Britain is a country that will always come up with new ways to honour its war heroes. You just can’t stop us – respect simply finds a way. Thus it was that in the very week that Captain Sir Tom Moore’s family were tragically ordered to tear down their unauthorised commemorative pool and spa complex, the home secretary stepped up to mark the sacrifice of countless soldiers by using it as a plot device in her never-ending tale of personal ambition.
This week, Suella Braverman has undermined the operational independence of the police, angered politicians and communities on all sides in Northern Ireland, stoked the potential for unrest caused by the far right and antisemites at tomorrow’s pro-Palestinian march, earned a rebuke from Winston Churchill’s grandson, and so much more besides – and all out of sheer respect for the dead we commemorate this weekend and every Armistice Day.
If you could take a time machine back to the Somme, and keep some poor teenager company as he bled out in the mud, you could explain to him the honour of the chance to one day have one’s memory co-opted in this selfless way. Dulce et Decorum Est to die for the future opportunity to be used as a news peg in Suella’s leadership campaign.
So where are we, at least at the time of writing? On multiple occasions over the past few months – in fact, on multiple occasions over the past week – the Conservative frontbenches have been full of people keen to tell us that they “wouldn’t necessarily use” the same words as Suella Braverman. They are now full of people who wouldn’t use the same home secretary as Rishi Sunak.
Over the past few days, Suella’s serial grandstanding seemed to tip finally into an all-out attempt at suicide-by-cop – though perhaps that metaphor doesn’t work, given that the prime minister keeps declining opportunities to pull the trigger. A more illustrative phrase for Braverman’s destructive acts of unauthorised attention-seeking would be political terrorism – and that’s before we get to whatever drama she’s got planned for next Wednesday’s supreme court decision on Rwanda. Can you negotiate with political terrorists? Sunak seems to have spent an awfully long time having a big think about that one.
In the meantime, Suella’s defining facial expression remains that faux-sheepish smile – the look that says “OMG can you believe I just said that?!” She does it on her way in to Downing Street; she does it on her way out of Downing Street. She does it as she’s leaving her house in the morning, and she does it as she’s taking applause on this or that stage for saying the things you can’t say. Except, like all people who explain you can’t say the thing they have just said, they have quite literally just done so. September saw her fly all the way to some Washington DC thinktank to give a speech decrying immigration, to which the only reasonable retort was: you’re the home secretary, madam. If only you knew someone with the ability to do something about your bugbears.
Then again, Braverman has never achieved anything of significance in public office, which is why she prefers to turn even operational roles into a form of carping from the sidelines. During the first world war she’d have been 30 miles back from the front enjoying a very good vintage at some chateau. I’m not sure what the modern equivalent is – perhaps doing a runner to GB News while you “build a power base”. Ask me again in six months. For now, Suella epitomises that most dead end of supposed modern political attributes: “annoying all the right people”. What sort of programme for improving people’s lives is that, when it’s at home?
In a move that only those secretly hoping for unrest could welcome, Braverman has announced that Saturday’s march will “give offence to millions of decent British people”. In which case, Suella and the march aren’t so different after all. On the other hand, plenty agree with the home secretary – and Braverman is from that post-shame generation of politicians who know you can get people to see anything you want them to see. Why bother trying to unify and inspire all those you are supposed to serve, when dividing them is so much more personally beneficial to you? I’m sure Suella didn’t fight in two world wars only to have to do the hard yards on civvy street.
Incredible, now, to think that 10 years ago the big Remembrance flashpoints were the annual confected rows over whether or not all Premier League clubs had agreed to embroider a poppy on their shirts, or whether Strictly contestants had basically committed treason by not wearing poppies among their sequins. We didn’t realise it at the time, but those were the good years. The dignified years.
Not that this direction of travel was entirely unpredictable. During the Conservative party’s second leadership election inside of two months last autumn, Sunak won only after securing the late-stage backing of Braverman. That Suella’s blessing was regarded as eminently covetable tells you a lot about a Conservative party that is in significant part now crying into its beer about the things she says. At the time of that endorsement, Suella had in fact been forced to resign as home secretary for breaching the ministerial code – and she was back in that very same job a mere six days later.
Whether she’ll be out of it again imminently in some kind of Remembrance reshuffle remains tantalisingly unclear. But if Braverman does turn out to be one of the fallen, we know exactly what this selfless martyr would expect us to say. Thank you, Suella. Thank you for your service.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
