Braverman accuses Sunak of being "uncertain, weak and lacking in leadership" over threat posed by extremism Braverman then turns in her letter to the row about the pro-Palestinian marches. She says: Another cause for disappointment – and the context for my recent article in The Times – has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7 October. I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion. Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years. I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing. As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else. Closing summary Suella Braverman has launched an astonishing personal attack on Rishi Sunak, describing the prime minister as weak and dishonest and claiming he reneged on promises to push through a series of controversial policy pledges. In a brutal three-page letter published a day after she was sacked as home secretary, Braverman warned Sunak that she now intends to spearhead a Tory rebellion over the government’s Rwanda plan. “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. You need to change course urgently,” she wrote. In her letter, Braverman said that Sunak had failed to prepare a credible backup plan and had ignored her suggestion – believed to be emergency legislation to change domestic law so that the government could ignore the ruling and the flights could go ahead. “I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people,” she added. Downing Street has issued its first response to the Suella Braverman letter, which does not include a denial of the claims she is making about Rishi Sunak going back on promises he made to secure Braverman’s backing for the Tory leadership last autumn. A No 10 spokesperson says: “The prime minister was proud to appoint a strong, united team yesterday focused on delivering for the British people.
The prime minister believes in actions not words. He is proud that this government has brought forward the toughest legislation to tackle illegal migration this country has seen and has subsequently reduced the number of boat crossings by a third this year. And whatever the outcome of the supreme court tomorrow, he will continue that work. The PM thanks the former home secretary for her service.” Dozens of Conservative MPs are poised to demand that the government quits the European convention on human rights, a move resisted by senior cabinet ministers, if the UK’s highest court rules against sending asylum seekers to Rwanda on Wednesday. Home Office insiders said the government had no plan B in the event of losing in the supreme court, suggesting that ministers were “panicked” over the potential outcome. They warned it was highly unlikely that flights to Rwanda would be able to take off before February even if they won. Rightwing Conservative MPs have accused Rishi Sunak of abandoning voters who brought the party to power in 2019 amid a backlash against his reshuffle and polling suggesting public opposition to David Cameron’s return. Unhappiness with Sunak’s reshuffle, particularly the sacking of Suella Braverman as home secretary, prompted a group of predominantly “red wall” MPs to issue a scathing rebuke of the prime minister and the pro-European credentials of his new foreign secretary. Keir Starmer will resist pressure from his MPs to back a ceasefire in Gaza on Wednesday in a move that could trigger one of the most significant rebellions of his leadership. The Labour leader is backing an amendment to the king’s speech that will criticise how Israel has conducted its military campaign. But it will fall short of calling for the ceasefire that nearly a quarter of his parliamentary party wants. After Rishi Sunak’s cabinet reshuffle, men hold the top four positions in government for the first time since 2010. Liz Truss’s ministry was notable for initially having no white men serving in the great offices of state for the first time in British political history, with Kwasi Kwarteng becoming the first black chancellor. Downing Street said on Tuesday that it was not focused on “tick-box diversity” and the prime minister was “clear that its actions and tangible impacts on the public that matters”. Sunak’s press secretary said women were getting senior jobs elsewhere in government, and a lot of women had risen up the ranks. The UK’s business and trade secretary has signed a deal to increase trade with Florida, the British government’s latest pact with a single American state as it awaits a broader, post-Brexit US free trade agreement. The memorandum of understanding, signed on Tuesday by Kemi Badenoch and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is the seventh deal between the UK and individual US states. The UK said the deal would focus on space, financial technology, artificial intelligence and legal services. The British government appears to have withdrawn an assertion made by the former prime minister Boris Johnson that the international criminal court has no jurisdiction in Israel, amid a wider western shift to more pointed criticism of the way Israel is conducting its campaign to remove Hamas from Gaza. In a statement to MPs on Tuesday, the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said: “It is not for ministers to seek to state where the ICC has jurisdiction; that is for the chief prosecutor. The chief prosecutor has not been silent on this matter, and I am sure he will continue to express his views.” The UK is being pressed to help provide more evidence against suspects involved in protests outside the Indian high