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Continuing my post from Friday, November 17, much more followed on the Middle East protests in the United Kingdom and on Suella Braverman last week.
Monday, November 13 (cont’d)
Rishi Sunak conducted a major Cabinet reshuffle, which included replacing Suella Braverman with James Cleverly, former Foreign Secretary, as Home Secretary. The other earth-shattering news — I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1 — was bringing back David Cameron as Lord Cameron and putting him in the Foreign Secretary role. More on Cameron to follow this week.
Guido Fawkes has the full list of Rishi’s new appointments.
The Guardian reported that it was Suella’s tone that upset No. 10 (bold in the original there, purple emphases mine):
Downing Street implied Suella Braverman was sacked because of the tone of what she was saying, rather than because of a disagreement over policy. The press secretary said: “[The PM and Braverman] had a professional working relationship. Clearly there were some issues around language. The prime minister said he would use some of the words that she’s used before. Ultimately the prime minister reserves the right to change the team sheet at a point where he sees fit. He felt it was the right time to make some changes to his top team.”
Meanwhile, ordinary Britons following the news were concerned about the continued perception of two-tiered policing of the Middle East protests. This is the police oath. Substitute ‘King’ for ‘Queen’ here:
Interestingly, London’s Metropolitan Police said they were looking for a few suspects disrupting the pro-Palestine protest at Waterloo Station on Remembrance weekend as well as pro-Palestinian supporters carrying offensive posters at the march on Saturday, November 11.
The Revd Giles Fraser, the vicar of St Anne’s in Kew and contributor to UnHerd, wrote an article, ‘Don’t be fooled by the march for peace’:
… good people can also be the problem, providing cover for those who manifestly are not.
… it is the genteel, middle-class, soft-Left, hand-wringing antisemitism — the kind that wouldn’t dream of saying anything crass or extreme — that has been legitimised, has become high-status opinion even, on the streets of London. Do not think that your feel-good liberalism or soft leftism is any sort of prophylactic against your antisemitism. It isn’t.
Perhaps the most chilling thing I have ever read on the Holocaust was Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men. First published in 1992, it tells the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101, a non-ideological group of Germans, many not Nazi party members, just ordinary people, who were persuaded to participate in the extermination of Jews simply from peer conformity and a deference to authority. As Browning challenges the reader in the final chapter, if people like these could end up murdering Jews, who among us could really be so confident that we would have acted differently? The reason we remember is, in part, to remind ourselves of the evil of which we are capable.
Tuesday, November 14
Suella said she would have more to say about her sacking in ‘due course’.
On Tuesday, she sent a three-page letter to Rishi, which some newspapers published in full, including The Express. Excerpts follow:
Dear Prime Minister,
Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave Government. While disappointing, this is for the best …
As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as Home Secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. Those were, among other things:
1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto through, inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary thresholds on work visas;
2. Include specific ‘notwithstanding clauses’ into new legislation to stop the boats, i.e. exclude the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Act and other international law that had thus far obstructed progress on this issue;
3. Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and Retained EU Law Bills in their then existing form and timetable;
I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced ‘notwithstanding clauses’ to that effect.
Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do “whatever it takes” to stop the boats.
At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.
If we lose in the Supreme Court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one. Worse than this, your magical thinking — believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion — has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’. I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you.
I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.
If, on the other hand, we win in the Supreme Court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the Government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects. The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that Rule 39 indications are binding in international law – against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg Court.
4. Issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protects biological sex, safeguards single sex spaces, and empowers parents to know what is being taught to their children.
This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become Prime Minister.
For a year, as Home Secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest.
You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.
These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.
Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
Another cause for disappointment – and the context for my recent article in The Times – has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7th October.
I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion. Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years. I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.
As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else …
I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions.
I will, of course, continue to support the Government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda.
Sincerely,
The Supreme Court’s decision on the Rwanda arrangement was due on Wednesday. To date, not one plane with refugees has left the UK for Rwanda.
