Closing summary
Suella Braverman has launched an astonishing personal attack on Rishi Sunak, describing the prime minister as weak and dishonest and claiming he reneged on promises to push through a series of controversial policy pledges. In a brutal three-page letter published a day after she was sacked as home secretary, Braverman warned Sunak that she now intends to spearhead a Tory rebellion over the government’s Rwanda plan. “Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently,” she wrote.
In her letter, Braverman said that Sunak had failed to prepare a credible backup plan and had ignored her suggestion – believed to be emergency legislation to change domestic law so that the government could ignore the ruling and the flights could go ahead. “I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people,” she added.
Downing Street has issued its first response to the Suella Braverman letter, which does not include a denial of the claims she is making about Rishi Sunak going back on promises he made to secure Braverman’s backing for the Tory leadership last autumn. A No 10 spokesperson says: “The prime minister was proud to appoint a strong, united team yesterday focused on delivering for the British people. The prime minister believes in actions not words. He is proud that this government has brought forward the toughest legislation to tackle illegal migration this country has seen and has subsequently reduced the number of boat crossings by a third this year. And whatever the outcome of the supreme court tomorrow, he will continue that work. The PM thanks the former home secretary for her service.”
Dozens of Conservative MPs are poised to demand that the government quits the European convention on human rights, a move resisted by senior cabinet ministers, if the UK’s highest court rules against sending asylum seekers to Rwanda on Wednesday. Home Office insiders said the government had no plan B in the event of losing in the supreme court, suggesting that ministers were “panicked” over the potential outcome. They warned it was highly unlikely that flights to Rwanda would be able to take off before February even if they won.
Rightwing Conservative MPs have accused Rishi Sunak of abandoning voters who brought the party to power in 2019 amid a backlash against his reshuffle and polling suggesting public opposition to David Cameron’s return. Unhappiness with Sunak’s reshuffle, particularly the sacking of Suella Braverman as home secretary, prompted a group of predominantly “red wall” MPs to issue a scathing rebuke of the prime minister and the pro-European credentials of his new foreign secretary.
Keir Starmer will resist pressure from his MPs to back a ceasefire in Gaza on Wednesday in a move that could trigger one of the most significant rebellions of his leadership. The Labour leader is backing an amendment to the king’s speech that will criticise how Israel has conducted its military campaign. But it will fall short of calling for the ceasefire that nearly a quarter of his parliamentary party wants.
After Rishi Sunak’s cabinet reshuffle, men hold the top four positions in government for the first time since 2010. Liz Truss’s ministry was notable for initially having no white men serving in the great offices of state for the first time in British political history, with Kwasi Kwarteng becoming the first black chancellor. Downing Street said on Tuesday that it was not focused on “tick-box diversity” and the prime minister was “clear that its actions and tangible impacts on the public that matters”. Sunak’s press secretary said women were getting senior jobs elsewhere in government, and a lot of women had risen up the ranks.
The UK’s business and trade secretary has signed a deal to increase trade with Florida, the British government’s latest pact with a single American state as it awaits a broader, post-Brexit US free trade agreement. The memorandum of understanding, signed on Tuesday by Kemi Badenoch and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is the seventh deal between the UK and individual US states. The UK said the deal would focus on space, financial technology, artificial intelligence and legal services.
The British government appears to have withdrawn an assertion made by the former prime minister Boris Johnson that the international criminal court has no jurisdiction in Israel, amid a wider western shift to more pointed criticism of the way Israel is conducting its campaign to remove Hamas from Gaza. In a statement to MPs on Tuesday, the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said: “It is not for ministers to seek to state where the ICC has jurisdiction; that is for the chief prosecutor. The chief prosecutor has not been silent on this matter, and I am sure he will continue to express his views.”
The UK is being pressed to help provide more evidence against suspects involved in protests outside the Indian high commission in London in March. The pressure came as the new UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, met the Indian external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, in one of his first bilateral meetings. Jaishankar is backing demands from the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) for further cooperation over those involved in the violence. The police handling of the demonstration and its subsequent investigation has become a raw nerve in Indian-British relations, but both sides deny it is acting as a brake on the Indian-British free trade talks.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
The UK is being pressed to help provide more evidence against suspects involved in protests outside the Indian high commission in London in March.
