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Post by northwestman on Oct 31, 2022 13:14:22 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Oct 31, 2022 17:13:49 GMT 1
Some of the briefing against Braverman seems to be coming not just from officials, but from other Tories. This may be significant because ultimately what matters when a minister is fighting to keep their job is not so much what they did wrong, but how much support they have from within their party.
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Post by northwestman on Oct 31, 2022 17:44:17 GMT 1
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, released this statement about the letter released today from Braverman about the events that led to her resignation two weeks ago. Cooper said:
This letter fails to answer all the serious questions about the home secretary’s irresponsible conduct and shows that neither she nor the prime minister recognise the gravity of these issues.
The home secretary has now admitted she sent government documents to her personal phone six times in 43 days - that’s once in every week she was in the post.
There are still significant inconsistencies in the information in this letter and her original resignation letter. There are also still no answers about alleged security breaches and leak investigations while she was attorney general or about whether the prime minister ignored the cabinet secretary’s advice in reappointing her just six days after she was forced to resign.
It is also astonishing that as home secretary in charge of national security and former attorney general she has therefore needed to seek an additional briefing on “what constitutes appropriate use of government and personal IT”.
This therefore leaves more unanswered questions, more confusion and more chaos from the home secretary and the government. It shows why Rishi Sunak was so irresponsible in reappointing her to her post.
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Post by Valerioch on Oct 31, 2022 21:18:10 GMT 1
Fully support Ms Braverman and her aims regarding the channel.
I only hope she has more substance than her predecessor, who was all talk no action
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Post by Dancin on Nov 1, 2022 8:35:05 GMT 1
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Post by davycrockett on Nov 1, 2022 9:27:17 GMT 1
Fully support Ms Braverman and her aims regarding the channel. I only hope she has more substance than her predecessor, who was all talk no action You have to work within the laws they just try to make it up as they go and deal with one crisis after another badly. Doesn’t seem like the situations improved over the last few years despite lots of strong talk, no action. |
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Post by kenwood on Nov 1, 2022 9:28:51 GMT 1
Do try and keep up Dancin . This Government have thrown in for good measure a free holiday in sunny Rwanda . Stay as long as you like with no passport control to contend with , no waiting around the carousel for your luggage to appear and a nice bus to take you to your accommodation. When word gets round they’ll be coming across the channel in Long Boats . |
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Post by northwestman on Nov 1, 2022 16:04:31 GMT 1
Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet, who has Manston migrant centre in his constituency, has said that he does not trust the home secretary, Suella Braverman.
Gale told Times Radio:
Her language yesterday, I’m afraid, suggested that she is only really interested in playing the right wing.
The fact of the matter is that, of course, I’m also defending my constituents’ interest because the facility at Manston was designed to turn people around in 24 hours, maximum 48 hours, and move them on, it’s a processing centre, not a refugee camp.
I was given a clear undertaking by Priti Patel as home secretary and by the minister of state that that is what would happen and that there would be no expansion of the facility.
Over the last few days, we have seen an almost doubling of the size of the number of people in Manston and a massive building of further accommodation, and that is not acceptable.
It’s in breach of the undertakings that I was given and I’m not prepared to accept it. I don’t accept or trust this home secretary’s word.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2022 19:33:10 GMT 1
Just for a bit of context following the Suella Braverman comment about an invasion. Granted the figures have probably changed somewhat over the last 12 months, but I doubt there is very much change.
Perhaps if this government were to properly fund those with responsibility for administering the immigration and asylum systems we could process people a lot quicker, weed out those Albanians here with spurious (at best) claims and repatriate them to their homeland, but that doesn't fit in with their far right agenda of turning the entire country against any form of immigration. Much better to feed the hate, than actually fix the bloody system 
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Post by northwestman on Nov 2, 2022 12:27:58 GMT 1
Already, Mr Sunak has mishandled two major issues in his short tenure as PM. The first is the appointment of Suella Braverman as Home Secretary after she had been forced to resign by his predecessor.
Backbenchers believe he took the decision as part of a deal to secure her backing for the leadership, and with it the support of the right wing of the party. But there are dissenting voices within the Tory ranks who feel it was an unnecessary sacrifice on his part, given the European Research Group wing of the party has become far more fractured in recent years, and no longer acts as a homogenous group.
Ms Braverman’s incendiary language towards asylum seekers is attracting headlines, which may play well for the party in the right wing press and a section of the electorate. But her admission that she breached ministerial rules six times and her potential to “blow up” runs counter to Mr Sunak’s pledge to run a serious, stable and above all compassionate Conservative Government. He may decide she risks being more trouble than she is worth.