That evening on his GB News show, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said that he agreed with Suella. The Mail excerpted his Moggologue, as he calls it:
Suella Braverman’s letter is excoriating, I’ve never seen anything like it, and it’s part of the sulphurous mood on the Tory backbenches.
Suella Braverman is right – the Prime Minister has repeatedly and manifestly not delivered on his promises.
Tomorrow is a defining day for the question of the Rwanda policy… even if the Government wins tomorrow, owing to the Prime Minister’s concessions, Rwanda deportations will be subject to months of appeals and legal challenges.
Suella was willing to override the ECHR to get Rwanda done. She not only knew the public didn’t want mass migration, but also that it has social and economic consequences.
Sadly, this government no longer seems serious about solving illegal or even legal migration. If the government isn’t careful this will be reflected in the next election.
You can see the Moggologue here, after the adverts and the news at the 3:36 mark:
Before Rees-Mogg’s show was Farage. Reform Party leader Richard Tice hosted the show as Nigel is in Australia on a reality show in the jungle. His guests — The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley, Baroness Hoey, the Mail‘s Sue Reid and Conservative MP John Redwood — largely agreed that Rishi’s policies were not working. Baroness Hoey — Brexiteer and former Labour MP Kate Hoey — had much to say about how the Government had let Northern Ireland down since leaving the EU:
Meanwhile, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, currently an Independent MP, had been denying his support of Hamas. Guido featured two Corbyn interviews.
In one posted at lunchtime, Guido said (red emphases his):
Jeremy Corbyn has been lying to Times Radio and on Piers Morgan Uncensored about his infamous line calling Hamas “friends“. Attempting to rewrite history, he claimed on Times Radio last night that he only referenced Hamas as friends at the event 10 years ago as “they’d gone out of the room and I said in a collegiate way, where has our friend gone? That was all I said.” He again said the same on Piers Morgan Uncensored. Guido has the original video where he says “I’ve also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well…”
Moreover at the same event he claimed specifically that the government labelling Hamas as terrorists was a big historical mistake. It turns out that it was Corbyn making the big historical mistake…
Thanks as ever to @TimesCorbyn for the archive footage.
Guido posted the second video that evening with the following commentary:
Corbyn continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, this time repeatedly refusing to call Hamas a terror group on Piers Morgan’s TalkTV programme last night appearing with [union official] Len McCluskey (he did accept Hamas were terrorists). CCHQ [Conservative Party HQ] and James Cleverly have already jumped on it. Morgan asked Corbyn 25 times throughout the show whether Hamas are a terror group and 11 times whether they should stay in power in Gaza. An exercise in patience…
The day ended with another excellent Israeli parody of the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict — a must-watch. It has English subtitles:
Speaking of the BBC, the corporation brushed away any complaints about Match of the Day host Gary Lineker’s spiky online comments to Suella Braverman:
Wednesday, November 15
Suella was on the cover of nearly every newspaper in England. (Scotland has their own editions.)
They referred to her aforementioned three-page letter:
The Supreme Court ruled that the Rwanda arrangement was unsuitable. The Court was unconvinced that Rwanda is a safe country in which to process refugee applications. There is a risk that unsuccessful claimants could be sent to a third country. At Prime Minister’s Question that day, Rishi vowed to clarify any concerns the Supreme Court has about the policy and, where necessary, revise it.
The Times had an article on the immigration crisis, ‘How Suella Braverman’s attacks on PM chime with the working class’:
Had Suella Braverman been in post for the Supreme Court ruling against the government’s Rwandan asylum scheme she would have been appallingly damaged as a politician.
Instead, having been fired, her advance warning of the likely judgment coupled with her brutal argument that prime ministerial indifference led to it have given her a platform she could never have hoped for.
And, worryingly for Rishi Sunak, her criticisms of him and the government read like a focus-group summary from one of England’s angrier towns. In places such as Stoke, Walsall or Wakefield, working-class swing voters talk about small boats in the same exasperated way.