The pressure came as the new UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, met the Indian external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, in one of his first bilateral meetings. Jaishankar is backing demands from the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) for further cooperation over those involved in the violence.
The police handling of the demonstration and its subsequent investigation has become a raw nerve in Indian-British relations, but both sides deny it is acting as a brake on the Indian-British free trade talks.
Cameron is enthusiastic about relations with India and sought during his premiership to deepen ties, inviting the Indian PM, Narendra Modi, on a three-day state visit in 2015.
Nadine Dorries accused Rishi Sunak of being “quick to anger” as she said it was the wrong move to sack Suella Braverman.
“I don’t think it was right to sack Suella,” the former minister and MP told Sky News.
“He’s quick to anger and ... that mask often slips... it’s just an irritability that you see.”
Updated
Suella Braverman’s parting shot to Rishi Sunak after he sacked her is a stinging letter in which she makes a series of attacks on his policies and style of government.
Here we analyse her key points.
Braverman wrote:
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 … This was a document with clear terms.
As soon as Sunak unexpectedly appointed the outspoken Braverman last autumn, it was rumoured that it had been part of a secret deal to help Sunak’s leadership campaign gain rightwing supporters who might otherwise have clamoured for the return of the exiled Boris Johnson.
Here, Braverman makes the incendiary claim that not only did such a deal exist, but Sunak actually signed up to a series of written pledges. If the prime minister did indeed make such a deal, it raises serious questions about his political judgment – such a document is an extraordinary hostage to fortune, as Braverman is now demonstrating.
But a deal like this also makes Sunak look weak, suggesting he was so uncertain about his standing within his own party that he was willing to subcontract large areas of policy to a rightwinger whose stance appears to be quite different from his. It may also help explain Braverman’s apparent sense that she did not need to abide by collective cabinet responsibility, as well as the ongoing ambiguity over the past year about what Sunak’s government actually stands for.
The UK’s business and trade secretary has signed a deal to increase trade with Florida, the British government’s latest pact with a single US state as it awaits a broader, post-Brexit, US free trade agreement.
The memorandum of understanding, signed on Tuesday by Kemi Badenoch and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is the seventh deal between the UK and individual US states. The UK said the deal would focus on space, financial technology, artificial intelligence and legal services.
The UK government is keen to secure a deal with the US as a central part of its post-Brexit efforts to increase trade with countries beyond the EU. However, progress has been slow despite the Conservative party pledging in its 2019 manifesto to reach an agreement within three years.
Updated
Rishi Sunak has finished his cabinet reshuffle, centred on forming a “strong and united team”. But for the first time since 2010, Sunak has ensured men get the top four positions in government.
Liz Truss’s ministry was notable for initially having no white men serving in the great offices of state for the first time in British political history, with Kwasi Kwarteng becoming the first black chancellor.
Downing Street said on Tuesday it is not focused on “tick-box diversity” as the prime minister is “clear that it’s actions and tangible impacts on the public that matters”. Sunak’s press secretary said women were getting senior jobs elsewhere in government, insisting a lot of women had risen up the ranks.
All of the ministers holding the four great offices of state were privately educated. Sunak attended Winchester college, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, went to Charterhouse, David Cameron attended Eton and James Cleverly went to Colfe’s school.
Updated
Keir Starmer will resist pressure from his MPs to back a ceasefire in Gaza on Wednesday in a move that could trigger one of the most significant rebellions of his leadership.
The Labour leader is backing an amendment to the king’s speech that will criticise how Israel has conducted its military campaign. But it will fall short of calling for the ceasefire that nearly a quarter of his parliamentary party wants.
Labour officials have told the party’s MPs to vote for their motion but to abstain on one from the Scottish National party calling for an outright ceasefire, making clear that they will sack any frontbencher who rebels by voting for the SNP amendment.
How damaging is Suella Braverman's departure letter?
The last time Suella Braverman left the Home Office, in October 2022, she also wrote a letter that was damning about the prime minister. Today’s, though, is on a different scale.
Take out the passage about the leadership contest deal, and it is bad enough. That is not so much because of the passages about weak leadership (a standard complaint from opponents of a PM) or the passage about extremism (which will strike some people as hyperbole), but because Braverman performs an astute “I told you so” manoeuvre on Rwanda. She is probably right to say that, even if the government wins in the supreme court tomorrow, flights to Rwanda will take longer to start (and involve fewer people) than many Tory supporters expect or want. She has detached herself from Rishi Sunak on an issue where she thinks she has public opinion on her side.
