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“I made a mistake, I took responsibility, I resigned,” said Suella Braverman, standing in the House of Commons dispatch box. The words she chose were a direct quote from her own resignation letter, which she sent to the former prime minister less than two weeks ago. And yet somehow, by some strange alchemy, she is still the home secretary. Here she was, praising her moral courage for admitting her mistake and doing the decent thing and resigning as home secretary, all while she was home secretary. In a way, it was almost relaxing to witness. The era of Rishi Sunak was supposed to be the end of the self-parody of the government, a country run as a clumsily written farce. We are so used to it now that one wonders if we would be able to cope if things went back to normal. But we don’t have to worry because they haven’t. The position Braverman had to defend was completely indefensible, but she made no effort to defend it. Quite the opposite. She went very aggressively on the offensive, but against herself and her government. Watching the full hour was supposed to be reminiscent of an infamous soccer match played in the 2002 Madagascar championship, in which Stade Olympique de l’Emyrne deliberately scored 149 own goals just to abuse the referee. Some background. Since she resigned two weeks ago, two more allegations against Suella Braverman have come to light. One is that she sent confidential information to her personal email account six times (she was only on the job for six weeks). The other is that it prevented asylum seekers from being moved from a makeshift detention center at Manston Airport in Kent, meaning 4,000 people were held there for weeks. Its capacity is for 1,600 and it is not intended for anyone to stay there for more than a few hours – 48 at most. There have been outbreaks of diphtheria, scabies, MRSA and also violence. None of that really matters though, obviously, because the Home Secretary did the decent thing and resigned and if you want to point out that she’s already Home Secretary again, then you’re very wrong. Listening to her talk was reminiscent of those crazy viral Facebook scams about how students should get their debt written off by declaring bankruptcy, or people who tear down Covid vaccine centers can escape prosecution by declaring that they are free the land under the Magna Carta. The Home Secretary can’t resign for her own gross incompetence because she’s already resigned, so there. Suck it up, losers. On the subject of Manston Airport, he simply insisted that it had not happened. That never prevented the hotel rooms from being used as a means of decongesting Manston. The MP for the airport constituency, Sir Roger Gale (Conservative), very politely pointed out that this was very hard to believe. There were no problems at all at Manston Airport just five weeks ago, a few days after the Home Secretary was appointed (for the first time). He stood there and spoke of the asylum seekers as having launched “an invasion of our south coast”. Five minutes later he accused Labor of using “inflammatory language”. To my knowledge, he did not resign or be reappointed within that narrow window. Although she may have forgotten that the first part of her statement included an update on the man who had attacked the asylum center with petrol bombs over the weekend. Later, the Member for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, will rise to ask her if, if the asylum seekers are not happy, they could just “get on a boat back to France”. To keep up to date with all the latest views and comments, subscribe to Voices Dispatches’ free weekly newsletter by clicking here “My esteemed friend is right,” he said. She and her half-breed friends are right that many of the people who arrive in small boats in Kent are seeking a better life for themselves, as opposed to fleeing war and persecution. But not all. The man who tried to kill them at the weekend, before killing himself, did so by sticking his petrol bombs to fireworks. One doubts that such devices are capable of targeting only the people the Home Secretary wishes to dehumanise. He spoke of the huge bill the government is paying to house asylum seekers in hotels, more than £6 million a day. The astronomical size of this number is a testament only to the failure of her government. He stood there and said that “illegal immigration is out of control.” He said this as a representative of a party that has been in power for the past 12 years. He is known to be at work only because he made a deal with Rishi Sunak last weekend. The new prime minister is well aware that the wave has broken in his party and he has just two years to convince it to come back again. If he is serious about this or any of his promises on the subject of “professional, responsible government”, then he should find the courage to make himself look slightly – but briefly – ridiculous and get rid of the his home secretary for the second time as soon as possible.