commission in London in March. The pressure came as the new UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, met the Indian external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, in one of his first bilateral meetings. Jaishankar is backing demands from the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) for further cooperation over those involved in the violence. The police handling of the demonstration and its subsequent investigation has become a raw nerve in Indian-British relations, but both sides deny it is acting as a brake on the Indian-British free trade talks. That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for today. Thanks for following along. The UK is being pressed to help provide more evidence against suspects involved in protests outside the Indian high commission in London in March. The pressure came as the new UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, met the Indian external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, in one of his first bilateral meetings. Jaishankar is backing demands from the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) for further cooperation over those involved in the violence. The police handling of the demonstration and its subsequent investigation has become a raw nerve in Indian-British relations, but both sides deny it is acting as a brake on the Indian-British free trade talks. Cameron is enthusiastic about relations with India and sought during his premiership to deepen ties, inviting the Indian PM, Narendra Modi, on a three-day state visit in 2015. Nadine Dorries accused Rishi Sunak of being “quick to anger” as she said it was the wrong move to sack Suella Braverman. “I don’t think it was right to sack Suella,” the former minister and MP told Sky News. “He’s quick to anger and ... that mask often slips... it’s just an irritability that you see.” Suella Braverman’s parting shot to Rishi Sunak after he sacked her is a stinging letter in which she makes a series of attacks on his policies and style of government. Here we analyse her key points. Braverman wrote: As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as home secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. 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 … This was a document with clear terms. As soon as Sunak unexpectedly appointed the outspoken Braverman last autumn, it was rumoured that it had been part of a secret deal to help Sunak’s leadership campaign gain rightwing supporters who might otherwise have clamoured for the return of the exiled Boris Johnson. Here, Braverman makes the incendiary claim that not only did such a deal exist, but Sunak actually signed up to a series of written pledges. If the prime minister did indeed make such a deal, it raises serious questions about his political judgment – such a document is an extraordinary hostage to fortune, as Braverman is now demonstrating. But a deal like this also makes Sunak look weak, suggesting he was so uncertain about his standing within his own party that he was willing to subcontract large areas of policy to a rightwinger whose stance appears to be quite different from his. It may also help explain Braverman’s apparent sense that she did not need to abide by collective cabinet responsibility, as well as the ongoing ambiguity over the past year about what Sunak’s government actually stands for. The UK’s business and trade secretary has signed a deal to increase trade with Florida, the British government’s latest pact with a single US state as it awaits a broader, post-Brexit, US free trade agreement. The memorandum of understanding, signed on Tuesday by Kemi Badenoch and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is the seventh deal between the UK and individual US states. The UK said the deal would focus on space, financial technology, artificial intelligence and legal services. The UK government is keen to secure a deal with the US as a central part of its post-Brexit efforts to increase trade with countries beyond the EU. However, progress has been slow despite the Conservative party pledging in its 2019 manifesto to reach an agreement within three years. Rishi Sunak has finished his cabinet reshuffle, centred on forming a “strong and united team”. But for the first time since 2010, Sunak has ensured men get the top four positions in government. Liz Truss’s ministry was notable for initially having no white men serving in the great offices of state for the first time in British political history, with Kwasi Kwarteng becoming the first black chancellor. Downing Street said on Tuesday it is not focused on “tick-box diversity” as the prime minister is “clear that it’s actions and tangible impacts on the public that matters”. Sunak’s press secretary said women were getting senior jobs elsewhere in government, insisting a lot of women had risen up the ranks. All of the ministers holding the four great offices of state were privately educated. Sunak attended Winchester college, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, went to Charterhouse, David Cameron attended Eton and James Cleverly went to Colfe’s school. Keir Starmer will resist pressure from his MPs to back a ceasefire in Gaza on Wednesday in a move that could trigger one of the most significant rebellions of his leadership. The Labour leader is backing an amendment to the king’s speech that will criticise how Israel has conducted its military campaign. But it will fall short of calling for the ceasefire that nearly a quarter of his parliamentary