Another unforced error is Mr Sunak’s hokey-cokey on attending the COP27 climate change summit in Egypt. It could be that he is yet to recognise that he is now Prime Minister, and not the chancellor, and his presence on the world stage on such matters is as much, if not more important, than poring over the Treasury’s data charts ahead of the autumn statement.
The i.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 2, 2022 12:53:47 GMT 1
When even Priti Patel thinks you’ve stepped over the mark as Home Secretary, you know you’ve done something seriously wrong. Or at least, you ought to.
But when Suella Braverman finally came out of hiding to make a statement to the Commons about the catalogue of chaos that has followed her reappointment, she was unabashed as she was unapologetic.
Patel, a self-described scourge of political correctness, a warrior against “woke” before the term was ever deployed, is so hardline that her successor could look lame in comparison.
So Patel’s decision, hours before Braverman’s statement, to let it be known that she had personally but reluctantly signed off extra hotel bills for Channel crossing migrants, was a very significant move indeed.
And the new allegation against the Home Secretary - that she ignored officials’ advice against longer, illegal stays for refugees at Manston airport - is one she struggled to defend.
Sources close to Patel (who don’t forget knows more than most what it’s like to survive a breach of the ministerial code, thanks to an indulgent PM) said that as much as she “hated” paying the accommodation costs she knew it was the legal and humane thing to do. It’s claimed that junior minister Tom Pursglove had similar concerns and successor Grant Shapps reversed her policy.
Although she insisted she had overseen the expansion of hotel places available, with her next breath Braverman gave the game away. “What I have refused to do is to prematurely release thousands of people into local communities without having anywhere for them to stay,” she said. This felt like an effective admission that she had knowingly broken the law in detaining asylum seekers longer than necessary.
It was clear she wanted to depict such legal safeguards as dispensable, and there were plenty of Tory MPs ready to lap that up, as well as her attempt to depict asylum seekers as “illegal economic migrants”.
At one point, the Home Secretary actually counselled Opposition MPs against using inflammatory language, yet she herself "out-Priti-d" Patel by talking about "the invasion" of Britain by small boats. "Let's stop pretending they're all refugees in distress," she declared.
Patel was not in the Commons to hear Braverman’s defence and it’s probably a good job she wasn’t, given how much her successor dumped on her record. Braverman said that on arriving at the Home Office she was shocked at how much was being spent on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers and repeatedly said the cost was £6.8m a day, or £150 a night per person.
In another extraordinary self-own, she said “the system is broken, illegal immigration is out of control” (to which Labour MPs yelled “and you broke it!”). That’s the system that Patel presided over, and for which the Conservatives have been responsible for the last 12 years.
Braverman didn’t once address that one root cause of the problem was the Home Office failure to process asylum claims swiftly, a failure that has created a huge backlog of 100,000 cases that puts pressure on housing - especially when the Tories have failed to build enough social housing over the past decade.
Despite her attempts to portray herself as even tougher than Patel, the Home Secretary’s failure to come clean about her errors is what may lead ultimately to her downfall.
Her latest admission of six other instances of sending sensitive documents to her personal email suggests the water torture of her brief record will continue, even if that means Rishi Sunak appearing to mislead MPs about it (he said in PMQs she “raised” an email security breach, when she took hours to do so).
The key question now is whether Sunak is prepared to put up with yet more chaos. Braverman’s statement felt like she’d been ordered to clean up the mess she’d created. If Sunak really wanted to sack his minister, her admission that she had deliberately detained people at Manston longer than the 24 hours the law requires feels like the perfect opportunity.
But all the signs are so far that Sunak will “do a Boris”, stand by his beleaguered Home Secretary and cynically exploit immigration as a political weapon - rather than taking practical steps to both help refugees and combat illegal migration.
The only problem is that Sunak sent a strong message last week that his premiership would be a break with Johnson’s worst flaws, not the continuation of them.
He may yet think that by giving Braverman enough political rope she may still hang herself. Judging by the support she got from his backbenches today, that’s a dangerous tactic.
The i.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 2, 2022 16:31:29 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/02/keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-grubby-deal-suella-braverman-pmqsStarmer accused Sunak of bringing back Braverman, only days after Truss had sacked her for a data security breach, so as to secure her support in his bid to replace Truss as prime minister without a full vote of Conservative members. “He did a grubby deal with her, putting her in charge of Britain’s security just so he could dodge an election,” Starmer said. “She’s broken the ministerial code, lost control of a refugee centre and put our security at risk. She did get one thing right – she finally admitted that the Tories have broken the asylum system. “So why doesn’t he get a proper home secretary, scrap the Rwandan gimmick, crack down on smuggling gangs, end the small boat crossings, speed up asylum claims and agree an international deal on refugees? Start governing for once and get a grip.” In response, Sunak said Labour’s asylum and immigration policy was “a blank page”, and that Starmer had threatened national security by supporting Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Is mentioning Corbyn the best Sunak can do in defending Braverman?
