Tag: United Kingdom

Suella Braverman has said this morning that the government’s Rwanda bill, announced by home secretary James Cleverly yesterday, will “fail”.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4 she said that while “there are elements that should be welcomed in this new bill”, taken as a whole it “will not stop the boats”. 

“That’s my opinion having read it in the last 12/24 hours”, she said

Braverman continued: “Looking at the wording of the bill, there are clear sections which allow a whole raft of individual claims to be made by people that we might seek to remove to Rwanda. They will be able to bring those claims through the courts via judicial review. 

“They will be able to challenge the decisions made by the Secretary of State and those those challenges could take months, and potentially sometimes years.”

“I very much hope that the prime minister changes course. I very much hope that he takes on course the kind of observations that people are making about the content of this bill.

“There is still time to change this bill, it is going to go through parliament and scrutiny. I very much urge him to encourage a receptive attitude to some of the changes that people are suggesting.”

She added: “Ultimately this bill will fail. I’m just being honest about where we are. We’ve put two acts of parliament through already. We’ve done huge amounts of work to stop this problem and it’s not worked. We cannot afford to put forward another bill that is destined to fail.”

‘The fortunes of the Conservative Party are at stake’ – read Robert Jenrick’s resignation letter in full

Asked whether she could challenge Rishi Sunak’s leadership over the bill, she said: “No ones talking about changing the leadership”.

Pressed on this point, she added: “I want the prime minister to succeed in stopping debates. He said he would do whatever it takes.”

It comes after the former home secretary gave a speech to the House of Commons yesterday in which she warned the Conservative Party of “electoral oblivion” if in fails on the Rwanda plan. 

She told MPs: “It is now or never. The Conservative Party faces electoral oblivion in a matter of months if we introduce yet another bill destined to fail.

“Do we fight for sovereignty? Or do we let our party die? Now, I may not have always found the right words in the past, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I refuse to sit by and allow us to fail”, she added.

‘Now or never’: Braverman says Conservative Party faces ‘electoral oblivion’ if Rwanda bill fails

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris was asked this morning whether it is possible that the UK could end up receiving refugees from Rwanda before anyone is deported to the central African state.

“I honestly do not know the answer to that question”, he responded.

Pressed by BBC Breakfast on whether that scenario was “possible”, he replied: “No, I said I don’t know the answer to that question.

Writing on X (formerly Twitter), former cabinet minister Sir John Redwood said: “The proposed small boats legislation needs to stop the boats as promised. The will of Parliament to stop this evil trade needs to be effectively expressed to any court that might wish to disagree”.

Former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke has also warned that Robert Jenrick’s departure as immigration minister is “very concerning”.

The senior MP said: “Very sorry, and concerned, to see Rob Jenrick leave government this evening.

Sir Simon said the question now is “simply will this legislation work”.

On Wednesday, chairman of the right-wing European Research Group (ERG) of Conservative MPs, said: “If the immigration minister, who is a good man, has resigned over this bill that is deeply worrying.”

And former minister Andrea Jenkyns, an ardent Boris Johnson loyalist, said Mr Jenrick’s resignation “may be the death knell for Sunak’s leadership”.

Robert Jenrick’s resignation could be ‘death knell for Sunak’s leadership’, Conservative MP says

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Race has often hit the headlines over the last four years – yet how much it will feature in an election year is unpredictable.  The Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests put race on the agenda, but there was a starkly polarised political argument over the Sewell Report.  

Britain’s growing diversity means there are more ethnic minority voters than ever before in a fast-changing political landscape. Will Rishi Sunak being Britain’s first Asian Prime Minister help the Conservatives advance further with British Indian voters? How far will the pressure on Keir Starmer over his response to the Israel-Palestine conflict disrupt Labour’s traditional strength with Muslim voters in particular?

Yet debates about ethnic minority voting are often anecdotal, not least because evidence is patchier on ethnic minority voters than for any other electoral demographic. Pollsters do not yet routinely report on ethnicity as they do for gender and geography, age and social class, for example. 

Two useful new studies are filling some of the gaps. By aggregating historic polling data, Ipsos have produced estimates for ethnic minority party support going back to the mid-1990s. A major new contemporary study from Focaldata/Kings College, to be published next year, previewed in a new report out today, will illuminate the diverging patterns across different minority groups.

There is a long history of Labour strength and Conservative weakness with ethnic minority voters. Ipsos shows a stable pattern with Labour invariably holding more than six out of ten ethnic minority voters. The Conservative 16 per cent share under Sunak – one in six votes – is the same as it was in 2010.

Yet Labour has no grounds for complacency about its share of ethnic minority voters – which it may find much harder to retain beyond this General Election.  The long-term reason is that party identification – which was much stronger among ethnic minority Britons than the white British as late as 2010 – is much weaker among the second and third British-born generations. Labour’s broad support reflects the breadth of a ‘time for a change’ message, but could easily prove much more fragile beyond it.