But it is the claim about the leadership contest that is most damaging because it takes a wrecking ball to Sunak’s reputation for integrity. It was always assumed that some sort of deal was done. In the first leadership contest of 2022 Braverman promised to back Liz Truss at a time when her rightwing Tory MP supporters might otherwise have rallied behind Kemi Badenoch. In return, Truss promised to promote Braverman from attorney general to home secretary. (There was an explicit deal, as Ben Riley-Smith confirms in his excellent new book on the Tories, The Right to Rule.) With Sunak, Braverman pulled off the same trick. It is arguable whether, as she claims, her endorsement was “pivotal”, but it certainly helped. She declared for Sunak on Sunday 23 October and that night Boris Johnson declared he was pulling out of the contest. Sunak was then elected unopposed.
What is surprising is the claim that Sunak offered explicit promises, and not just nudges and winks. We have yet to hear his side of the story and it may be that, when she says he promised to support policies contained in a document, he was simply saying, “Yes, of course, I’ll consider etc etc.” Yet reports that there are witnesses (see 5.01pm), and hints that she will publish the text (see 5.12pm), imply she might be able to provide strong evidence of a deal of sorts. This will alarm Tory MPs who backed Sunak precisely because they thought he was not the sort of candidate to sign up to a hard Brexit ERG-type wishlist. They will also want to know why he was naive enough to haggle like this with Braverman when he probably did not need to anyway.
None of this means Sunak will be toppled in a leadership contest. There is no obvious replacement, and there is little appetite among Tory MPs for another ballot. (Even Braverman is not calling for one.) But – unless he can provide a robust rebuttal, which he hasn’t so far – Sunak looks tainted and demeaned. For Labour, it’s a godsend.
That’s all from me for today. My collegue Tom Ambrose is taking over now.
Updated
The Liberal Democrats say Suella Braverman’s letter shows the Tory soap opera is never ending. In a response, the Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael said:
This is yet more Conservative chaos. Suella Braverman failed at every task at hand as home secretary and now she seems determined to drag everyone else down with her.
While people struggle to see their GP or pay their mortgages, this government is too busy dealing with their own infighting.
When will this Conservative party soap opera end?
No 10 responds to Braverman, saying PM believes in 'actions not words ' - but not denying claims of broken promises
Downing Street has issued its first response to the Suella Braverman letter, which does not include a denial of the claims she is making about Rishi Sunak going back on promises he made to secure Braverman’s backing for the Tory leadership last autumn. A No 10 spokesperson says:
The prime minister was proud to appoint a strong, united team yesterday focused on delivering for the British people.
The prime minister believes in actions not words. He is proud that this government has brought forward the toughest legislation to tackle illegal migration this country has seen and has subsequently reduced the number of boat crossings by a third this year. And whatever the outcome of the supreme court tomorrow, he will continue that work.
The PM thanks the former home secretary for her service.
Updated
Braverman tells Sunak to 'change course urgently', saying 'your plan is not working'
And here is how Braverman ends her letter.
In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself.
Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.
I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions.
I will, of course, continue to support the government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda.
Sincerely,
Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP
Updated
Braverman accuses Sunak of being 'uncertain, weak and lacking in leadership' over threat posed by extremism
Braverman then turns in her letter to the row about the pro-Palestinian marches. She says:
Another cause for disappointment – and the context for my recent article in The Times – has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7 October.
I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion. Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years. I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.
As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else.
Updated
Braverman says, even if he wins in supreme court, Sunak's compromises will stop Rwanda deportations starting soon
In the third section of the letter Braverman writes about small boats, and the supreme court decision on the Rwanda policy tomorrow.
Your rejection of this path (see 5pm) was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do ‘whatever it lakes’ to stop the boats.
At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.
If we lose in the supreme court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one. Worse than this, your magical thinking – believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion – has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’. I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you.
I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.
If, on the other hand, we win in the supreme court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects. The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that rule 39 indications [injunctions imposed by the European court of human rights] are binding in international law – against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords – will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg court.