party wants. Labour officials have told the party’s MPs to vote for their motion but to abstain on one from the Scottish National party calling for an outright ceasefire, making clear that they will sack any frontbencher who rebels by voting for the SNP amendment. How damaging is Suella Braverman"s departure letter? The last time Suella Braverman left the Home Office, in October 2022, she also wrote a letter that was damning about the prime minister. Today’s, though, is on a different scale. Take out the passage about the leadership contest deal, and it is bad enough. That is not so much because of the passages about weak leadership (a standard complaint from opponents of a PM) or the passage about extremism (which will strike some people as hyperbole), but because Braverman performs an astute “I told you so” manoeuvre on Rwanda. She is probably right to say that, even if the government wins in the supreme court tomorrow, flights to Rwanda will take longer to start (and involve fewer people) than many Tory supporters expect or want. She has detached herself from Rishi Sunak on an issue where she thinks she has public opinion on her side. But it is the claim about the leadership contest that is most damaging because it takes a wrecking ball to Sunak’s reputation for integrity. It was always assumed that some sort of deal was done. In the first leadership contest of 2022 Braverman promised to back Liz Truss at a time when her rightwing Tory MP supporters might otherwise have rallied behind Kemi Badenoch. In return, Truss promised to promote Braverman from attorney general to home secretary. (There was an explicit deal, as Ben Riley-Smith confirms in his excellent new book on the Tories, The Right to Rule.) With Sunak, Braverman pulled off the same trick. It is arguable whether, as she claims, her endorsement was “pivotal”, but it certainly helped. She declared for Sunak on Sunday 23 October and that night Boris Johnson declared he was pulling out of the contest. Sunak was then elected unopposed. What is surprising is the claim that Sunak offered explicit promises, and not just nudges and winks. We have yet to hear his side of the story and it may be that, when she says he promised to support policies contained in a document, he was simply saying, “Yes, of course, I’ll consider etc etc.” Yet reports that there are witnesses (see 5.01pm), and hints that she will publish the text (see 5.12pm), imply she might be able to provide strong evidence of a deal of sorts. This will alarm Tory MPs who backed Sunak precisely because they thought he was not the sort of candidate to sign up to a hard Brexit ERG-type wishlist. They will also want to know why he was naive enough to haggle like this with Braverman when he probably did not need to anyway. None of this means Sunak will be toppled in a leadership contest. There is no obvious replacement, and there is little appetite among Tory MPs for another ballot. (Even Braverman is not calling for one.) But – unless he can provide a robust rebuttal, which he hasn’t so far – Sunak looks tainted and demeaned. For Labour, it’s a godsend. That’s all from me for today. My collegue Tom Ambrose is taking over now. The Liberal Democrats say Suella Braverman’s letter shows the Tory soap opera is never ending. In a response, the Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael said: This is yet more Conservative chaos. Suella Braverman failed at every task at hand as home secretary and now she seems determined to drag everyone else down with her. While people struggle to see their GP or pay their mortgages, this government is too busy dealing with their own infighting. When will this Conservative party soap opera end? No 10 responds to Braverman, saying PM believes in "actions not words " - but not denying claims of broken promises Downing Street has issued its first response to the Suella Braverman letter, which does not include a denial of the claims she is making about Rishi Sunak going back on promises he made to secure Braverman’s backing for the Tory leadership last autumn. A No 10 spokesperson says: The prime minister was proud to appoint a strong, united team yesterday focused on delivering for the British people.
 The prime minister believes in actions not words. He is proud that this government has brought forward the toughest legislation to tackle illegal migration this country has seen and has subsequently reduced the number of boat crossings by a third this year. And whatever the outcome of the supreme court tomorrow, he will continue that work. The PM thanks the former home secretary for her service. Braverman tells Sunak to "change course urgently", saying "your plan is not working" And here is how Braverman ends her letter. In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself. 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. You need to change course urgently. I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions. I will, of course, continue to support the government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda. Sincerely, Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP Braverman accuses Sunak of being "uncertain, weak and lacking in leadership" over threat posed by extremism Braverman then turns in her letter to the row about the pro-Palestinian marches. She says: Another cause for disappointment – and the context for my recent article in The Times – has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7 October. I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion. Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years. I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing. As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else. Braverman says, even if he wins in supreme court, Sunak"s compromises will stop Rwanda deportations starting soon In the third section of the letter Braverman writes about small boats, and the supreme court decision on the Rwanda policy tomorrow. Your rejection of this path (see 5pm) was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do ‘whatever it lakes’ to stop the boats. At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position. If we lose in the supreme court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one. Worse than this, your magical thinking – believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion – has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’. I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you. I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people. If, on the other hand, we win in the supreme court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects. The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that rule 39 indications [injunctions imposed by the European court of human rights] are binding in international law – against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords – will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg court. On the PM programme Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, says he has asked Braverman’s team if he can see the document she writes about which set out the conditions Sunak agreed to when she promised to support him. Mason says he was told that was “not for today” – implying she is planning to release it in due course. The next phase of the letter is the passage where Braverman says Rishi Sunak broke promises he made to her in secret when she backed him for leader. (See 5pm.) I will post the full text of the Suella Braverman here in five chunks. Here is the opening. Dear prime minister. Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave government. While disappointing, this is for the best. It has been my privilege to serve as home secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do. I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary. I am proud of what we achieved together: delivering on our manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers and enacting new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National Security Act 2023. I also led a programme of reform: on antisocial behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of enquiry; grooming gangs, knife crime, non-crime hate incidents and rape and serious sexual offences. And I am proud of the strategic changes that I was delivering to Prevent, Contest, serious organised crime and fraud. I am sure that this work will continue with the new ministerial team. It is understood that, in front of witnesses, Rishi Sunak read the document referred to by Braverman in her resignation letter, agreed to it and took a second copy. What Braverman says in her letter about her claim that Sunak broke multiple promises made to her Here is the key passage from Suella Braverman’s letter. As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as home secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. 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. These were, among other things: 1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto through, inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary thresholds on work visas; 2. Include specific ‘notwithstanding clauses’ into new legislation to stop the boats, ie exclude the operation of the European convention on human rights, Human Rights Act and other international law that had thus far obstructed progress on this issue; 3. Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and Retained EU Law Bills in their then existing form and timetable; 4. Issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protects biological sex, safeguards single sex spaces, and empowers parents to know what is being taught to their children. This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become prime minister. For a year, as home secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest. You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises. These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged. I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced ‘notwithstanding clauses’ to that effect. Notwithstanding clauses are clauses in bills saying, in effect, notwithstanding that fact that international law says the government should do X, Y and Z, this bill allows the government to ignore those obligations. They would allow the government to circumvent the ECHR. But whether they would survive legal challenge is another matter. Braverman accuses Sunak of breaking secret promises he made to win her support in leadership contest in scathing attack Suella Braverman has just posted on X her letter to the PM after her sacking in the cabinet reshuffle yesterday. In it she says she only agreed to back him for the leadership race last autumn, after Liz Truss resigned, because he agreed to conditions that were put down in writing, which included cutting legal migration, not watering down key pieces of Brexit legislation and publishing statutory guidance to schools to protect biological sex. Braverman says Sunak has gone back on all these promises. She accuses him of opting for “wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices”. These