Why Suella's political survival is about more than appeasing the Tory right

If you were to spot Dominic Raab and Nadhim Zahawi chuntering away to each other in the corridors of Westminster this week, it would take little to guess who was their topic of conversation: the Home Secretary. These two ex-cabinet ministers might be wondering why they were shown the exit to government over questions of integrity, yet Suella Braverman remains tighly glued to her ministerial red box, despite accusations that she misused her position to avoid the consequences of a speeding fine. Raab and Zahawi will not be the only Tory MPs carrying a disgruntled look on their faces as they move from vote to vote in the Commons; for some will be thinking that Sunak’s loyalty to their speeding cabinet colleague might be accelerating their Party to defeat at the next election. The Prime Minister’s letter of acquittal to Braverman made little attempt to conceal his unease at the Home Secretary’s actions that gave ‘rise to the perception of impropriety’. It would also not have gone missed that the yet-to-be-named ‘Speeding-gate’ was the attack-line of choice for Keir Starmer at PMQs; another scandal over integrity in government once again undermined the commitment the Prime Minister made on the steps of Downing Street.

The problem for Rishi Sunak is that he is walking a tightrope between the warring factions in his Party, and cutting Suella Braverman loose might have been enough to see the Tory right take their scissors to this balancing act and let Sunak fall to the oblivion of continued party infighting. It was only eight months ago that close to a third of Conservative MPs were prepared to restore the Party leadership to Boris Johnson, and many of those most loyal supporters are agitated and ready to erupt. In their ranks are also dozens of MPs who backed Suella Braverman’s own bid for the Premiership in July last year. If Sunak wanted a pertinent reminder of these facts as he weighed up Suella Braverman’s future, then he got it with the reaction of the Tory right to the revelation that Boris Johnson was once again facing a police investigation over Covid lockdown breaches. GB News commentators erupted and the Westminster twitter-sphere was flooded with talk of dismayed Johnson allies plotting to disrupt the work of Government in retaliation. Sunak’s hands-off approach to sanctioning the Home Secretary lies in the fact that she remains the most influential and high-profile representative of the further-right of the Tory party, a block that needed reassurance that the Prime Minister did not want to throw them under the bus, just at the very moment of he was deciding the Home Secretary’s fate. It was no accident that Braverman was planted next to Rishi Sunak on the green benches for Prime Minister’s Questions; he was doing all he could to tell his backbenchers not to direct their bubbling anger over the new Boris Johnson probe at him.

Sunak also needs to save his skin when it comes to immigration, and he knows that the Home Secretary is an invaluable shield for his government’s credibility in this potentially election-defining area of policy. While the Prime Minister had one eye on police investigations and speeding ticket allegations, he had another on the incoming headlines that despite government targets, net migration into the United Kingdom has reached record highs. While Sunak is in part staking his electoral comeback on delivering on migration numbers and stopping the boats, Braverman is the undeniable political face of his immigration crackdown. As long as his publicity-keen Home Secretary remains in post, she can be the future fall guy if the public continues to be unimpressed with migration numbers, while the Prime Minister is gambling he can protect his own image as a leader trying to steer the ship to the shores of lower immigration. The moment Braverman exits centre stage, Sunak has to face the music when the next headlines over the wave of asylum seekers and legal migrants hit the press.

When it comes to Sunak’s electoral ambitions, Braverman is not just there to sponge up any criticism of the PM, she is also a significant electoral asset, because she has something that is ever-allusive in British politics: a water-tight political identity with the public. She is following in the footsteps of Boris Johnson, who Conservative voters unwaveringly saw as pro-Brexit despite once voting for Theresa May’s own derided Brexit deal and in face of constant allegations that he was a deep-seated remainer. The Home Secretary’s own political credentials appear to be equally as durable; her limited success in halting boats coming across the English Channel and in controlling the movement of people into Britain has done little, if anything, to undermine her reputation among voters, Conservative supporters, and Tory backbenchers that she is unwaveringly anti-immigration, or anti-woke – two positions that Conservative HQ are hoping will win over wavering voters. The result is that Sunak might be banking that Braverman being front-and-centre of an election campaign will help sooth any anxieties among the public that the Conservatives are not focused on those electoral issues.

Suella Braverman is a political survivor. She has scraped through successive scandals because she is successfully touting a populist Conservative political ideology in a Cabinet brief that matters to Tory backbenchers, Rishi Sunak, and, the PM will be hoping, prospective Conservative voters at the next general election. She may be a survivor, but she is also a maverick, and one that has her eyes peeled on her own political future and credibility. The Prime Minister believes he needs Braverman more than he can afford to have her agitating on the backbenches, but he will also have to remain vigilant that keeping her in the cabinet means another, potentially more damaging, blow-up might be around the corner. As the stakes continue to rise in the run up to the general election, Sunak will just be hoping that he is a political survivor too.

Featured Image: UK Government on Flickr