Suella Braverman has just published a scathing resignation letter after she was sacked by Rishi Sunak as home secretary yesterday.
After a paragraph expressing pride in her record in the post, Mrs Braverman writes: “Despite you having been rejected by a majority of party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be prime minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities.
“Those priorities were reducing illegal migration, excluding parts of international law from new legislation aimed at stopping small boat crossings, delivering the Northern Ireland Protocol and the retained EU law legislation as they were a year ago (and have since changed), and issuing statutory guidance protecting biological sex.”
But she writes: “You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies.”
She accuses him of a “betrayal of our agreement” that put Mr Sunak in Downing Street and a “betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop the boats”.
The ex-home secretary also accuses the prime minister of a “failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets” since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
My letter to the Prime Minister pic.twitter.com/7OBzaZnxr2
— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) November 14, 2023
She labels his response to “the rising tide of racism, intimidation, and terrorist glorification” as “uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs”.
Concluding the letter, she writes: “Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time.”
Mrs Braverman acknowledges that she “may not have always found the right words” to express her views, but says she has “always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019”.
But she adds, “I will, of course, continue to support the government in pursuit of policies that align with an authentic conservative agenda.”