Updated
On the PM programme Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, says he has asked Braverman’s team if he can see the document she writes about which set out the conditions Sunak agreed to when she promised to support him. Mason says he was told that was “not for today” – implying she is planning to release it in due course.
Updated
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 safety 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 Security Act 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.
Updated
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 the 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 Z, 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.
Updated
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.
My letter to the Prime Minister pic.twitter.com/7OBzaZnxr2
— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) November 14, 2023
Updated
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.
Updated
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.
Updated
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.
Updated
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.
Updated
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💥
— Cameron Garrett (@CameronGarrett_) November 14, 2023
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
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.
Updated
63% of members of new cabinet attended private school, Sutton Trust says
The Sutton Trust, a charity supporting social mobility, has done its analysis of which schools and universities the new cabinet attended, with all four holders of the so-called great offices of state – prime minister, chancellor, foreign secretary and home secretary – having attended private schools, the first time this has happened since 1964, under Alec Douglas-Home.
The analysis finds that Sunak’s latest cabinet is little different to his previous administrations, with 63% having gone to private schools, 53% having attended Oxford or Cambridge universities, and 41% having been both privately and Oxbridge educated.
The privately educated proportion of ministers is well above the 30% in Theresa May’s cabinet, or the 50% in David Cameron’s 2015 cabinet. The last Labour government’s cabinets had around 30% of ministers who had been privately educated.
The trust also found that the proportion of Sunak’s cabinet ministers educated at comprehensive schools is the same as Liz Truss’s cabinet, at 19%, but lower than Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, with 27%. In Sunak’s latest cabinet, 16% went to a selective grammar school.
Updated
Pro-Braverman MPs accuse Sunak of 'walking away from' voters who gave Tories their large majority in 2019
Rishi Sunak has been accused by two high-profile backbenchers of abandoning the voters who gave the Tories their large majority in 2019 with his rehuffle yesterday.
Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, who co-chair the New Conservatives, a group of rightwing, socially conservative Tory MPs, made the comment in an open statement they have just released.
While Cates and Kruger stress their personal support for Sunak, they are withering about his strategy, and they say they will be raising funds to ensure more like-minded Tories are elected to parliament.
The statement does not name Suella Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary, but Cates and Kruger were vocal in their support for her last week and the New Conservatives are seen as a base from which Braverman will launch a leadership campaign if the party loses the next election.
In their statement, Cates and Kruger say:
We are concerned that yesterday’s reshuffle indicates a major change in the policy direction of the government. The Conservative party now looks like it is deliberately walking away from the coalition of voters who brought us into power with a large majority in 2019.
That election, building on the victory of the leave vote in the Brexit referendum of 2016, represented the realignment of our politics. In 2019 voters across Britain – from our rural heartlands to the industrial towns of the north and Midlands – rejected the declinist consensus among the parties. This consensus had brought two decades of wage stagnation, asset inflation, high taxation, regional inequality, record rates of immigration, a failed foreign policy oriented towards China and the European Union, and a cultural agenda which denigrated the history of Britain and even denied the reality of biological sex. The public voted - and we promised – to change this.
Until yesterday, we held on to the hope that the government still believed in the realignment – that they would work to rebalance our economy, reorient our foreign policy, radically reduce migration, and restore common sense in our schools and universities. That hope – the project of the realignment – has now dwindled. In political terms, it appears the leadership has decided to abandon the voters who switched to us last time, sacrificing the seats we won from Labour in 2019 in the hope of shoring up support elsewhere.
In the statement Cates and Kruger also restate the New Conservatives’ call for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights, a cause championed by Braverman. And they say their group will be raising funds to help support the election of MPs and candidates “who agree with the New Conservative mission”.
It is understood that other rightwing Tories may be speaking out about the reshuffle in the coming days. Sunak is unlikely to be overly concerned about the Cates/Kruger intervention. The New Conservatives have only 14 MPs listed as supporters on their website, and rightwing papers, even those who admire Braverman’s views, have been broadly supportive of the reshuffle. (See 11.42am.)
Last night Dame Andrea Jenkyns, a rightwinger loyal to Boris Johnson who is not listed as a supporter of the New Conservatives, announced she had written to the chair of the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of no confidence in Sunak and posted her letter on X. She said that Sunak’s treatment of Johnson was “unforgivable” and that Sunak did not have public support. But no other Tory MP has publicly said they agree.
