Suella Braverman, the UK’s Home Secretary and Conservative Party member, was accused this week of asking officials in her ministry to arrange for her a confidential course in responsible driving so she doesn’t lose points on her driving license following a fine for excess speed. In doing so, she allegedly tried to take advantage of her position as a minister, trying to obtain a private course that did not receive attention or publicity. The officials to whom you referred your request reported it to the Cabinet Office, the executive department of the UK government which supports the work of the prime minister.
According to some reconstructions, Braverman then also turned to one of her collaborators, to ask him to contact a company that organizes courses and let her take part in a session anonymously. Her request was denied in both cases.
In the UK, the responsible driving course is an alternative to deducting points from the driving licence, and is feasible for minor road traffic infringements. These courses are organized by private companies, are group courses and can be attended online or face-to-face. It happened more than once that individual courses were organized, in case the person was famous. The presence of a celebrity is indeed considered a distraction for the other participants, which the course should make drivers more careful and aware of. It had never happened – as far as we know – that a politician made this kind of request.
Braverman had been fined for speeding in the summer of 2022, when she was attorney general for England and Wales, the main legal adviser to the British monarchy and government. Her requests regarding her course date back to a later time, when she was already interior minister in Rishi Sunak’s conservative government. Braverman had also been interior minister in the previous government, that of Liz Truss, which lasted for a month between September and October 2022.
Il Times on Sunday, the Sunday edition of the newspaper Timesreleased the news regarding his demands on Sunday, and Braverman has received criticism from both the opposition and within the Conservative party.
Some representatives of the Labor Party and the Liberal Democrat party argue that Braverman violated the ministerial regulation and attempted to circumvent the law. Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, also faced calls from the opposition to authorize Laurie Magnus, the prime minister’s independent ethics adviser on relations with his government ministers, to set up a commission of inquiry. After consulting with Magnus, however, Sunak has decided not to authorize any official proceedings regarding the behavior of the interior minister.
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During her political career, Suella Braverman, who was born in London 43 years ago, has received much criticism for her reactionary positions or for behaviors and acts judged inappropriate for her roles. When she was still Interior Minister in Liz Truss’ government she was forced to resign due to a breach of ministerial regulation: Braverman had shared via his private e-mail address, an official document containing the written proposal of a draft law on immigration, material considered sensitive due to the repercussions that this type of law has on the economy of the states. The day following her resignation, however, Liz Truss also resigned.
In January 2023, after she labeled migrant people who enter the UK illegally by boat crossing the English Channel as “invaders”, she was accused to use a type of rhetoric similar to that of the Nazi regime. The accusations, as well as from some Holocaust survivors, had come from the well-known former footballer and sports commentator Gary Lineker, who had also criticized her for her proposed law against irregular immigration which would make it almost impossible to seek asylum in the UK. Braverman had stood her ground, and she hadn’t apologized.
Some Conservative MPs have recently argued that Braverman is trying to step up as party leader in Sunak’s place, with a view to becoming prime minister. In the United Kingdom, the leader of the party that controls the majority of seats in parliament is in fact appointed prime minister: the next elections are scheduled for January 2025, but the precariousness of the last governments and the loss of consensus of the Conservative party make the political situation lively and unstable.
The accusations about his ambitions refer to a very protagonist speech that Braverman had given during a conference organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation, an association of the US populist right. Braverman had harshly criticized trends in irregular immigration, and some of her party colleagues had protested that as Home Secretary, immigration issues should be her responsibility.
In the same speech Braverman also attacked Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labor Party and of the opposition, focusing on his positions on LGBTQ+ issues, which are much more progressive and open than Braverman’s. The interior minister had made one nasty joke on gender transition, making fun of the fact that Starmer considers a trans woman as a “woman” – not a “man”: Braverman had said that following this way of thinking, Starmer too, if she ever becomes prime minister of the United Kingdom, could be dubbed the country’s “first female Labor prime minister” (the UK has never had a Labor prime minister).
Recently the Guardian reported the allegations of some people who work together with Braverman, who complain gross errors in some official statements by the minister, which would have made verification interventions by the officials of his ministry mandatory. The same sources argued that these corrections had not been necessary when working with Priti Patel, Home Secretary during the two governments of Boris Johnson. Among the mistakes made by Braverman, the article reports a series of inaccuracies regarding the number of migrants from Ukraine and Hong Kong, which the current minister had overestimated in a statement by the tens of thousands.