UK PM fires Suella Braverman: The many controversies of the ex-home secretary

British prime minister Rishi Sunak has fired controversial home secretary Suella Braverman after her recent remarks on the police’s handling of pro-Palestinian protesters sparked a row. According to Reuters, Sunak was facing pressure to take action against Braverman after her comments evoked right-wing demonstrators to hit the streets of London. She has been replaced by foreign minister James Cleverly, while ex-British PM David Cameron has been named the UK’s new foreign secretary. Braverman, who is popular among the right-wing in the ruling Conservative Party, has often grabbed headlines with her controversial takes and actions that have many times landed her in hot water. Let’s take a look at Suella Braverman’s many rows. Accusing the police of bias In an article for the Times of London last week, Braverman accused the police of “playing favourites” by going easy on pro-Palestinian demonstrators while acting sternly against right-wing protesters. “I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. “They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups - particularly Islamists - of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland,” Sky News cited Braverman’s article as saying. According to Associated Press (AP), the article was not approved by the prime minister’s office in advance.

She had earlier described pro-Palestinian protesters as “hate marchers”.

Homelessness a ’lifestyle choice’ Braverman faced backlash after defending a proposal to stop charities from providing tents to the homeless and calling homelessness a “lifestyle choice”. Homelessness charities hit out at the now-sacked interior minister when she wrote on X that those living in tents on the streets are “from abroad” and vowed to act tough on “aggressive” begging. She also accused rough sleepers of causing “nuisance and distress to other people by pitching tents in public places”.

Unless we step in now to stop this, British cities will go the way of places in the US like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor. 2/4

— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) November 4, 2023

‘Pretending to be gay’ In September, the 43-year-old lawyer claimed that “in many instances” asylum seekers pretended to be homosexual or transgender to get “special treatment” and stay in the UK. She also said that being discriminated against in their home country for being gay or a woman should not be enough to qualify for asylum. Her comments drew sharp reactions from human rights activists and key figures such as Sir Elton John, who said Braverman risked “further legitimising hate and violence” against LGBT people. [caption id=“attachment_13383942” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] James Cleverly has replaced Suella Braverman as UK’s home secretary. AP File Photo[/caption] Grooming gangs remark Braverman stoked a row after claiming in a comment piece in the Daily Mail that child grooming gangs in the UK were “almost all British-Pakistani” men. She wrote that those behind the “grooming gangs phenomenon” were “groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values” and that they have been “left mostly unchallenged both within their communities and by wider society”, reported ITVX. Sayeeda Warsi, the first Asian person to chair the Tory party, accused Braverman of racism over her remarks. In October, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) found that Braverman’s comments were “significantly misleading” as the Home Office’s own research had revealed that offenders were mostly from white backgrounds, noted The Independent. Security breach This is the second time that Braverman has lost her job as the home secretary. She was removed from the post last October by the then UK PM Liz Truss for breaching the ministerial code. According to The Independent, Braverman had sent official government documents to her personal email on several occasions, along with leaking a confidential draft ministerial statement to right-wing backbencher Sir John Hayes. Just six days after her removal, she was reappointed by Sunak when he became the prime minister. [caption id=“attachment_13383962” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Suella Braverman was brought back as Britain’s home secretary by PM Rishi Sunak. AP File Photo[/caption] Row over India remarks Braverman’s comments on Indian immigrants had almost sunk major trade deal talks between India and the UK. She told The Spectator magazine in October 2022: “I do have some reservations. Look at migration in this country - the largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants.” The then home secretary added that “open borders migration policy with India” was not “what people voted for with Brexit.” Her comments had not gone down well in New Delhi. Other anti-immigrant utterances Braverman, the daughter of Indian-origin, immigrant parents, is known for her controversial stance on immigration and asylum seekers. She is a vocal supporter of the UK’s scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Addressing the Tory Party Conference last October, she said it was her “dream” to see a flight of asylum seekers take off for Rwanda before Christmas. According to ITVX, Braverman said at the time she would “love to be here claiming victory, I would love to be having a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, that’s my obsession”. She also labelled the arrival of asylum seekers on the south coast of England as an “invasion”. Braverman was criticised for her remarks by Holocaust survivor Joan Salter, but she remained defiant and said she would not apologise “for the language that I have used to demonstrate the scale of the problem”, reported The Independent. In March this year, Braverman was accused of “cowardly attack” on civil servants after an email was sent to Tory supporters blaming an “activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” for blocking earlier bids to tackle illegal migration. The incident irked the FDA civil servants union. However, UK Cabinet secretary Simon Case later said someone else was responsible, claiming that Braverman “did not see, sign off or sanction the email” before it was sent, reported Sky News. With inputs from agencies