The Conservatives have been about half as likely to win an ethnic minority vote as that of a white British voter. Ipsos suggests that David Cameron closed that gap before it grew again after Brexit.  More ethnic minorities backed Brexit – around a third – than had ever voted Conservative. Yet the Conservatives had much less success in converting Labour Leavers among ethnic minorities than among the majority group: post-Brexit polarisation put off the young, upwardly mobile graduate voters who were more favourable to Remain. 

As James Kanagsooriam notes, while being a university graduate is associated with being more likely to vote to the left, among ethnic minorities the pattern is reversed. Black and Asian graduates are more likely to vote Conservative than non-graduates. The Conservatives have advanced with British Indian voters, prior to Sunak’s premiership, but the effort to shed the baggage of the past with other minority groups has stalled in an era of more polarised identity politics.

No modern Conservative politician has ever been as popular with ethnic minority voters as Rishi Sunak was three years ago. That was not because he was Asian. As Chancellor during Covid, responsible for the furlough scheme, Sunak’s reputation transcended party allegiance much more than that of his Cabinet colleagues. While Sunak was rather more popular than his party at the start of his premiership, his personal rating has converged downwards to the Conservative score. 

Ipsos now reports no gap in approval for the Prime Minister’s performance between ethnic minority and white British voters – but, in sharp contrast to his pandemic reputation, that has now become a consensus of disapproval.

There is set to be a narrower ‘ethnic vote gap’ in the next General Election – less due to shifts in ethnic minority support as swings in party fortunes more generally. Labour’s vote share among the majority group was well below half of its ethnic minority vote share in 2017 and 2019 – but polling in the mid-40s has closed that gap.  Pressure on Keir Starmer over Palestine has been particularly vocal from British Muslim voices both inside and beyond his party.  Nobody can confidently predict how much impact the issue might have in a General Election a year from now. 

The Iraq war cost Labour up to a quarter of Muslim voters in 2005 – with the Liberal Democrats, George Galloway’s Respect Party and the modernising Conservatives with Sayeeda Warsi as party chair all competing for votes. Labour holds large cross-community majorities in most Westminster seats with the largest Muslim populations, so is likely hold those seats this time around. But the impacts at local government level, and on the formative attitudes of younger voters from Britain’s largest faith minority group, could be significant.

Whether race unites or divides depends on how the public conversation is led. There can be efforts to exploit race as a ‘culture war’ dividing line – yet that could backfire across groups and generations. It can sometimes seem that the choice in politics is between polarising culture clashes or lapsing into silence as the issue falls off the agenda.

The Windrush 100 network, which launches this week at an event in parliament, wants to change that. The many civic groups who worked to bring this year’s Windrush 75^th anniversary to national attention aim to sustain that effort, by showing how improving the public conversation about the past, present and future of race in Britain can shift the political and policy agenda too.  

Polling this year found that 71 per cent of ethnic minority respondents – and 65 per cent of the public overall – would support setting a ‘net zero’ goal to eliminate racial discrimination and disadvantage in Britain by the time of the Windrush centenary in 2048.  In an increasingly diverse Britain, every political party will need to find greater confidence in how to talk and act on race. Having a clearer sense of where we want to go as a society may help to navigate the pressures of an election year.

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Robert Jenrick has this evening resigned as immigration minister. Read his resignation statement in full below:

Dear prime minister,

It is with great sadness that I write to tender my resignation as Minister for Immigration. I cannot continue in my position when I have such strong disagreements with the direction of the Government’s policy on immigration.

As you know, I have been pushing for the strongest possible piece of emergency legislation to ensure that under the Rwanda policy we remove as many small boat arrivals, as swiftly as possible, to generate the greatest deterrent effect. This stems from my firmly held position that the small boats crisis is a national emergency that is doing untold damage to our country, and the only way we will be able to stop the boats completely is by urgently introducing a major new deterrent. I have therefore consistently advocated for a clear piece of legislation that severely limits the opportunities for domestic and foreign courts to block or undermine the effectiveness of the policy. One of the great advantages of our unwritten constitution is the unfettered power of our sovereign parliament to create law, and that is a power we must take full advantage of. The Government has a responsibility to place our vital national interests above highly contested interpretations of international law.

In our discussions on the proposed emergency legislation you have moved towards my position, for which I am grateful. Nevertheless, I am unable to take the currently proposed legislation through the Commons as I do not believe it provides us with the best possible chance of success. A Bill of the kind you are proposing is a triumph of hope over experience.

The stakes for the country are too high for us not to pursue the stronger protections required to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent.