Enough is enough, I have submitted my vote of no confidence letter to the Chairman of the 1922. It is time for Rishi Sunak to go and replace him with a 'real' Conservative party leader. pic.twitter.com/yJmGc14d75
— Andrea Jenkyns MP 🇬🇧 (@andreajenkyns) November 13, 2023
To trigger a confidence vote in Sunak, 53 Tories would have to submit letters to Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chair. While a few more MPs may have submitted letters in private, the Sunak critics are not thought to be anywhere near that total.
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Labour says 'short' humanitarian pauses in Gaza not enough to alleviate suffering
Labour has said that short humanitarian pauses would not enough to alleviate suffering in Gaza.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, made the statement in the Commons, in response to a statement from Andrew Mitchell, the development minister, on the Israel-Hamas war. He was speaking ahead of a tricky vote for the party in the Commons tomorrow, when there is a risk of Labour MPs rebelling and voting in favour of a full ceasefire.
Addressing Mitchell, Lammy said:
Gaza is in a humanitarian catastrophe, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced, there are desperate shortages of basic essentials, does the minister agree that the short pauses in the north are clearly not enough?
Gazans need aid now, they need medicines now, they need water now, they need food now, they need fuel now, a full comprehensive and immediate humanitarian pause in fighting across the whole of Gaza now to alleviate Palestinian suffering and for Hamas terrorists to release the hostages.
Mitchell said that all deaths of civilians “were to be profoundly regretted”.
He also told MPs that the UK was considering using “air and maritime options” to get more aid into Gaza. He said:
We also are urging the Israeli government to increase humanitarian access including by Rafah and by opening up the Kerem Shalom crossing.
At this point we assess that land presently offers the most viable and safe way to get humanitarian aid into Gaza in the quantities needed, but we are also considering air and maritime options, including through our bases in Cyprus.
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The hunger marches of the 1920s and 1930s are being emulated this month by modern day food campaigners in the south Wales county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf.
Marchers will depart from the Cynon, Rhondda and Taf valleys on Saturday 25 November. They will meet at Pontypridd for a rally calling on the UK government to enshrine the right to food in law. Speakers are to include the Wales football legend Neville Southall and manager of Merthyr Cynon foodbank Cleide Correia.
AJ Le Brun from Rhondda Cynon Taf Trades Union Council said:
Like our forebears did in the 1920s, we are again suffering food insecurity and abject poverty. In one of the richest countries in the world, that is an absolute disgrace.
Communications Workers Union rep Jason Richards added: “We will also be collecting for brilliant local food banks on the day, so please bring a tin to share if you are able.”
At the No 10 lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said that the Cabinet Office would in due course publish details of Esther McVey’s responsibilities as a minister without portfolio. He declined to confirm that she had been appointed as a minister for “common sense” or tasked with fighting “woke”, as one report claimed last night. (See 9.54am.)
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Sunak tells cabinet UK 'bucking global trend' in tackling illegal migration ahead of supreme court ruling on Rwanda policy
At cabinet James Cleverly, the new home secretary, outlined some of the “possible scenarios” that might emerge when the supreme court delivers its judgment tomorrow on the government’s Rwanda deportation policy, No 10 said.
While the supreme court is in essence being asked to decide whether or not the policy is lawful, in practice the ruling is expected to be much more nuanced.
In a readout of what was said at cabinet, the PM’s spokesperson also said Rishi Sunak told his colleagues the UK was already “bucking the global trend” in terms of addressing illegal migration. The spokesperson said:
Ahead of the supreme court judgment on the Rwanda migration partnership tomorrow, the prime minister highlighted significant progress made by the government to stop the boats.
He said that the UK was bucking the global trend by significantly reducing the flow of illegal immigrants into the country while other countries continue to see their numbers rise.
Alongside this, he said we are on track to eliminate the asylum legacy backlog and were making good progress on curbing the use of hotels to house migrants.
The home secretary updated cabinet ahead of the court judgments and on the wider work to curb illegal migration, including through more returns agreements, most recently with Georgia and Albania.
