Why Suella Braverman is politically useful to Rishi Sunak

The reappointed home secretary may terrify refugees, but she also reassures the new breed of Conservative nationalists in the Commons, says Sean O’Grady

Braverman leaves the first meeting of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet on Wednesday (Getty)

Opposition parties have rightly fastened upon the rapid reappointment of the leaky Suella Braverman as home secretary, with the added spice that fellow security risk Gavin Williamson has also scraped back onto the top table as an ominously-titled minister without portfolio.

But it is Braverman who has offended people, because of her views on refugees, repugnant as they are. She does, after all, have a dream of seeing a picture on the front page of the newspapers of distressed asylum seekers, including genuine ones, on a plane to Rwanda. It’s hardly Martin Luther King.

So she’s a disgrace. However, she is politically useful to Rishi Sunak. It would seem to be no coincidence that her last-minute support for Sunak in the post-Truss leadership contest has been followed by her swift rehabilitation. Despite saying during the party conference that Boris Johnson had been the victim of a “coup”, Braverman threw what weight she has behind Sunak instead of Johnson. As a former chair of the rightist European Research Group and virtually an extremist, her intervention may have sliced a few hardliners away from Johnson’s abortive return.