Reflecting on my time in the Home Office, I am proud of the improvements we have delivered together working alongside dedicated and capable civil servants. I am grateful to you for agreeing to much of my five-point plan to reduce net migration which, once implemented, will deliver the single largest reduction in legal migration ever. However, I refuse to be yet another politician who makes promises on immigration to the British public but does not keep them. This package must be implemented immediately via an emergency rules change and accompanied by significant additional reforms at the start of next year to ensure we meet the 2019 manifesto commitment that every single Conservative MP was elected upon. The consequences for housing, public services, economic productivity, welfare reform, community cohesion and, more fundamentally, for trust in democratic politics are all too serious for this totemic issue to be anything other than a primary focus for the Government.

Together we have also made progress tackling illegal migration. Small boats arrivals are down by more than a third compared to last year, against a forecast of a forty per cent increase and an almost one hundred per cent rise in Italy in the same period. The deal we negotiated with Albania has led to a more than ninety per cent reduction in Albanians arriving illegally on small boats and has demonstrated that a fully functioning scheme with Rwanda will act as a powerful deterrent. For the first time we have developed a comprehensive upstream strategy to disrupt the organised immigration crime gangs in important countries including Italy, Belgium, Bulgaria and Turkey. This has made the United Kingdom a partner of choice to those who share a determination to tackle illegal migration and has led to record numbers of small boat equipment seizures, preventing thousands more people making the illegal, unnecessary and dangerous crossing. At home we have relentlessly focussed on removing the pull factors the United Kingdom. We have increased raids on illegal working by seventy per cent and returns of immigration offenders by over fifty per cent, transformed the asylum case-working system with a ten-fold increase in weekly decisions to eliminate the legacy backlog, and began closing hundreds of the farcical asylum hotels. Behind the scenes we have also instilled greater rigour in scrutinising visa applications which will tackle the equally concerning rise in non-small boat asylum claims.

However, we said that we would stop the boats altogether. That is what the public rightly demands and expects of us. We must truly mean that we will do ‘whatever it takes’ to deliver this commitment when we say so. This emergency legislation is the last opportunity to prove this, but in its current drafting it does not go far enough.

You and I have been friends for a long time. In cabinet I have seen up close your hard work, dedication and the deep sense of public service that drives you every day. Against strong headwinds you have stabilised the country, showed leadership on the world stage and done much to improve the lives of millions of citizens across the United Kingdom, for which you deserve much greater recognition.

This is not a decision I have arrived at lightly, but one born of principle and reached after careful consideration and many months of trying to convince you of the merits of my position.

You will retain my full support on the backbenches even as I campaign on illegal and legal migration policy and the intersecting challenges of generating meaningful economic growth, solving the housing crisis and improving integration. The fortunes of the Conservative Party at the next general election are at stake.

It has been an honour to serve in government for five Conservative Prime Ministers. I will continue to represent the interests of my constituents in Newark to whom I owe so much.

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Robert Jenrick has resigned from his post as immigration minister over the government’s Rwanda plan.

Home secretary James Cleverly confirmed his colleague’s departure following concerted questioning in the House of Commons.

Chris Bryant: ‘Has Jenrick resigned because Rwanda bill is crazy or because he doesn’t think it’s crazy enough?’

Speculation mounted after Robert Jenrick was missing from the frontbench as Cleverly gave a statement on the government’s bid to rescue the deal to fly migrants who arrive illegally in the UK to East Africa.

In his statement, Cleverly said: “Today I can inform the House that [the Supreme Court’s] concerns have been conclusively answered and those changes made as a result of intensive diplomacy by the prime minister, by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, by the Attorney General’s Office, and of course by the Home Office for the purpose of the Bill”.

Later, when asked by Labour MP Ashely Dalton if he had resigned, the home secretary responded: “That has been confirmed.”

No sign of Robert Jenrick on the frontbench as James Cleverly makes his statement on the new Rwanda legislation pic.twitter.com/3vY1UAwAMo

— Josh Self (@Josh_Self_) December 6, 2023

It came after Home Office minister Laura Farris, appearing on LBC Radio, was asked if the immigration minister had resigned. 

She replied: “I understand that he has.”

In a tweet, Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns reacted: ” Well done to Robert Jenrick for resigning.

“As his former ][parliamentary private secretary] when he was secretary of state I saw his strength and how he stood up to civil servants, I know what a decent man he is and how he adores his family.

“This may be the death knell for Sunak’s leadership.”

The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael MP has responded tp the news in a statement: “This is yet more Conservative chaos as another minister flees this sinking ship of a Government.

“Rishi Sunak is no longer in control of his party and has lost the support of the country.

“The prime minister knows that his Rwanda plan is totally unworkable, immoral and a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.

“It is time the government scrapped it and focused on fixing the broken asylum system instead of fighting amongst themselves.”

