By her own account, she was in a party that she no longer trusted, had no faith in, and could not defend. “I looked around and realised I was politically isolated and alone.” The problem, as she sees it, is not circumstantial but structural – and insoluble. “Most of the people involved in the great betrayals are the same people running the party today.”
The central betrayal, the one she returns to again and again, is immigration. “The truth,” she warns, “is that half of Conservative MPs are dead against leaving the ECHR. I know it. I sit in the tea rooms. I hear what they say under their breath.”
[…]
Why, then, does she believe that Reform can succeed where the Tories repeatedly failed? Braverman says that, when she tried to persuade the party that Britain must leave the ECHR, to cut visas, to end what she calls two-tier policing, she was left exposed. “None of my Cabinet colleagues stood up for me. Not one.” The Conservatives might respond that recollections vary, but Braverman is insistent that there is a zeal in Reform which she is convinced the Tories still lack.
– Annabel Denham writing about Suella Braverman’s defection (£) to Reform
The pertinent question is why are half of Conservative MPs determined to continue policies harmful to the nation? It can’t be a matter principle, because they don’t have any. It can only be because pressure is being applied. The most likely culprit is the bureaucracy, which can keep them on the back benches and ensure no cushy berth can be found when they leave Parliament. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a news media that was interested in these questions?
The real reason that Tory Wets oppose leaving the ECHR is that they have internalised a left wing moral sensibility. They see themselves as ‘nice’ people who wouldn’t agree to anything nasty. Their superficial logic is this: human rights are good, so human rights conventions are good; any proposal to leave a human rights convention must therefore be bad. Because they are ‘nice’ people they don’t look any deeper into the issue to see what the consequences of the ECHR convention are, or what the consequences of leaving it might be.
This same superficial leftist thinking applies to any issue, which you put in front of a Tory Wet. Effectively, despite their rosette, their manifesto and the expectations of their party members and voters, they are part of the anto-Western left.
There she is wrong.
The Tories must be destroyed completely. The ground where that once great establishment stood salted, to prevent any regrowth.
Tories Delenda Est!
Then we should do the same with the Labour party, the Lib Dems and the Greens. Each has contributed to political madness and national decline.
Suella Braverman did fuck all about immigration. Wsa this her fault or “the blob”? Dunno, don’t care. She failed. Was it her or Pirtti Patel who came up with the whizz-bang idea of focussing on net migration figures? Of course that means if native Brits pissed-off to sunnier climes then that mitigated our cities and towns turning into “Mogadishu in the Rain” or “Dreary Karachi”. I guess it’s OK to take a cab in Oldham if you are an adult male.
Why do you think the government is hitting Grok? They are doing it to be seen to be doing something about sexual violence and it is a convenient cover to hit a Yarpie rather than tackle the difficult question of “uncovered meat” as cited in the Qu’ran.
“The pertinent question is why are half of Conservative MPs determined to continue policies harmful to the nation? It can’t be a matter principle, because they don’t have any.”
Its pure self interest. If they were to start suggesting policies that run counter to the Establishment’s current ideology they would then become a figure of interest to the Left, and get all the opprobrium that goes with that. They would lose many of their friends, their ticket into polite society, their ability to schmooze the Establishment for nice little sinecures and jobs if they were to leave politics. They don’t want to become a hate figure in the manner of (say) Jacob Rees-Mogg. (He is independently wealthy and aristocratically connected, so is more immune to such social banishment). They have nice middle class lives that are dependent on them not rocking the boat, so they don’t.
Roué Le Jour and Jim are both onto something.
In my humble opinion, the scourge of our age is the rise of the professional politician. Politics is all they know, and most of them would be unemployable elsewhere were they to be booted out. So they keep quiet about policies they may not agree with, just as a corporate careerist keeps quiet about company policies he does not agree with. Don’t rock the boat, and all that.
By contrast, being an MP used to be what we now call an encore career. MPs were men who had previously had successful careers in business, the law, the military or whatever. As such, they were more likely to be independent minded. It wasn’t even a paid job until the early 20th century, so remaining and MP wasn’t as existentially important as it is to their modern counterparts. Any MP who was thrown out, either by the electorate on polling day, or for not towing the party line, would most likely just shrug and go and find something else to do, like practice his golf swing.
The reference to “Mental Health” in the response of Central Office was not acceptable.
Suella Braverman was one of the “Spartans” – the few Members of Parliament who opposed the disgusting “deal” with the European Union (which the British people had voted to leave – to be independent of) of Mrs May, and is well known to be one of the most decent and honourable Members of the House of Commons. To imply that the lady is mentally ill is, as stated above, unacceptable.
This goes back a long way….
In 1968 J. Enoch Powell made a speech about ending mass (mass – not every individual case) immigration – a speech that was firmly supported by the great majority of the British people. Edward Heath responded to this by dismissing Mr Powell from the Shadow Cabinet – because the establishment did not like the speech (the Times newspaper, then the newspaper of the establishment, called the speech “evil”) – Mr Heath signaled (by this and other actions) that if he became Prime Minister he would obey the establishment – NOT the British people, and so it proved – although his admiration for the Chinese Marxist Dictator Mao (perhaps the largest scale mass murderer in human history) is still baffling – if anyone in public life had “mental health issues” it was Edward Heath.
