Why is Suella Braverman going after people who eat tofu now?

I occasionally enjoy tofu, is she talking to me? asks Salma Shah

Suella Braverman may not be your cup of tea, but she’s not without merit (AFP/Getty)

What’s gotten into Suella Braverman, the now-former home secretary? She reintroduced the Public Order Bill in the Commons yesterday with the look of someone who’d had one too many espressos before hitting the dispatch box. The bill is designed to stop disruption to major transport infrastructure by overzealous protestors. It is a sensible bit of legislation that needs a bit of careful handling to get it passed into law.

Why, then, did Braverman, whilst commending the bill, lambast the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” and the “coalition of chaos” as the people responsible for such self-defeating acts?

Come again, Suella? The who? I occasionally eat tofu, is she talking to me? Or is it the whole meat-free crowd, who encourage civil unrest with their offensive pulse-laden diets? I recently switched to oat milk in my coffee, and now I’m a bit worried that I’ve crossed some kind of legal line with my occasional fears about how dairy cows are treated.

Surely, it can’t be directed at me? I have no problem with this legislation, for the most part it’s on the right side of public opinion. People should be free to go about their daily lives without being inhibited by protest. Most people are trying to do the right thing and are already frazzled by the recycling bin sorts, the fear of water shortages and increasing food prices. They don’t need to be made to feel worse because they aren’t throwing soup on priceless works of art to “start a conversation” or glueing themselves to the north circular to “make a point”.

Given this, Braverman’s outburst is even more bizarre. What is it about a prime minister on the ropes that makes cabinet ministers go ever so slightly tin-eared? You’d think the last month of government would make any ambitious pretender think twice. Or at least have some humility about using the phrase “coalition of chaos”.

But of course, this is a classic example of a senior politician speaking with a particular audience in mind. With Liz Truss possibly days away from departure, could the current home secretary be eyeing a promotion? Making rousing statements in the chamber to galvanise backbenchers behind her astounding political attack lines? Could it be that there’s a little more to yesterday’s performance than an impassioned plea for the Public Order Bill?

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If the pretenders are now reassembling, ready to pounce at any moment, they need to remember that no one is going to make a decision based on poor attempts at soundbites in the chamber. They will be exposed as the obvious props they are. Instead, what will be noted is the seriousness with which any contender takes the hard choices ahead.

Suella Braverman may not be your cup of tea, but she’s not without merit. She won a scholarship to a private school and got herself into Cambridge. She was a planning lawyer and now she’s doing the hardest job in government. She has the capacity to realise that this is about winning people’s trust, not the pantomime performances and the edgy comebacks to the opposition.

Just do the job. Try your best to do it well and you’ll stand a much better chance of getting people to take you seriously. Don’t waste your time going after the tofu eaters. No one dislikes them enough to care.