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Sunak meeting Met chief Mark Rowley to discuss if police need further powers over protests, No 10 says
Rishi Sunak is meeting Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, today to discuss the policing of the pro-Palestinian march and the events at the Cenotaph in London at the weekend, No 10 said. The PM’s spokesperson said:
The public rightly expect that the full force of the law is used to bear down on some of the shocking scenes of criminality we saw over the weekend, whether it was EDL protesters or those seemingly supporting Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation.
The prime minister continues to be grateful to police officers, a number of whom were injured over the weekend. They have an extremely difficult job to do and he was grateful to them for doing it.
The spokesperson said the PM would be speaking to Rowley to “get a shared understanding of how to approach these protests should there be significant protests in the future”. He went on:
It’s important that police have the powers they need to carry out their role and we will continue to keep that under review.
Yesterday the Sun reported that Sunak was considering tightening the laws around protests in the light of concerns about demonstrations in London in recent weeks. In their story Michael Hamilton and Harry Cole said:
The Sun understands the clampdown would see:
- New laws drawn up to stop yobs climbing on statues, scaffolding and bus stops during protests.
- The law around fireworks, smoke bombs and flares tightened up.
- The threshold at which cops can ban marches and protests due to safety concerns lowered.
- The law on glorifying terrorists like Hamas is also to be tightened as cops say it is too vague to enforce currently.
Ministers are also looking at ways to restrict certain chants like “from the river to the sea” made at protests by working with organisers to set conditions for approving demonstrations.
The story, which has not been confirmed by the government, appeared less than a week after ministers supposedly set out their legislative agenda for the next 12 months in the king’s speech, which did not include these measures.
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Braverman's plan to ban charities giving tents to rough sleepers not included in criminal justice bill, No 10 confirms
The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished, and the PM’s spokesperson told reporters that Suella Braverman’s plan to include a ban on charities distributing tents to homeless people in cities will not be included in the criminal justice bill.
The bill, which was mentioned in the king’s speech last week, is being presented to parliament today. The weekend before the speech, the Financial Times said Braverman was pushing for it to include a ban on tents being given to homeless people in cities, because Braverman argued this encouraged rough sleeping. In tweets defending her plan she described rough sleeping as a “lifestyle choice”.
It now appears that it is this that finally persuaded Rishi Sunak to sack her, not the row about her unauthorised article criticising the Met published in the Times last Thursday. At that point Sunak had already met David Cameron to discuss his taking a job in government in the reshuffle that would see Braverman being replaced.
Last week, after the king’s speech was published, No 10 indicated that there was still a debate going on about whether or not to include the tents plan in the text of the criminal justice bill.
Today the spokesperson said that the proposal was not in the legislation being published. He told reporters:
[The proposal is] not going to be introduced in the criminal justice bill. I’m not aware of any plans for its introduction elsewhere.
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Welsh government launches consultation on reforming council tax system to make it fairer for people in least valuable homes
Council tax bills could increase for up to 450,000 homes in Wales under proposed reforms from the Welsh government as it says it is trying to make the system fairer for people living in the least valuable properties.
The Labour-led government is launching a consultation on how it should reform the system but says it is not going to increase the amount of council tax collected overall – about £2.4bn a year.
Under two of its proposals, bills would go up for three out of 10 of the country’s 1.5m homes and fall or stay the same for the others.
Homes are to be revalued for the first time in 20 years and new bands could be created. The last revaluation in Wales took place in 2003. In England and Scotland, bills are still based on property values from 1991.
The changes are part of the cooperation deal between the Labour government and Plaid Cymru. The Welsh government said:
The current system is 20 years out of date, and it is unfair, with people living in homes in the lowest council tax bands paying a relatively higher amount of council tax in relation to the value of their homes, than people who live in higher value homes.
The Welsh Conservative shadow local government minister, Sam Rowlands claimed the government was “stealthily” planning to hike up council tax for “hard-working people”.
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William Hague, the former foreign secretary and former Tory leader, has rejected suggestions that he was instrumental in persuading Rishi Sunak to appointed David Cameron as foreign secretary. Speaking to Times Radio, he said:
I do like the idea of David Cameron coming back into government and was very enthusiastic about it. [See 11.05am.] I knew about it a few days before and spoke to David Cameron to brief him about my views on foreign affairs and the Foreign Office, but it wasn’t my idea.
You read these things that I ‘set it up in some way, it was my idea’. That’s not the case.
