While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insists he hasn’t “given up” on his Conservative Party ahead of polling day on Thursday (despite urging voters to vote Tory to prevent a Labour “supermajority”), others are being far more candid about the party’s chances this week – namely, former home secretary Suella Braverman.
Braverman – the Tory candidate for Fareham and Waterlooville – is no stranger to penning controversial opinion pieces for newspapers, having written a piece for The Times in November in which she branded pro-Palestine protesters “hate marchers” and said there is a “perception that senior police officers play favourites” when it comes to handling demonstrations.
The article sparked criticism from the public and other politicians, and just days later, she was sacked as home secretary by Sunak.
That hasn’t stopped her from being a thorn in her former boss’ side since, though, as in May she wrote a piece for The Telegraph in which she gave her brutal stance on the Conservatives’ disastrous local election results that month.
The piece, titled “The Tories must change course, or be wiped out”, reads: “The prime minister’s plan is not working and he needs to change course. Otherwise, we are heading for a Keir Starmer government with his band of hard-left fanatics set to undo Brexit, open our borders and meddle pointlessly with everything from employment laws to the number of bins you put out each week.”
Oh, and the line about the bins is inaccurate, just to be clear.
And now, two months on from that op-ed, it seems Braverman hasn’t seen the change from the Conservatives that she wanted to see, as she was back in The Telegraph on Tuesday conceding that the election is “over” for her party.
“When even cabinet ministers are admitting that Labour will win the election, and that Thursday’s vote is now all about forming a strong enough opposition, one needs to read the writing on the wall: it’s over and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition,” she writes.
Braverman also goes on to claim Tory voters feel the party hasn’t “delivered for them on things they voted for time and time again”, and that the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is “entirely our own fault”.
She continues: “We may lose hundreds of excellent MPs because of our abject inability to have foreseen this inevitability months ago: that our failure to unite the right would destroy us.
“Tory cabinet ministers attacking Farage is like a patient berating the doctor for the illness. It’s an illness that could have been easily prevented by the patient taking heed of the warnings years ago, admitting to the problem and adopting some healthy habits.”
Despite all the defeatism contained in other paragraphs, Braverman does round off the piece by stating she is “still hoping for an England-style triumph” – referring to the football team’s lucky victory over Slovakia on Sunday courtesy of goals by Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane.
“But if we don’t enjoy the same luck, we need a searingly honest post-match analysis. Because the fight for the soul of the Conservative Party will determine whether we allow Starmer a clear run at destroying our country for good or having a chance to redeem it in due course.
“Indeed, it will decide whether our party continues to exist at all,” she concludes.
And now Twitter/X users are shocked Braverman has published such remarks before the public even heads to the polls:
Reform UK’s picked up on the comments too, writing on Twitter/X that “even Suella Braverman admits the Tories are finished”.
“They have failed Britain. Reform UK is now the real opposition to Keir Starmer,” it said.
Awkward.
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