This one is going to run and run. If Rishi Sunak had hoped that his somewhat confusing explanation at PMQs for Suella Braverman’s special interpretation of national security was going to end doubts about his decision to reappoint her as home secretary, then he was in for disappointment.
Surprisingly, not many MPs – including some Tories and probably even Rish! himself – were convinced by a garbled: “She done nothing wrong but even if she had at least she owned up and besides six days is more than long enough for her to have learned her lesson.”
Come Thursday morning, things were looking a whole lot worse for Rish! and Leaky Sue. First, the sacked Tory party chairman, Jake Berry, had told TalkTV that, far from coming forward and admitting her mistake, she had only fessed up when confronted with the evidence.
Moments later, another Tory MP, Mark Pritchard, popped up to suggest that MI5 lacked confidence in her and the situation needed sorting. So much for Rish! uniting the Conservatives.
Inevitably, these revelations prompted a whole load of new questions and the hopeless, hapless Nadhim Zahawi, the newly appointed party chairman, was sent out on the morning media run to see if he could come up with a passably inventive explanation.
After all, if Zahawi could demean himself by posting tweets supporting both Boris Johnson and Sunak last Sunday – there is nothing he wouldn’t do to prolong what passes for his career – then he should be able to talk himself out of this one. He couldn’t. He crashed and burned horribly. But hey, he did turn the news round into a comedy circuit. A public service.
First off, Zahawi tried to claim that the original version had been true. If there was a victim in all this, it was Leaky Sue herself. She had just been minding her own business copying government business to her personal email account. As you do. She had then tried to forward it to her old mucker, the notoriously trustworthy Tory MP, John Hayes. A man far to the right of the ERG. As you do.
Only Hayes was having problems with his email, so Braverman sent it to his wife for her to print out for him. As you do. Her only mistake was to send the confidential document to the wrong address. As you do. To a member of staff of another Tory MP. Who promptly reported the breach of the ministerial code. As you don’t.
Braverman had been absolutely shocked – appalled, I tell you – to find out that she had committed an error and had raced to report herself when confronted with the evidence of her own lapses in security.
To his credit, Zahawi didn’t really labour the point. There are limits to the bullshit to which even a professional bullshitter can descend. He was prepared to go through the motions of the “Free the Leaky Sue One” line but no more. Instead he went for the absurdist Dada defence. AKA the alternative space-time continuum hypothesis.
It was like this. Six days might not seem very long between getting sacked and reappointed to the same job. That’s because ordinary civilians experience six days as six days. But MPs and ministers experience six days as six months. In some cases as six years.
So actually Leaky Sue had in reality been sacked for an exceptionally long period of time. More than enough time, in fact, for her to have been fired and rehired for further breaches of the ministerial code. She had been frozen out for far too long.
Zahawi was warming to his theme. He believed in redemption. Let him who was without sin cast the first stone. Poor Leaky Sue! Cast out into the wilderness for six long days and nights.
How could anyone do that to a woman of the utmost compassion? Someone whose every dream was a loving romp of drowning asylum seekers? Whose only mistake had been to serially break the ministerial code which she was honour-bound to obey? Surely now was the time also to let out all offenders. Hmm. Suella died for somebody’s sins, but not mine. With that, Nadhim died on his arse.
Next to defend what was left of Leaky Sue’s reputation was Oliver Dowden, the new Cabinet Office secretary. That too did not go well. First he had to fend off a question from Labour’s Chris Bryant about Leaky Sue being a possible target for Russian spies given her known lack of interest in national security.
Dowden bobbed nervously from side to side. He’s desperate to make a good impression with the new Sunak junta and was squeaking with anxiety. He was sure the Russians would not ever consider targeting a home secretary who was a known security risk. But he would try to make sure she emailed all confidential documents to the entire country in future. That way there would be no kompromat.
Dowden tried a coquettish giggle when Angela Rayner asked much the same question. They were very similar, he smirked. They were both gingers and liked Glyndebourne – Tories clearly consider both to be an insult. But he couldn’t comment on anything. Not on whether any future ethics advisers – neither Johnson or Liz Truss felt the need of one – may consider Leaky Sue’s reappointment a mistake. Or whether the cabinet secretary had advised against reappointing her. So we can assume he did.
But all this leaves the government with a home secretary that can’t be allowed out in public. Leaky Sue avoided answering an urgent question on her six-day hell on Wednesday. And she avoided answering another on conditions inside the Manston asylum seeker processing facility. AKA an overcrowded concentration camp, ridden with disease.
You’d have thought Braverman would have wanted to take the credit for that. But it’s one thing for the prime minister and his outriders to lie on her behalf. They can claim they were misinformed. But it’s a bad look for the home secretary to lie on her own behalf. So she’s holed up indefinitely, waiting for the crisis to pass.
Also out of view was Penny Mordaunt. Still sulking about her failed leadership bid and being left in the job of leader of the house that she never wanted in the first place. First she failed to turn up on time, telling the Speaker that she was busy doing her nails.
Then when she did appear 50 minutes late, it was with a face contorted into a rictus of self-hatred. I’m not fucking unhappy to be here, she snarled. No one believed her. Even her colleagues thought it best to give her a wide berth. It clearly wasn’t the best of days. Or best of lives. Meet the new regime. One big happy family.