Yet as Braverman anticipated, these voters do not blame “lefty judges” for the crumbling of the Rwanda policy — rather, they roll their eyes at government failure. They doubt that the government has the will to deal with the endless arrival of small boats packed with migrants, and they put a lack of success down to a lack of effort.
More broadly, given that most of these working-class people voted Leave in 2016, they are baffled that the government has not reduced conventional legal migration. “Getting Brexit done” was explicitly about taking control of borders.
On this issue, Braverman’s depiction of Sunak as a politician who does not care about meeting promises rings most true.
Yet there are other criticisms of Sunak that Braverman makes in her letter that will also concern Downing Street: in particular over single-sex spaces and how the government handles protests …
Regarding the protests, working-class anger and irritation are increasing. Although few voters understand the origins of the recent conflict in the Middle East, they know and feel enough to condemn Hamas outright and by name. Initially voters were protective of people’s right to protest, but the resulting mass inconvenience and sporadic violence have changed their views. They increasingly question why the government and the police tolerate it.
In her article in The Times a week ago, Braverman effectively accused the police of double standards. Many agree, but for different reasons. They think the police are excessively tolerant about any protests which are politically driven, whatever the cause. They think the police do not touch anyone waving a vaguely political flag …
Braverman is not well-known enough to lead any sort of movement in the way Nigel Farage could, but she has unquestionably injected arguments into the political bloodstream that will speak to working-class voters, and make the government’s electoral task even more daunting.
Interestingly, that day, The Telegraph published an article by an anonymous civil servant who works in the Home Office, ‘Why my Civil Service colleagues are celebrating Rwanda ruling’:
This week has left my Home Office colleagues celebrating. The Supreme Court’s ruling against the Rwanda plan, Suella Braverman’s exit and the appointment of a new untested minister [James Cleverly] have all uplifted the mood in Marsham Street.
Despite our change in boss, when it comes to controlling Britain’s borders nothing will change. I know this because I have worked for some time as a civil servant on immigration policy, and – in my experience – no priority is further from the Home Office in 2023 than stopping the boats or cutting net migration.
For all her strident bearing, Suella was cringingly apologetic in speeches to Home Office staff. Instead of instilling much needed discipline, she would tell us what a great job we were doing, not that this got her any kind of loyalty. She was mocked and insulted by London-based staff furious at the refusal to extend safe routes to an ever growing number of countries.
Home Office officials have a moral and legal duty to do everything in their power to deliver the Government’s priorities on immigration. Political impartiality is a central tenet of the civil service code, but this has morphed into a culture of “stewardship” …
What this means in practice is accepting the bien pensant view that immigration cannot and should not be controlled, overruling the instructions of ministers and thereby their democratic mandates, with many of my colleagues viewing their role as being part of the resistance to what they see as a radical Right-wing Government determined to ignore the rules to punish innocent migrants. This culture of defiance is so widespread that any suggestion of border controls is sneered at or ignored.
There is widespread understanding that our asylum rules are open to abuse. Any Border Force officer or civil servant who works on asylum policy will tell you this openly. Yet any suggestion that asylum rules be tightened or asylum seekers be refused is rejected out of hand as cold-hearted evil.
If I were to walk into a meeting and suggest reducing migration or ask how we could immediately deport small boat arrivals or foreign criminals, my colleagues might think to ring the many mental health services we are provided to check in on my sanity.
Even the most moderate attempts to do anything about migration are met internally as either unreasonable or not legally possible, with discussion being stopped dead by allusion to “international law” …
The mood is of self-congratulation and there is a refusal to engage let alone learn from the criticism the department receives, unless of course it comes from the Left or from an incredibly expensive commission finding that we are institutionally racist. There is no self-reflection on the fact we have completely failed to fulfil our democratic duty to reduce migration.