I know Rishi Sunak and David Cameron very well, but sometimes in politics things are simpler than they look, sometimes somebody just asked somebody else around for a chat and said, ‘Why don’t you do this? And they say, Well, OK, fine’.
It doesn’t need any intermediary, they just sort it out themselves. So that’s what happened in this case.
Sunak largely avoids backlash from Tory papers over sacking of Suella Braverman
Rishi Sunak took something of a risk when he decided to sack Suella Braverman. Her hardline, anti-immigration rhetoric was popular, not just with rightwing MPs, but with most of the Tory press (particularly the Daily Mail), and this morning those papers might have come out in her defence.
But, judging by their editorials, they are broadly supportive of Sunak. They have not turned on him – at least today.
The Daily Mail in its editorial is quite sceptical about the appointment of David Cameron – “many loyal Tories will think that if Mr – now Lord – Cameron is the answer to anything, No 10 is asking the wrong question” – and it says Braverman “spoke for the quiet majority who care about what is happening to Britain”. But it goes on:
Moving the impressive James Cleverly to Home Secretary is smart, as is appointing Esther McVey as ‘Common Sense Tsar’ to oversee the anti-woke agenda.
Will this be enough to placate the Tory Right? Only time will tell, but any MP who thinks salvation lies in yet more no- confidence letters – and trying to unseat another leader – needs their head testing.
Right now Mr Sunak is the party’s best and only hope of seeing off Labour.
Of the four most pro-Tory papers, the Daily Telegraph is probably the least impressed. It says Sunak has a “bold new team” and it does not criticise the reshuffle directly. But it says Sunak must show that Braverman’s ideas has not been abandoned. Its editorial says:
The seeds of his downfall were planted that year when his promise of an EU referendum was included in the Tory manifesto, not least to see off a populist threat from Ukip. Mr Sunak is facing something similar in that the country is increasingly alarmed by high levels of immigration, both legal and illegal, and extremism. The recent pro-Palestinian marches and the rise of anti-Semitic hatred have brought much of this to a head.
Mrs Braverman articulated many of these concerns, and those who agree with her will be angry that she has been dropped, seeing it as appeasing the Left and deepening Tory divisions.
Mr Sunak must show that this is not the case by adopting many of the causes she espoused but did little about, and Lord Cameron is someone to follow through on this agenda.
The Daily Express is the paper most sympathetic to Braverman in its news coverage. But its editorial on the reshuffle says that she was seen as lacking statesmanship, and that the return of David Cameron “could turn out to be an astute move”.
The Sun in its editorial says that, even though Braverman “spoke for millions”, she had become “a loose cannon”.
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William Hague was foreign secretary when David Cameron was prime minister and he is very close to Rishi Sunak, who succeeded him as MP for Richmond in Yorkshire. In his Times column today, he has warmly welcomed Cameron’s return to government. Hague says:
[Cameron’s] central achievement in 11 years as party leader, often overlooked after the Brexit debacle, was to give the Conservative party a much broader base. In his time, great strides were made in making sure a fiscally conservative party was also socially liberal and internationalist: advancing the careers of women in politics, championing same-sex marriage, expanding development aid and becoming the natural home of ethnically diverse British leadership, of whom Rishi Sunak himself is the outstanding embodiment.
Cameron’s renewed prominence is a reminder that the cabinet in which he will be sitting is mainstream and centre-right, looking to reduce taxation but only in a financially responsible way, controlling migration effectively but without divisive language, improving the UK’s relations with Europe while eschewing nationalistic rhetoric. That is what Sunak has been doing but against the backdrop of mixed messages from former PMs and some of his own cabinet. The Conservatives after this reshuffle are more unmistakably the party that some of its disenchanted former voters will recognise as their own.
Graham Russell has a round-up of how the papers have covered the reshuffle, and the return of David Cameron.
Downing Street has announced new appointments to the whips’ office. Stuart Anderson, Dame Amanda Milling, Joy Morrissey and Mike Wood have been made government whips, while Aaron Bell, Mark Fletcher, Mark Jenkinson and Suzanne Webb have been appointed assistant (ie, more junior) whips.
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Here are pictures of some of the new ministers arriving for cabinet this morning.
The reshuffle does not seem to be entirely over. Julie Marson, MP for Hertford and Stortford, says she is stepping down from her job as a whip for personal reasons.
