Home Secretary Suella Braverman was today heckled by protesters angry at her plans to curb illegal immigration by sending anyone who arrives on a small boat to Rwanda.
The outburst from social justice campaigners Extinction Rebellion came on day one of the first National Conservatism Conference in London. The fringe event brings together supporters and representatives of the harder right of the Conservative party. Ideas being discussed are largely pro-Brexit, anti-immigration and about defending cultural traditions.
In her short tenure as home secretary – once removed for breaching the ministerial code by sending official emails from a personal account – Ms Braverman has never been one to shy away from delivering a contentious line. In fact, she seems to enjoy provoking the ire of her political opponents when given a chance, once joking that annoying the Left would be her “delight”.
Here’s a selection of some of her most controversial quotes:
‘It’s not racist for anyone, ethnic minority or otherwise, to want to control our borders’
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in London, Braverman aims to tackle criticisms that many of her policy aims as home secretary are racist.
She has also said “we mustn’t forget to do things for ourselves”, in response to criticism that post-Brexit immigration laws continue to cause a worker shortage in the UK. She is outlining plans to train UK workers to fill the jobs of fruit pickers and lorry drivers, which have long been held by foreign workers.
‘The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast, and which party is not’
Braverman said this in Commons at the end of October 2022 during a debate about asylum processing centres. She called illegal immigration to the UK an ‘invasion’, arguing that the opposition could not be trusted to combat the issue.
This choice of words provoked a lot of critcism across the political spectrum. Shortly afterwards she was confronted by 83-year-old Joan Salter, a Holocaust survivor and one of her constituents, who said Braverman’s language reminded her of that used by the Nazis.
‘I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession’
Ms Braverman said this in response to an audience member on Question Time in October 2022. Her Rwanda policy of sending asylum seekers who arrive in the UK illegally has attracted much criticism from political opponents, international courts and human rights’ charities alike. They are concerned about deporting people to a country with a questionable human rights record and are angry that the plan will include modern slavery victims and children.
‘Benefits Street culture’
This comment was made at a fringe event during 2017’s Conservative conference when discussing how to get people off long-term benefits. “We have got a lot of carrots to get people into work but we have got to add more conditionality and a bit more stick,” she added.
‘It’s the coalition of chaos, it’s The Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’
This infamous quote came in October 2022 during a Commons debate about the government’s Public Order Bill. Designed to expand police powers against protesters from groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion by making it easier for police to stop action, Ms Braverman implied that the real culprit in enabling their disruptive action, which has seen members glue themselves to paintings and roads, was the mysterious “wokerati”.
‘Focus on catching criminals not policing pronouns’
In September 2022, Braverman took a break from immigration to briefly join in the transgender debate. The home secretary launched her criticism at Sussex Police after it referred to convicted paedophile Sally Ann Dixon, who committed her crimes as a man and later transitioned to a woman, as a woman.
‘It’s not a secret society’
This came from Ms Braverman’s strained interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 before she became home secretary. She was being grilled on the membership of the European Research Group – a body of around 70-80 hardline Eurosceptic Tory MPs, of which Ms Braverman was a previous chair.
