Braverman accuses Sunak of breaking secret promises he made to win her support in leadership contest in scathing attack
Suella Braverman has just posted on X her letter to the PM after her sacking in the cabinet reshuffle yesterday. In it she says she only agreed to back him for the leadership race last autumn, after Liz Truss resigned, because he agreed to conditions that were put down in writing, which included cutting legal migration, not watering down key pieces of Brexit legislation and publishing statutory guidance to schools to protect biological sex.
Braverman says Sunak has gone back on all these promises.
She accuses him of opting for “wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices”.
These claims are incendiary. On his first day as PM Sunak promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. She claims to have evidence that blows this apart.
Key events
The next phase of the letter is the passage where Braverman says Rishi Sunak broke promises he made to her in secret when she backed him for leader. (See 5pm.)
I will post the full text of the Suella Braverman here in five chunks.
Here is the opening.
Dear prime minister.
Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave government. While disappointing, this is for the best.
It has been my privilege to serve as home secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do. I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safely is exemplary.
I am proud of what we achieved together: delivering on our manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers and enacting new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National SecurityAct 2023. I also led a programme of reform: on antisocial behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of enquiry; grooming gangs, knife crime, non-crime hate incidents and rape and serious sexual offences. And I am proud of the strategic changes that I was delivering to Prevent, Contest, serious organised crime and fraud. I am sure that this work will continue with the new ministerial team.
Rajeev Syal
It is understood that, in front of witnesses, Rishi Sunak read the document referred to by Braverman in her resignation letter, agreed to it and took a second copy.
What Braverman says in her letter about her claim that Sunak broke multiple promises made to her
Here is the key passage from Suella Braverman’s letter.
As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as home secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. Despite you having been rejected by a majority of party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be prime minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. These were, among other things:
1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto through, inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary thresholds on work visas;
2. Include specific notwithstanding clauses’ into new legislation to stop the boats, ie exclude the operation of the European convention on human rights, Human Rights Act and other international law that had thus far obstructed progress on this issue:
3. Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and Retained EU Law Bills in their then existing form and timetable:
4. Issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protects biological sex, safeguards single sex spaces, and empowers parents to know what is being taught to their children.
This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become prime minister.
For a year, as home secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest.
You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.
These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.
Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off t ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced ‘notwithstanding clauses’ to that effect.
Notwithstanding clauses are clauses in bills saying, in effect, notwithstanding that fact that international law says the government should do X, Y and X, this bill allows the government to ignore those obligations. They would allow the government to circumvent the ECHR. But whether they would survive legal challenge is another matter.
Braverman accuses Sunak of breaking secret promises he made to win her support in leadership contest in scathing attack
Suella Braverman has just posted on X her letter to the PM after her sacking in the cabinet reshuffle yesterday. In it she says she only agreed to back him for the leadership race last autumn, after Liz Truss resigned, because he agreed to conditions that were put down in writing, which included cutting legal migration, not watering down key pieces of Brexit legislation and publishing statutory guidance to schools to protect biological sex.
Braverman says Sunak has gone back on all these promises.
She accuses him of opting for “wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices”.
These claims are incendiary. On his first day as PM Sunak promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. She claims to have evidence that blows this apart.
Bringing back Cameron sends ‘very confusing signal’ to Tory supporters, Danny Kruger claims
The Conservative MP Danny Kruger has told GB News that the appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary in the reshuffle sends “a very confusing signal” to the party’s supporters. In an interview expanding on the statement he issued earlier with Miriam Cates (see 2.11pm), Kruger said:
[Cameron] led the remain campaign and here he’s now in charge of our relations with Europe.
But as long as he follows the prime minister’s lead, as long as he genuinely honours the mandate that we have as a government … I’m not concerned about his appointment.
Personally, I do think it sends a very confusing signal to our voters. And overall the shape of the government now is not where we think it should be.
