Suella Braverman is likely to be fired within days, a senior Tory parliamentarian said on Friday as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt became the most senior Cabinet minister to distance himself from the embattled Home Secretary.
Lord Robert Hayward, a leading Tory pollster, said he expected that Rishi Sunak would take his time to thoroughly consider the details of how an incendiary article by the Home Secretary was published before deciding her political fate.
Downing Street said it had not cleared the comment piece which accused the Met Police of “bias” in the way it treats protests ahead of a planned pro-Gaza march in London on Armistice Day on Saturday.
Lord Hayward told The Standard: “He could take the decision any time between now and Thursday but I would be surprised if she was still in position by Thursday.
“She has persistently offended groups when a Home Secretary should be governing rather than causing division.”
With her future thrown into doubt by a series of deeply-controversial comments, Ms Braverman was not getting public support from ministers this morning.
Mr Hunt said: “As many other Cabinet ministers have said, the words that she used are not words that I myself would have used.”
Education minister Robert Halfon, on the media round for the Government, said it was above his “pay grade” whether Ms Braverman would stay in the Cabinet and repeatedly stopped short of saying the PM had full confidence in the Home Secretary.
Some Tory Right wingers rallied behind Mrs Braverman.
Conservative MP Miriam Cates told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think the Home Secretary has a view that is very mainstream in the rest of the UK.”
However, other Tory Right wing MPs are aghast at Mrs Braverman’s comments, even fearing that it could push some young men towards being radicalised.
Senior Tory Sir Bob Neill, MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, believes her position is “untenable”.
Sir Bob, who is on the Left of the party and chairman of the Commons Justice Committee, told LBC: “I think she’s gone over the line.”
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the 1922 Committee of Backbench Tory MPs, said Ms Braverman had been “unwise” with her article which was published in The Times.
Stressing it would be down to Mr Sunak whether to reshuffle his Cabinet, he added “I think we cannot carry on as we are.”
Lord Hayward said the Tory Right is not as organised and strong as it previously was in recent years.
He believes the Prime Minister is more likely to wait to before announcing a decision on Ms Braverman until after Armistice weekend and a decision by the Supreme Court on Wednesday on whether to overturn a Court of Appeal ruling that the Government’s flagship Rwanda deportation scheme for people who cross the Channel in “small boats” is unlawful.
Ms Braverman sparked the latest controversy by saying that aggressive right-wing protesters are “rightly met with a stern response” by officers while “pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law”.
She claimed police were showing “double standards” and made a widely-criticised comparsion between the pro-Gaza marches and demonstrations in Northern Ireland.
Her claim that there is a perception some senior officers “play favourites” over protests was only the latest inflammatory comment by the Home Secretary in recent days, having described pro-Gaza demonstrations as “hate marches” and suggested that some homeless people living in tents on the streets were doing so in “lifestyle choices”..
Gavin Stephens, who is chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said that political views could not be allowed to influence decision-making such as that by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley not to ban Saturday’s march.
He said: “The decisions that we take are not easy ones, but we do so impartially, without fear or favour, and in line with both the law and our authorised professional practice.”
It is understood Mrs Braverman’s article was submitted to Downing Street, but did not get signed off as significant alterations were requested. The piece was published nonetheless.
The Times claimed the comment piece had been even more hard-hitting, with an early draft including the suggestion that there was “ample evidence” that the police were biased in the way they treated different protests and warning Scotland Yard against “soft touch” policing of Saturday’s march in London.
Mr Sunak is facing calls from Labour and the Liberal Democrats to remove the Home Secretary.
