Home Secretary announces resignation after using personal email address

Suella Braverman, Britain's Home Secretary, outside 10 Downing Street, London, October 18, 2022.

British Interior Minister Suella Braverman announced her resignation on Wednesday, October 19, confirming information from British media. In particular, she expressed her “concerns about the direction of this government”occupied by Liz Truss.

In his resignation letter published on TwitterSuella Braverman recognizes the” mistake “ to have sent an official document to a “trusted parliamentary colleague” from a personal email address. She also smashes the government, which, according to her, has “broken key promises”citing in particular the fight against illegal immigration.

Grant Shapps, transport minister under Boris Johnson, was appointed in stride, Downing Street announced. The choice of Mr. Shapps, 54, sends a signal of openness, while he had supported during the campaign Rishi Sunak, the rival of Liz Truss in the race for the head of government.

The departure of M.me Braverman, while he does not appear linked to a rebellion in government like the one that prompted Mr Johnson to leave in July, falls badly for Liz Truss, who is looking to regain control after being torn to pieces on Monday, by her new finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, of the massive tax cuts she had promised.

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Defender of the project to send illegal migrants to Rwanda

“Acting as if we didn’t make mistakes, carrying on as if everyone didn’t see them and hoping that things would magically go back to normal is not a serious political strategy”said M.me braveman. Member of Parliament since 2015, Suella Braverman held the position of legal adviser to the government under Boris Johnson, while the British executive was mired in a legal battle over its plan to return illegal migrants to Rwanda.

This crucial plan for the Tories in power, at a time when crossings of the Channel in small boats are on the rise on the south coast of the country, was at the top of the pile of files she had inherited, but she could not progress on the subject during the six weeks she spent in her post.

Born in 1980 in Harrow, north-west London, Suella Braverman, a mother of two, studied law at the University of Cambridge, where she was president of the Association of Conservatives, as well as at the university Pantheon-Sorbonne in Paris. She was elected to the House of Commons in 2015 as MP for Fareham in southern England. A member of the Buddhist community of Triratna, she had taken an oath on the Dhammapada, one of the most famous Buddhist texts.

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Suella Braverman, whose parents of Indian origin arrived in the United Kingdom in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius, had been one of the first to declare herself a candidate to take the reins of the Conservative Party, after the resignation of the first Minister Boris Johnson. Eliminated by the deputies, she had supported Liz Truss.

Her dogged Euroscepticism and commitment to defending right-wing values ​​has made her popular with the party base, refusing to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal or criticizing “this devouring desire” to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 despite the energy crisis. Slayer of “wokism”which denounces the injustices suffered by minorities, she praises the British Empire as a “power of good” and claimed that the Tories were “engaged in a war against cultural Marxism”.

“I am a fighter, not someone who gives up”

The announcement of his departure was made a few days after Mr.me Truss sacked his finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday. The British Prime Minister was very combative at midday during the weekly appointment of questions in Parliament, defending her policy in the face of boos and calls for the resignation of the Labor opposition. “I am a fighter, not someone who gives up”she thundered. “What is the use of a prime minister whose promises do not even last a week? »Assaulted the leader of the Labor opposition, Keir Starmer, listing all the measures that Liz Truss had to abandon.

After this session in Parliament, Mrme Truss was due to field questions from reporters during a factory tour in north London but had to cancel to speak with Ms Braverman. The crisis that the government is going through goes back to the presentation on September 23 of the “mini budget” of Mr. Kwarteng, who had raised fears of a slippage in the public accounts.

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The pound had fallen to a historic low and long-term government borrowing rates had soared. The Bank of England had to intervene to prevent the situation from degenerating into a financial crisis. In an attempt to calm the economic and political storm, Liz Truss on Friday appointed a new finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, responsible for rectifying his economic program and reassuring the markets about the seriousness of the government’s budget.

One in ten Britons have a favorable opinion of Liz Truss

The latter, now widely considered to have taken the upper hand over Mme Truss, returned to almost all the tax cuts promised by the Prime Minister and warned that savings should be made in public spending, raising fears of a return to austerity, as after the 2008 financial crisis. when inflation reached a 40-year high of 10.1% in September, the Prime Minister nevertheless wanted to silence rumors that suggested that she would not increase retirement pensions as promised, of inflation.

According to a YouGov poll, only one in ten Britons have a favorable opinion of Liz Truss – one in five among Conservative Party voters. Among the members of the majority party, 55% believe that Mme Truss is expected to resign, compared to 38% who want her to stay on. Two years before the next legislative elections, the Labor opposition is overwhelming the Conservatives in the polls.

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Now, six MPs from her party have already publicly urged Liz Truss to leave. In the absence of an obvious successor, the Tories are however reluctant to engage in a new and long process of appointing a new leader, and are looking for a consensus to agree on a name, but seem far from achieve it.

The World with AFP

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