PM Sunak sacks Braverman after she was faulted for empowering pressures and racial disdain over Truce Day fights
Monday, November 13, 2023
LONDON: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has sacked Suella Braverman as home secretary after she was accused of inciting tensions and racial hatred during Armistice Day protests and claims London police favored left-wing pro-Palestinian protesters - including fake news and unverified attacks on Pakistani men in the country.
Leading up to her sacking, Braverman angered much of the Labor Party, Muslim groups, left-wing groups including Jews, migrant groups and moderates in her party with her vile statements and deliberate provocations to appeal to the hard right. groups within the ruling Conservative Party and extremists who oppose immigrants and left-wing politics.
She openly defied Prime Minister Sunak by refusing to accept changes made to her article published in The Times last week and choosing to publish her article as she wanted, criticizing the Metropolitan Police and encouraging far-right groups who had gathered in London. Saturday and attacked police. That article is the main trigger for her humiliating dismissal.
She claimed in the article that there is a "perception that senior police officers are favorites when it comes to protesters" and that they are tougher on right-wing extremists than pro-Palestinian "mobs".
The article also compared demonstrations calling for a cease-fire in Gaza to marches in Northern Ireland, which are mainly carried out by unionists. She also described Muslims and others marching for peace in Palestine as "hate demonstrators" and supporters of Hamas.
Despite clear evidence that Islamophobia is on the rise and Muslims are under attack, she has gone out of her way not to support the Muslim community, issuing statements that single them out. She is believed to have done all this to run for the party leadership.
Prime Minister Sunak fired her on Monday morning.
Braverman's resignation followed weeks of controversy in which she followed her hard-right politics and made a number of controversial statements, including describing homelessness as a "lifestyle choice".
She made history by becoming the first Home Secretary in UK history to be forced out of the same job in just over a year. Liz Truss ordered her to resign after weeks in the job last October for sending confidential information to an MP from a private email address, which breached the ministerial code.
Police and Labor have accused Braverman of helping to stoke tensions that resulted in far-right groups fighting police near the Cenotaph on Saturday, when hundreds of hard-right activists attacked police.
She was widely accused of violence by the entire Labor Party, Muslim and left-wing groups and commentators, and almost all called for her sacking for inciting tensions. She campaigned against pro-Palestinian protesters in general, but it is widely believed that her real targets were British Muslims and left-wing groups who supported Palestinian freedom.
It is Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who fired her for reasons she openly defied and challenged his authority as Prime Minister.
Ironically, the 43-year-old anti-immigrant politician is the child of immigrant parents. He wants to deport immigrants and imprison them abroad.
Braverman was born Sue-Ellen Fernandes in Harrow, north-west London, the only child of Christie Fernandes, a Kenyan woman of Christian Goan descent, and Uma Fernandes, a Mauritian woman of Indian descent, who had both arrived in the UK in the 1960s.
Braverman, named after Sue Ellen Ewing, the female lead of the 1980s American television drama Dallas, shortened her name after teachers started calling her Suella. She attended the fee-paying Heathfield School in outer London on a partial scholarship.
Braverman studied law at Queens' College, Cambridge, and became president of the university's Conservative Association. She also studied for two years in France at the Sorbonne. Before entering full-time politics, she practiced as a barrister in both the UK and the US.
She lost her first election in 2005, but made it to the House of Commons in 2015. In 2018, she became junior Brexit minister under then-prime minister Theresa May, before landing her first cabinet post as attorney-general under Boris Johnson, May's successor, just two years later.
She entered parliament as Suella Fernandes, but changed her surname to Braverman in 2018 after marrying Rael Braverman, a Mercedes-Benz executive. She described her husband as "a proud Jew and a Zionist".
"My husband is a proud Jew and a Zionist. He lived in Israel. We have close family members who serve in the IDF," she told the Jewish Chronicle in a recent interview.
She was at the center of controversy all the time.
Market Bill
As Attorney General, Suella Braverman criticized the legal profession for supporting the Single Market Bill, which was described as violating international law in a "limited and specific way". Braverman remained a staunch supporter of the bill, leading to accusations that she was sacrificing the UK's reputation and jeopardizing the Good Friday Agreement.
A dream of deportations
Braverman has been a leading proponent of government plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda if they cross the English Channel in small boats.
The policy drew widespread condemnation from rights groups, and Braverman was criticized after she told the 2022 Conservative conference that her "dream" was to deport people to Rwanda.
Agreement with India
A major UK-India trade deal was reportedly "on the brink of collapse" after Braverman expressed "reservations" about allowing more immigration from India and said there was a problem with Indian citizens overstaying their visas. A government spokesman said the UK and India enjoy a close and positive relationship.
Security breach
Braverman was effectively sacked as Home Secretary at the end of Liz Truss's premiership in October 2022 after it emerged she had leaked confidential Cabinet documents to right-wing backbencher John Hayes.
The investigation found that as Home Secretary she sent confidential documents to her personal email address on several occasions, in addition to leaking a draft ministerial statement to John. Her return to government a few days later, when she was reappointed by Rishi Sunak, reignited the row, but Braverman survived.
"Invasion" of migrants
Shortly after her return to government, Braverman again sparked controversy by describing the arrival of asylum seekers on the south coast as an "invasion".
Her comments came days after a man threw firebombs at a migrant processing center in Kent, and migrant support groups likened her words to language used by far-right figures. She was confronted about her remarks by Holocaust survivor Joan Salter, but Braverman said she would not apologize "for the language I used to demonstrate the extent of the problem".
Grooming gang article
Commenting in the Daily Mail in April 2023, Braverman claimed that childcare gangs in the UK are "almost all Bri