Kruger also said he thought the reshuffle showed the government was going back to “the politics of decline”. Asked to rate the reshuffle, he said:
I’m going to give it a 5 out of 10 – some good people, some great people, but I’m afraid we’re going back into the politics of decline. That is our concern.
Where is the energy and the spirit of change that 2019 represented? I worry that we’re going in the wrong direction now, even though all the people involved are tremendous and we support them.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, used his speech in the king’s speech debate this afternoon to say that next week’s autumn statement would focus on growth. He told MPs:
As we start to win the battle against inflation, we can focus on the next stage which is growth. So next week we will see an autumn statement for growth.
Because no business can expand without hiring additional staff I will address labour supply issues to help fill the nearly one million vacancies we have, working with the excellent secretary of state for work and pensions [Mel Stride].
This will build on the 30 hours of free childcare offer that I announced for all eligible children over nine months in the spring budget.
I will also focus on increasing business investment because despite the fact that our growth has been faster than many of our European neighbours, our productivity is still lower.
At the weekend the Financial Times said Hunt was expected to cut business taxes in the autum statement. The FT said Hunt was “likely to extend beyond 2026 the ‘full expensing’ regime, which lets businesses deduct the full cost of investments in IT equipment, plant or machinery from their profits”.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, used her speech to describe the king’s speech as a “lost opportunity”. She explained:
No legislation to reform the antiquated planning process, to accelerate decisions around our critical national infrastructure, instead planning processes continue to hold back the success of our offshore wind sector, life sciences, and 5G.
No pension reforms to encourage growing British companies to stay here, instead being forced abroad for funding, which contributes to the UK’s stagnating growth.
No serious plan to help get energy bills down, the energy price cap has increased by a half this parliament.
Cameron announces sanctions against four Hamas leaders and two of its financial backers
David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, has announced sanctions against four senior Hamas leaders and two of the militant group’s financiers.
In a statement accompanying the announcement, Cameron said:
We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to disrupt the abhorrent activity of this terrorist organisation, working with the United States and our other allies, making it harder for them to operate and isolating them on the world stage.
The Palestinian people are victims of Hamas too. We stand in solidarity with them and will continue to support humanitarian pauses to allow significantly more lifesaving aid to reach Gaza.
Conservative supporters loyal to Boris Johnson have been highly critical of the reshuffle in private, Sky’s Sam Coates reports. He has seen WhatsApp messages on groups set up to support the Conservative Democratic Organisation, a Tory campaign set up by Johnson supporters, and the exchanges show participants expressing alarm at the reshuffle decisions, and calling for a leadership contest.
Martin Vickers, a Conservative MP who sits on the 1922 Committee’s executive, told Radio 4’s World at One that, although he did not know how many MPs had submitted a letter calling for a vote of confidence in Rishi Sunak (see 2.11pm), he thought there were “nowhere near” enough of them to reach the threshold that would lead to such a vote happening.
Voters overwhelmingly back Sunak’s decision to sack Braverman, poll suggests
Voters overwhelmingly support Rishi Sunak’s decision to sack Suella Braverman, but are more likely than not to think that bringing back David Cameron was the wrong decision, according to new polling from Ipsos. This is from Cameron Garrett, who works for the polling company.
💥NEW @IpsosUK POLL💥
What do the public think about Sunak’s reshuffle?
Braverman
Right decision: 70%
Wrong decision: 17%Cameron
Right decision: 35%
Wrong decision: 46%Cleverly
Right decision: 28%
Wrong decision: 24% pic.twitter.com/HtO3Yjltc0— Cameron Garrett (@CameronGarrett_) November 14, 2023
The full findings are here. Commenting on the findings, Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said:
The appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary appears to divide opinion – although those voting Conservative in 2019 are more positive. The public hold generally unfavourable views of his time in office, especially regarding UK-EU relations, public services and how his government managed immigration.
In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that whilst some target voters feel he will improve the competency of the current government (including 4 in 10 2019 Lib Dem voters), few think his appointment will have a significant positive impact on the Conservatives’ prospects at the next general election.