Mr Heath also established the Central Office policy of trying to weed out “right winger” candidates for the House of Commons – although this did not save him from being voted out as Leader in 1975.
Margaret Thatcher, the only Prime Minister in my life time to have a real achievements whilst Prime Minister, was treacherously betrayed in 1990 (a serving Prime Minister, who had won a large majority in the General Election, voted out of office by a MINORITY of Conservative Members of Parliament – under the bizarre rules drawn up the leftist Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler) – and the situation in the United Kingdom has got worse and worse since then – with officials and “experts” having the real power – not elected ministers.
In the last government ministers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and even a Prime Minister, Liz Truss, found themselves without real power – utterly at the mercy of officials and “experts” (who have no mercy).
This is unacceptable – so this system of governance must be ended.
If the debate is over the question “is Britain broken?” – then the answer is that it is broken. NOT broken by any individual minister or Prime Minister – but by the system of governance itself.
I note that the ministers in the current government, and the Prime Minister himself, are parroting the line of the officials and “experts” that “British jobs” depend on the People’s Republic of China Communist Party Dictatorship.
In reality the flood of imports from China, “paid for” by creating “money” from NOTHING (this is NOT Free Trade – Free Trade is paying for imports with exports – NOT with “money” created from NOTHING) has helped destroy much of British industry – anyone who does not grasp that, is not fit for office.
And “anyone” means “anyone” – including members of the Conservative Party.
This.
Suella Braverman never had any power – neither did Jacob Rees-Mogg or other.
The lady did not “fail” NickM – because the lady had no power to start with.
The system of governance is NOT based on elected people being in power.
That is why it is the SYSTEM that must be destroyed.
Out of Reform’s 8 current MPs, just 4 were elected as Reform candidates, and one of them pre-2024 was a Tory turncoat. The other half are all Tory defectors. You have to wonder, if the defections continue, at one point is Reform just simply Conservative Party 2.0. I’m not really convinced it even increases Reform’s electoral appeal. There’s a good portion of Reform’s vote that defected from Labour that perhaps still have long standing prejudices against the Tories that didn’t yet apply to Reform, but might do if Reform begin to look like a home for veterans of the BoJo and Sunak governments.
Given his father was deep in the establishment (Times editor, House of Lords, BBC Vice Chairman of Board of Governors, Arts Council etc) you would have thought he might have explained to Jacob about how things actually work regarding government. I could understand younger Jacob being more naive but I strongly doubt the old man wasn’t wise to it.
“In my humble opinion, the scourge of our age is the rise of the professional politician.”
Quite. Which leads to one of my hobby horses, which is that standing for public office should be limited to those over a certain age, 50 in my opinion, but YMMV. Something needs to be done to prevent those who want to become politicians at a young age from doing so. Hopefully by the age of 50+ they will have maybe lost that desire, or found success in some other career, or had the edges knocked off of them and (maybe) gained some wisdom. It would also stop the lifelong MP, in the manner of people like Corbyn, who get a safe seat in their 30s and are there for life. Starting at 50+ and ending at the next election after turning 70 means a maximum political career of 20 years.
Martin – the situation has got worse over time.
The institutions have gained more and more power – at the expense of elected politicians.
Back in the time of William Rees-Mogg elected people still had a lot of power – now they have a lot less.
Although the present elected government is in tune with the Progressive establishment – so Sir Keir Starmer and co have no conflict with it, because they are part of it.
Nor is this just a matter of the United Kingdom – the process can also be seen (although less radically) in the United States.
Senator Conkling was correct in the 19th century – either you have elected government, or you have government of officials and “experts” – it can NOT be BOTH.
Disraeli was against the creation of the Civil Service because he thought officials and “experts” would obstruct “Social Reform” – the reverse has proved to be the truth.
The officials and “experts” very much support “Social Reform” – i.e. ever bigger and more controlling government.
By the way, Senator Conkling and other conservative Republicans (the opposite of the “Teddy” Roosevelt “Social Reform” crowd) were correct about another matter.
You can not have gold and silver fixed exchange rate currency at-the-same-time (as the Democrats wanted) – NOT if there is a fixed exchange rate. The only way you could have gold and silver currency at-the-same-time is if the exchange rate between the two was NOT fixed – and contracts specified if payment was to be made in gold or in silver.
The institution of the Conservative Party must be destroyed utterly because it has been irredeemably captured by liars and traitors to its own supporters. Successive Tory governments have promised to defend British sovereignty, capitalism and the rule of law while working assiduously in power to destroy these things. The Party has thus become an instrument of deception.
The Labour, Lib-Dems and the Green parties we should work to defeat and discredit utterly, because their political project is inimical to human freedom and prosperity, and to the British national interest. But they are openly in favour of abolishing capitalism and placing Britain in thrall to international institutions. That makes them political opponents. There is a distinction. Political opposition cannot be utterly destroyed, nor does any decent society truly attempt to do so. We should still strive to ensure they are never entrusted with power or a sliver of credibility, while accepting that some poor benighted souls may disagree with us.