It has been an honour and a pleasure to serve the government as a whip, but I believe it is now time that I return to the backbenches. This was a personal decision.
— Julie Marson MP (@JulieMarsonMP) November 14, 2023
I look forward to continuing to serve my constituents as a backbench MP. pic.twitter.com/94V1Y4NvjN
Sunak tells his new cabinet they are 'strong and united team' as they meet for first time
Rishi Sunak described his new cabinet as a “strong and united team” as they met for the first time at No 10.
Opening the meeting, Sunak said:
A warm welcome to those for whom it’s their first cabinet and also a welcome to those for whom it may not be their first time …
Our purpose is nothing less than to make the long-term decisions that are going to change our country for the better. I know that this strong and united team is going to deliver that change for everybody.
Sunak noted it was an “important week”, with inflation figures and the supreme court’s Rwanda ruling expected tomorrow and the chancellor’s autumn statement next Wednesday. He went on:
Across all of that I’m confident that we can demonstrate to the country that we are making progress on the priorities that I set out at the beginning of the year – to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut waiting lists and to stop the boats.
But their ambitions went further than that, he said. He said the cabinet would make the “big, bold decisions that will drive change”. And he ended saying:
Looking around this table, I know that we have an energetic and enthusiastic team that is going to deliver for the country. So, let’s get to work.
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New Tory chair Richard Holden dismisses reports Esther McVey has been appointed as ‘anti-woke’ minister
Good morning. Yesterday’s reshuffle was more surprising than expected, largely because of the return of David Cameron, but also because it suggests that Rishi Sunak has chosen to tack towards governing more as a mainstream, centrist Conservative, to abandon trying to present himself as a radical, “change” candidate, and to pull back from a lurch towards “red wall” Toryism.
There was one concession to the red wallers. Although the very rightwing Suella Braverman was out, another rightwinger popular with the GB News demographic (she presents a show there) was in. Esther McVey, the former work and pensions secretary who was born in Liverpool, has been made a Cabinet Office minister. According to a briefing to the Sun newspaper, she will serve as the “common sense tsar” tasked with “tackling the scourge of wokery”.
But will she? Richard Holden, the new Conservative party chairman was doing interviews this morning and on the Today programme at one point he appeared to confirm that McVey is the new Braverman. Asked about McVey’s job, Holden said: “What Suella … what Esther is going to be doing ….” The presenter, Nick Robinson, described it as a Freudian slip.
However, Holden was reluctant to describe McVey as a common sense minister who will wage war on wokeism. In an interview with Times Radio, asked if McVey would be vetting “woke” policies, Holden replied: “I think all of us will be looking at all policy in the round.” And when it was put to him that she was in government to represent “anti-woke opinion”, Holden replied:
No, it’s there to represent – I know Esther, I know her husband Philip [Davies] very well – they have various different views on a wide range of different topics just like other MPs do as well. And I think to try and put people into little pockets of one thing or another, I don’t think is fair.
And on the Today programme, when Robinson asked what being minister for common sense might mean, Holden did talk about freedom of speech on universities, but also stressed that the Conservative party was “a broad church … with a common goal”.
The briefing about McVey being a “common sense tsar” was clearly intended to appeal to rightwingers but, in a further sign that the gambit may have failed, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary and a fellow GB News presenter, described the label attached to McVey by the Sun as “silly”. He told Times Radio:
I welcome Esther’s return because I think she’s highly capable and a good presenter of the Tory cause. I think having a minister for woke is silly and I think it’s deeply regrettable that a minister of the calibre and quality of Jeremy Quin, who was in the Cabinet Office, has been lost to the government and they brought in somebody with a silly title. I think it’s an extraordinary thing to do and is not serious, but Esther is a very good person and to have her in the cabinet is a good thing.
I think silly titles for government posts is a Blairite thing. That is not the proper business of government ... This is ridiculously tokenistic, won’t impress anybody.
Rees-Mogg himself was once minister for “Brexit opportunities and government efficiency”. Given that critics felt both of those concepts were fictions, that title was controversial too.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.
10am: Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, gives evidence to the Commons health committee.
11am: The Growth Commission, which was set up by Liz Truss, publishes a report proposing free market policies that it says would stimulate growth.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.30pm: MPs resume the debate on the king’s speech, with the focus on the economy.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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