol has caused so much difficulty. Fresh elections to the Stormont assembly have postponed any crisis until shortly before Christmas, when there will be renewed efforts to find a workable solution. Brexit campaigners recall how Mr Sunack sided with Brexit Secretary Michael Gove to try to weaken a new draft law to bypass the Northern Ireland Protocol. They were led by Braverman and others and the bill is now on its way to Parliament. There will be battles with peers in Parliament as well as in Dublin and Brussels over the new law if no agreement is reached. Brexiteers remember this and want to see Braverman leading the fight.
5. Beware of Suela the retrograde
Braverman’s statements in the Commons last night that the border “system is broken” and “immigration is out of control” show how desperate things are. At first glance, Sunak may have been disappointed by the comments. But politically the remarks were astute: attacking the failings of the system under previous home secretaries, she presented herself as the minister to fix it, as Labor Home Secretary John Reid did so in 2006 when he declared the Home Office “not fit for purpose” and broke it up to create the Department of Justice. Braverman is ambitious. He told me on my podcast that he wants to reduce net immigration to the “tens of thousands”, adopting the famous target that former prime minister David Cameron could never achieve. Tory MPs were listening. They want an ambitious Home Secretary willing to take on critics to try and plug the UK’s porous southern border. And Sunak will not want her on the back benches, where she would emerge as a touchstone for criticism of the Home Office. For now, at least, the answer is Braverman. As one right-wing Tory MP told me today: “It’s the last chance we have to deal with the migrant boat crisis before the general election.”
