Suella Braverman is speeding towards the exit marked ‘arrogant and hypocritical’

Had Suella Braverman abided by Rishi Sunak’s injunction on his first day in office to practice ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability’, she would not now be in the trouble she finds herself

To the public, Suella Braverman simply looks arrogant and hypocritical – one rule for her; another for everyone else (PA)

Suella Braverman should have resigned as home secretary as soon as the miserable facts of her speeding fine had become public knowledge.

Or rather, when it became apparent that she was secretly attempting to secure for herself a kind of “private justice”, subverting the civil service and, reportedly, misleading the media in an attempt to keep this relatively small offence away from public attention.

For someone who boasts a degree in law, trained as a barrister, is an experienced politician and was at the time a government law officer as attorney general of England and Wales, no less, it represents a jaw-dropping lack of judgement. She has demonstrated, once again, on the grounds of her sheer incompetence, that she is unsuited to high office.

As usual in such scandals, it’s the cover-up that’s the problem, not so much the initial offence. Having three penalty points on a driving licence has probably never been a resigning matter, and it would not be now.

The list of senior politicians who’ve been “done” for speeding is a long one, from Harriet Harman (99mph) to Nicholas Soames (47mph). She broke the highway code, which was not much more than an embarrassment, albeit one she could not countenance.

But what followed was a potential breach of the ministerial code, a rather more grievous affair.

Even at their most sanctimonious or indignant, neither Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner nor Yvette Cooper would be calling for an ethics investigation into Ms Braverman had she fessed up and not thrown the weight of her office behind suppressing public knowledge of the speeding ticket and attempting to gain special treatment.

To the public, that simply looks arrogant and hypocritical – one rule for her; another for everyone else. Had Ms Braverman abided by the prime minister’s injunction on his first day in office to practice “integrity, professionalism and accountability”, she would not now be in the trouble she finds herself.

Ms Braverman has not been a success in office. We do not know if the speeding fine was a “first offence”, but she certainly has “previous” in breaching the ministerial code. She holds the unenviable distinction of being fired from the Home Office by Liz Truss for a previous breach of the code when she was funnelling confidential documents to a backbench ally – only to be re-appointed six days later by Mr Sunak.

Even in a world where sentencing policy is regarded by some as far too lenient, that was a truly generous act of forgiveness on the part of Mr Sunak. It may, of course, have had something to do with Ms Braverman delivering a couple of dozen vital votes from hard-right MPs for Mr Sunak in the leadership contest.

Politically, too, she has been playing fast and loose. Time and again she has pushed the limits of cabinet collective responsibility to breaking point, and been widely condemned for her inhumane attitude to refugees and the dehumanising language she uses about them. Last week, she publicly and enthusiastically allied herself with the Trumpian National Conservative movement.

Yet even as her rhetoric has explored new frontiers of intolerance, her policies are failing, with no sign of irregular migration numbers coming down for the simple reason that, for all their harshness, measures such as the Rwanda plan will not act as a deterrent and will merely push more migration into entirely clandestine routes.

It is difficult, in other words, to understand quite why Ms Braverman occupies the position she does. Like Gavin Williamson, Nadhim Zahawi and Dominic Raab before her, she is becoming a serious political liability for the prime minister and his party.

Mr Sunak has an unfortunate habit of getting tied up in the process and hanging on to ministers for far longer than is wise in the face of the inevitable. And the second fall of Ms Braverman very much feels like it cannot be long postponed.