claims are incendiary. On his first day as PM Sunak promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. She claims to have evidence that blows this apart. Bringing back Cameron sends "very confusing signal" to Tory supporters, Danny Kruger claims The Conservative MP Danny Kruger has told GB News that the appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary in the reshuffle sends “a very confusing signal” to the party’s supporters. In an interview expanding on the statement he issued earlier with Miriam Cates (see 2.11pm), Kruger said: [Cameron] led the remain campaign and here he’s now in charge of our relations with Europe. But as long as he follows the prime minister’s lead, as long as he genuinely honours the mandate that we have as a government … I’m not concerned about his appointment. Personally, I do think it sends a very confusing signal to our voters. And overall the shape of the government now is not where we think it should be. Kruger also said he thought the reshuffle showed the government was going back to “the politics of decline”. Asked to rate the reshuffle, he said: I’m going to give it a 5 out of 10 – some good people, some great people, but I’m afraid we’re going back into the politics of decline. That is our concern. Where is the energy and the spirit of change that 2019 represented? I worry that we’re going in the wrong direction now, even though all the people involved are tremendous and we support them. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, used his speech in the king’s speech debate this afternoon to say that next week’s autumn statement would focus on growth. He told MPs: As we start to win the battle against inflation, we can focus on the next stage which is growth. So next week we will see an autumn statement for growth. Because no business can expand without hiring additional staff I will address labour supply issues to help fill the nearly one million vacancies we have, working with the excellent secretary of state for work and pensions [Mel Stride]. This will build on the 30 hours of free childcare offer that I announced for all eligible children over nine months in the spring budget. I will also focus on increasing business investment because despite the fact that our growth has been faster than many of our European neighbours, our productivity is still lower. At the weekend the Financial Times said Hunt was expected to cut business taxes in the autum statement. The FT said Hunt was “likely to extend beyond 2026 the ‘full expensing’ regime, which lets businesses deduct the full cost of investments in IT equipment, plant or machinery from their profits”. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, used her speech to describe the king’s speech as a “lost opportunity”. She explained: No legislation to reform the antiquated planning process, to accelerate decisions around our critical national infrastructure, instead planning processes continue to hold back the success of our offshore wind sector, life sciences, and 5G. No pension reforms to encourage growing British companies to stay here, instead being forced abroad for funding, which contributes to the UK’s stagnating growth. No serious plan to help get energy bills down, the energy price cap has increased by a half this parliament. Cameron announces sanctions against four Hamas leaders and two of its financial backers David Cameron, the new foreign secretary, has announced sanctions against four senior Hamas leaders and two of the militant group’s financiers. In a statement accompanying the announcement, Cameron said: We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to disrupt the abhorrent activity of this terrorist organisation, working with the United States and our other allies, making it harder for them to operate and isolating them on the world stage. The Palestinian people are victims of Hamas too. We stand in solidarity with them and will continue to support humanitarian pauses to allow significantly more lifesaving aid to reach Gaza. Conservative supporters loyal to Boris Johnson have been highly critical of the reshuffle in private, Sky’s Sam Coates reports. He has seen WhatsApp messages on groups set up to support the Conservative Democratic Organisation, a Tory campaign set up by Johnson supporters, and the exchanges show participants expressing alarm at the reshuffle decisions, and calling for a leadership contest. Martin Vickers, a Conservative MP who sits on the 1922 Committee’s executive, told Radio 4’s World at One that, although he did not know how many MPs had submitted a letter calling for a vote of confidence in Rishi Sunak (see 2.11pm), he thought there were “nowhere near” enough of them to reach the threshold that would lead to such a vote happening. Voters overwhelmingly back Sunak"s decision to sack Braverman, poll suggests Voters overwhelmingly support Rishi Sunak’s decision to sack Suella Braverman, but are more likely than not to think that bringing back David Cameron was the wrong decision, according to new polling from Ipsos. This is from Cameron Garrett, who works for the polling company. The full findings are here. Commenting on the findings, Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said: The appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary appears to divide opinion – although those voting Conservative in 2019 are more positive. The public hold generally unfavourable views of his time in office, especially regarding UK-EU relations, public services and how his governmen