When the Rwanda scheme seemed a millimetre closer to happening, staff message boards were filled with comments vowing they will not work on such an evil project. Senior staff always mollify these messages and tell staff not to resign … policies cannot be enacted as they need governance, and the governance needs terms of reference and the terms of reference need to be redrafted and then circulated a few more times before we can hold the first meeting. Many relatively senior officials spend their time dealing with this work, toiling away at things that will never be read or used in an endless round of busywork.
In spite of all this it wouldn’t matter if the Home Office was a finely oiled machine ready and eager to deliver on every possible government priority and determined to protect the UK’s borders. The clear messaging behind closed doors from the Treasury and other departments is that legal migration should be expanded to boost lacklustre economic growth.
For my colleagues, I suspect James Cleverly’s ascension is merely an opportunity to run rings around an inexperienced minister in a new department. And for Britain, our borders will remain uncontrolled.
Meanwhile, a report of a November 11 incident emerged. On a bus in London, a woman launched into an anti-Semitic tirade against McDonalds. If I remember rightly, the restaurant chain sent food to the Israelis shortly after October 7.
GB News reported, complete with photos:
A woman aggressively launched into an antisemitic rant while on a London bus, in a moment captured on camera.
The woman, who has not been named, declared “only Jews eat at McDonald’s” in a violent rant at others onboard.
She was seen in the footage wearing a black bandanna, top, coat, and ripped blue denim jeans.
The footage was taken on Armistice Day in London, the same day 300,000 people marched through central London in a pro-Palestine protest.
A passenger was on board the evening London bus with her husband discussing McDonald’s chips. She claims that she heard someone shout “only Jews eat McDonald’s”.
In the footage, the woman then asks someone: “Are you a Jew?” After spotting she is being filmed by someone on the bus, she takes a swipe at a woman’s phone.
She then directs her anger at another passenger who tried to stop her from walking towards another man.
The woman is heard in the video saying: “Why are you touching me, fam?’ I’ll smash your glasses into your eyes, bro. I’ll smash your glasses into your eyes, bro” …
An eyewitness who took the footage said: “It is not safe to be a Jew in London right now.
“We are experiencing everything that we were warned about as children.”
“This weekend in London, Jewish homes have been graffitied, people had to be escorted by police whilst leaving Synagogue and posters have been waved that would have been proudly held up in 1930s Germany.
“Each bus or train journey becomes increasingly intimidating, making us question if this is a place we can continue to call home.
“To my non-Jewish friends and colleagues – please understand that this is the reality for Jewish people right now. Please do not look away. Please do not stay silent. Please reach out to your Jewish friends, talk to them, listen to them.
“And if and when you witness incidents like this – please, please, speak up. Because despite there being lots of other people on the bus, only one other person confronted her.
“And I was scared. This is a route I take daily, and while I had my husband with me this time, I can’t help but wonder who would stand up for me if I were alone?”
The BBC — the nation’s broadcaster — does not help matters in this regard.
Just before 9:30 that morning, Guido said that the BBC had misreported what was going on at the hospital in Gaza:
BBC News last night stated Reuters were reporting that the IDF in the Shifa Hospital were
“targeting Arab speakers and medical staff”
Shocking if true.
Reuters actually reported:
The Israeli military said on Wednesday: “We can confirm that incubators, baby food and medical supplies brought by IDF tanks from Israel have successfully reached the Shifa hospital. Our medical teams and Arabic speaking soldiers are on the ground to ensure that these supplies reach those in need.”
The BBC twisting the story to paint Israel in the worst possible light. This is beyond propaganda, it is demonstrably reporting incompetence driven by credulous BBC reporters ready to believe the worst of Israel.
Guido had a follow-up later that morning, as BBC News apologised for the erroneous and damaging report:
Just in from the BBC following Guido’s report earlier. The BBC have issued an on air apology for their false reporting about the IDF’s actions inside Gaza’s main Shifa hospital this morning. A BBC News presenter has just said:
“An apology from the BBC…we said that medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted. This was incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report.”
They should wear their reading glasses next time…
Indeed.
But the week was far from over.
More to follow tomorrow.