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Post by ssshrew on Nov 2, 2022 16:35:51 GMT 1
Apparently so!
It should also have been pointed out to him that our police force seems to be in a bit of a mess as well and perhaps he could tell us what he will be asking her to do about it.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 2, 2022 16:56:58 GMT 1
If true, then this is an interesting development. www.lbc.co.uk/news/suella-braverman-refused-hotel-bookings-migrants-tory-areas/A senior government source told LBC Suella Braverman was presented with options for locations to move asylum seekers from the overcrowded site in Kent, where conditions are said to be “wretched”, but wouldn’t approve those in Conservative seats. Priti Patel is also accused of adopting the same approach when she was Home Secretary and is said to have refused to sign off bookings for the same reason over the summer. |
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Post by northwestman on Nov 2, 2022 20:07:10 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/02/home-office-leaves-asylum-seekers-from-manston-stranded-in-central-londonThe Home Office left asylum seekers from the Manston immigration centre in central London without accommodation or warm clothing, as officials attempted to reduce acute overcrowding. About 50 asylum seekers from Kent were also deposited from a bus by Victoria coach station at around 11pm on Saturday, according to a witness. “They were still on the street at midnight, trying to work out what to do, where to go. They had no money, and hadn’t even been told where they were,” said the witness, an Afghan asylum seeker, who asked not to be named. He has been housed in a nearby hostel for the past 14 months, and watched them arrive. “I was shocked. I tried to help; I showed them where to get free wifi, where to sit and get warm in the station.” Hundreds of asylum seekers have been rapidly moved out of the Marston camp in the past two days amid heavy criticism of overcrowded conditions at the immigration centre, where this weekend about 4,000 people were being held at a site designed for 1,600. www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/02/tory-mps-councils-resist-home-office-plans-asylum-seekers-hotelsSeveral Conservative MPs are resisting government attempts to use hotels to house asylum seekers, while at least four councils are taking legal action to block the move.
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Post by edgmond on Nov 3, 2022 6:09:04 GMT 1
If true, then this is an interesting development. www.lbc.co.uk/news/suella-braverman-refused-hotel-bookings-migrants-tory-areas/A senior government source told LBC Suella Braverman was presented with options for locations to move asylum seekers from the overcrowded site in Kent, where conditions are said to be “wretched”, but wouldn’t approve those in Conservative seats. Priti Patel is also accused of adopting the same approach when she was Home Secretary and is said to have refused to sign off bookings for the same reason over the summer. This is highly ironic, bearing in mind that the whole of Kent (with the exception of Canterbury) has Tory MPs. It is symptomatic of the complacent neglect with which the party treats some of its heartlands. Not only is Kent bearing the brunt of the migrant problem but it also being swallowed up by seemingly unlimited housing development with some of the worst infrastructure in the country. I would love to see a Blue Wall backlash at the next election, akin to what happened to Labour in 2019. Levelling up, anyone? Having said that, Roger Gale is a very good constituency MP who has often called out the shambles that his party has overseen in the guise of government. He has been particularly scathing about Braverman, as he was about Johnson. He would be a loss to Parliament. |
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Post by northwestman on Nov 7, 2022 19:02:08 GMT 1
Suella Braverman fails to turn up to the House of Commons to answer the Urgent Question by Roger Gale on the Government's treatment of refugee children and overcrowding at Manston.
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Post by staffordshrew on Dec 4, 2022 10:52:05 GMT 1
Should Braverman just have let him go while historic allegations are investigated, or was she right to ensure we all know, even though, like everyone else, he's innocent until proven guilty? It looks like an excercise in making Bravermann look decisive to me.
"The head of the police watchdog has been forced to resign after becoming the subject of a police investigation, Home Secretary Suella Braverman says.
Independent Office for Police Conduct director general Michael Lockwood said on Friday that he was resigning for "personal and domestic reasons".
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Post by ssshrew on Dec 4, 2022 12:12:35 GMT 1
Anything to save face and curry favour for me I’m afraid.
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Post by northwestman on Dec 17, 2022 15:43:58 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Dec 21, 2022 16:49:54 GMT 1
Lady Hamwee asks if disused cruise ships might be used to house asylum seekers.
Braverman says her preference is to house asylum seekers via local authorities. They currently house 57,000 people. She wants to get that to 100,000.
The next option is to go for hotels.
But hotel use is an unacceptable cost to the taxpayers, she says. That is why the government said they would use other venues.
She says the government is looking at using disused holiday parks and former student halls to house migrants.
As for whether cruise ships could be used, Braverman just says that the government is talking to a “wide variety of providers and that “everything is still on the table and nothing is excluded”.
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