The announcement this morning, Monday 13th November, by the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak that he has decided to replace Suella Braverman as Home Secretary, was widely predicted. The final decision came after an eventful weekend, which saw far-right protesters attacking and injuring police during the Armistice commemorations and then tracking and abusing peaceful protesters on their way home from a largely peaceful and historic pro-Palestine march.
Videos online showing far right thugs hurling Islamophobic chants and abuse at peaceful protesters go viral on social media
Videos went viral on social media showing groups of Far-right thugs hurling Islamophobic chants at peaceful protesters, telling them that they do not belong in this country and referring to them as terrorists. British Transport Police have subsequently put out an identity appeal ‘following the racially aggravated altercation at Waterloo station on Saturday 11th November’. Impressively, the identities of most of those involved in the disturbance were revealed very quickly and it is expected that arrests will soon follow.
Most political pundits had already predicted that the Home Secretary’s publishing of a controversial article in the Times Newspaper last Thursday, without clearance from No 10, was a breach of the ministerial code and required sanction, without which confidence in the government would be severely undermined. Many reported of the growing disquiet amongst the more moderate wings – the so called ‘One Nation Conservatives’, of the Conservative Party, especially given the Home Secretary’s recent attempt to criminalise the homeless and to ban charities from providing tents to those sleeping rough. Some expressed the belief that Braverman had engineered her own sacking, so that she could be seen as something of a martyr in order to set herself up for a leadership challenge after the next election, when Tory seats are expected to be in free fall.
Former Attorney General says the former Home Secretary is ‘very dangerous’
On Friday, former cabinet minister, Attorney general, Dominic Greaves KC, spoke passionately to BBC Newsnight and pulled no punches in his condemnation of the Home Secretary’s actions. He said:
‘She’s done two things. Firstly she’s carried out an attack on the independence of the police – and they are independent. They must be allowed to enforce the law without fear or favour. It is not for her publicly to attack the police in this fashion and it gives the impression that she wishes to control the police decision-making, and that in a free and democratic society is unacceptable. That’s her first thing – then, on the face of it, she has created a chaos within government, because it is quite apparent that there are large numbers of her fellow ministers who disagree fundamentally with what she is saying. So the government’s collective line which is essential for the proper functioning, is being torn apart….from taking a tough-thumping exercise where she denounces the police and the police’s judgement and then puts the police under pressure to do her bidding…if the police view is that these marches can be carried out peacefully, with no significant public disorder, then what she is doing, is undermining some absolutely basic tenets of freedom of expression in this country and she cannot and must not be allowed to do it. From that point of view, she is actually very dangerous. If she has broken the ministerial code, that’s a matter for the Prime Minister, she should be sacked. Because otherwise the Prime Minister’s authority is shot to pieces.’
London’s Muslim Mayor joins call for Braverman sacking as he blames her squarely for unrest
London’s Muslim Mayor, Sadiq Khan, laid much of the blame for the unrest on the weekend, squarely on the shoulders of the former Home Secretary, whom he accused of stirring up the far-right ‘so called ‘counter protesters’. Notorious former EDL leader, Tommy Robinson put out a call to his latest online group named ‘Football Lads Against Extremism’ to rally his supporters and ‘firms’ from different parts of the country, to join him in standing shoulder to shoulder with our veterans that fought for our freedom’.
Exclusion Zone order backfires
It was especially ironic that pro-Palestinian marches were subject to an exclusion order, preventing them from getting anywhere close to the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Saturday, despite the fact that the march was scheduled to take place more than an hour after the minute of silence and the route of the march ensured that protesters would not be anywhere close to the Cenotaph. The exclusion order, did not however prevent the far-right thugs from entering the exclusion zone and ultimately causing a major disruption, terrorising onlookers and injury to police.
Calling for the Home Secretary to be sacked, the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan spoke after news broke of violent clashes between the far-right ‘counter-protesters’ and the police, which led to over 100 arrests on Saturday. The Mayor was unequivocal that the clashes were a ‘direct result’ of the Home Secretary’s words – especially her allegation of Metropolitan Police bias towards ‘pro-Palestinian mobs’. Commenting in the Mirror on Sunday Newspaper, he said:
‘Sadly, these scenes were predictable after a week of efforts from some to stoke tension…they were a direct result of the Home Secretary’s words and behaviour…If Suella Braverman had any honour she would resign – and if not, Rishi Sunak should sack her’
LBC’s most popular presenter vents his outrage and blames Suella Braverman for ‘the absolutely appalling events of this weekend’
Just minutes after the Prime Minister made his announcement of the sacking of Suella Braverman, James O’Brien – presenter on LBC Radio, took to the airwaves and was unable to hold back his outrage at the actions of the former Home Secretary, claiming that she was ‘desperately hoping’ for violence to break out on the weekend.
He said:
‘Why did Suella Braverman attack the police and summon a mob of far right hooligans to pollute our capital city on a day of remembrance, while 300,000 overwhelmingly peaceful people sought to call for an armistice on the day that we commemorate what is for British people the most resonant armistice of all. How did that happen and crucially I think, how did we let it happen?’
I don’t want Suella Braverman to depart in disguise as it were, I don’t want the absolutely appalling events of this weekend, caused inarguably and irrefutably by her. The more a right wing commentator or a right wing politician shouts that it wasn’t her fault, the louder they are, the more certain you can be that they know in their heart of hearts that it was absolutely her intention and it failed largely because the peaceful protesters stayed peaceful and the Metropolitan Police did their job in the most unfair and unacceptable of circumstances…
Having a Home Secretary attack you verbally and then days later have far right thugs attack you physically is like night following day and most categorically not – a coincidence!’
