Suella Braverman is asking for private justice. She must resign

By reportedly asking for a speeding penalty to be handled on the sly, the home secretary seems to think it’s one rule for her, another for the rest of us

According to her defenders, Suella Braverman – who really should have resigned in shame by now – is a victim of a conspiracy. The Whitehall “blob”, that disparaging moniker given by former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings to everything that got in his way, has apparently moved against her, picking off another Leaver, or “proud Spartan” as she likes to style herself, in an effort to undermine that most noble of projects, Brexit.

Apparently everyone is in on it – the civil service, the BBC, Tony Blair, and of course the European Union. They’ve not blamed Bill Gates, the Rothschilds and George Soros yet, but it is surely only a matter of time. I’m just waiting for Braverman to renounce vaccines in an attempt to inoculate herself against criticism.

For the Bravermanites, her only offence was to ask for a one-to-one speed awareness course. This is something, so we’re told, celebrities do all the time – that is, of course, when Nick Freeman, nicknamed Mr Loophole, hadn’t already got them off the charge (Freeman has already tweeted to say that he’s performed this service for “several high profile clients”).

Perhaps “Suella”, as she’s called by her fans in a vain attempt to humanise her, wanted only to avoid disputing the course of events with her armed Praetorian guard in tow. It’s important to get the facts straight. One false move from the instructor as he reached into his pocket for the pen for the whiteboard and we’d all be sorry. Suella was only thinking of others, as we know she always does. So what’s wrong with that?

Well, a few things. One, it’s wrong to use the civil service for a personal matter. Braverman didn’t make her request to the police herself or via her personal agent, such as a solicitor.

She used taxpayer-funded Covid servants or special advisers. She thus placed them in an invidious position, under an obligation to her to resolve a private matter. It’s not their job to sort out her personal problems with the law. It is against the ethos of the civil service, and the ministerial code.

She should not have made the request to them to sort it out for her. Perhaps she was embarrassed and didn’t want to be in some room with the hoi polloi? That could explain why she reportedly also asked for the camera on the course she was set to attend to be turned off and to use an alias. It appears that she also expected accounts of her ridiculous behaviour never to make it into the public domain. This too was foolish.

So vain! So entitled! You would not think, from what she did, that Braverman is a trained barrister; an experienced politician; and was at the time a law officer in the government as attorney general. Rather like the original offence, her actions in seeking to avoid the negative publicity suggests that she should really have known better, wasn’t paying attention and made an unfortunate misjudgment.

What she really needs is to go on an ethics awareness course. Her knowledge of the ministerial code seems as shaky as her grip on the highway code. She really should be in a room with Dominic Raab, Boris Johnson and a few others being asked to put their hand up if they know when it's permissible to bully the staff. (Trick question - the answer is never).

Not is this her first “offence”, politically speaking. Suella Braverman is so misbehaved and useless that she has the unenviable distinction of being sacked by Liz Truss. Truss! She was fined for leaking confidential government documents to an influential mate in the backbenches for personal political advantage, and Truss had no choice but to let her go.

After barely a week out of office – an overly lenient sentence, surely – Braverman was pardoned by Rishi Sunak when he replaced Truss and invited her back into his cabinet. Not because the nation was missing Braverman’s talents or out of a misplaced sense of mercy, but because Braverman had some ERG votes in her pocket, and that was the price Sunak was willing to pay for them.

This is, in essence, why she is still there, despite her weekly challenges to collective cabinet responsibility and Sunak’s authority. Indeed, the other “crime” in all this is Sunak taking her back into government knowing full well what she was like (quod vide Gavin Williamson, Nadhim Zahawi and Dominic Raab).

As it happens, having been hauled in for a speed awareness course myself, I reckon Braverman would have enjoyed the experience had she attended in person. It was a bit like a film script, or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, as a dozen or so people from all classes and backgrounds were thrown together with one thing in common: they needed help.

One by one we got up, stated our names, and confessed the nature of our felony and why we were there. It broke the ice. We all got on very well, and the collective element helped us all confront our problem: we realised how badly we were in denial about the indisputable fact that speeding kills. It would have done Braverman, who seems just a touch arrogant in her ways, the world of good to be in there with the plebs, equal under the eyes of the law.

I’d have loved to have been in the room with Suella, exchanging glances at some especially feeble pun or laboured story; though I rather fear she might have tried to take the session over because it was getting too woke. Or gone into full National Conservative mode about how it was a matter of personal responsibility about how fast one drove, and nothing to do with the over-mighty state. You just know that’s what she really thought about her speeding – that the petty laws need not apply to her as a senior government minister who’d be PM soon. One highway code for you; another one for Suella. And that is why she should go.