Is Robert Jenrick the new Suella Braverman?

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It’s a tale of two grillings today in British politics. 

Capturing the largest part of SW1’s attention today, of course, is Boris Johnson’s appearance before the Covid inquiry — as the former prime minister stares down chair Baroness Hallett’s lead lawyer: the headline-generating Hugo Keith KC. But current PM Rishi Sunak faced his own forensic dressing-down this afternoon — albeit in rather less aberrant circumstances. 

Still, the House of Commons isn’t the PM’s favourite forum at the moment. Earlier this week, he faced his first defeat in the chamber as 22 Conservative MPs defied a three-line whip to back an opposition amendment on infected blood compensation. Half an hour later, Sunak faced a further rebellion of 28 Tory MPs, who sided against the government’s plans to require car companies to make 22 per cent of their sales next year electric vehicles. 

The government won the vote because Labour supported it; but it is a further sign of the times for Rishi Sunak. In light of this, he might view his appearance before the Covid inquiry next week as offering some welcome respite. 

Nonetheless, prime minister’s questions began at 12 noon today with a rare show of Conservative unity. It came as Sir Michael Fabricant mocked the Labour leader as a “fanboy” of Margaret Thatcher, amid laughter and jeering from the government benches. Teed up by Fabricant, Sunak declared: “I am always happy to welcome new Thatcherites from all sides of this house”. 

But it was downhill from here for the prime minister. And the Conservative benches soon quieted as Keir Starmer took to his feet, taking aim squarely at the government’s still-unimplemented Rwanda deportation plan. 

The Labour leader, predictably, mocked the government’s “Rwanda gimmick”, highlighting that zero asylum seekers are yet to be flown to the African nation to have their claims processed. 

But the Labour leader wanted Sunak to own his party’s apparent failure on its flagship “small boats”-stopping proposal. And so he continued: “Apart from members of his own cabinet, how many people has the prime minister sent to Rwanda?”.

Sunak refused to bite, responding instead with a pre-prepared soundbite: “We will do everything it takes to get this scheme working so that we can indeed stop the boats”. He subsequently accused Starmer of being “on the side of the people smugglers” over his refusal to back the plan. 

Starmer returned fire by listing the various phases the Rwanda Plan has passed through since it was announced under Boris Johnson’s government in April 2022. First the government claimed 10,000s of asylum seekers would be settled in Rwanda, Starmer began; this pledge was later watered down to mere hundreds, he continued — before noting the Court of Appeal’s judgement earlier this year, which found the African nation only had enough accommodation to house 100 individuals. 

Today, Starmer closed, a “stubbornly consistent” zero asylum seekers have been flown to Rwanda. The Labour leader knows that as long as that remains the case, he can always rely on an easy win at PMQs. 

Starmer then reached for the government’s new Rwanda treaty, figuratively and literally, as he brandished the thin document before the Conservative benches. Referring specifically to Article 19 and Annex A, Starmer pointed out — with lawyerly attentiveness — the additional money the UK may have to send to Rwanda for accommodation and upkeep over a further five years. That is despite the PM insisting “no incremental money” had been agreed yesterday.

He told the commons: “Article 19 of the treaty says the parties shall make arrangements for the United Kingdom to resettle a portion of Rwanda’s most vulnerable refugees in the United Kingdom.

“So how many refugees from Rwanda will be coming here to the UK under the treaty?”

Sunak defended his government’s record, saying “It’s a point of pride that we are a compassionate country that does welcome people from around the world”. But he couldn’t dispute the facts that the Labour leader had laid before him. 

He closed with one of his regular claims that Labour’s immigration policy “would see us accept 100,000 illegal migrants” from the European Union. It prompted the usual press release from fact-checkers. Full Fact, for one, labelled the claim “incorrect, as according to the Migration Observatory the figure is based on a ‘mathematical error’”. 

Nor did the reference to Starmer’s alleged EU-apologist ways succeed in corralling the Conservative benches. Again, it is highly revealing of Sunak’s political woes that his MPs seemed distinctly disinterested in the jibe. In turn, Starmer responded by painting a picture of the Rwandan government enjoying the benefits of the Rwanda deal — flush with UK taxpayer money — without actually taking in any asylum seekers. 

Then, continuing a theme from last week, Starmer again tried to rile up James Cleverly — who appears to find PMQs especially animating — with a further reference to his choice language. 

“I’m beginning to see why the home secretary said the Rwanda scheme — something to do with bats, was it?”, Starmer said. Cleverly, sitting opposite, shook his head in response. It was a reference to the home secretary’s reported view of the Rwanda plan as “bat****”. 

Can James Cleverly break the ‘Home Office curse’ before it breaks him?

The prime minister later went on to quote shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, declaring that in a recent interview he “didn’t rule out rejoining the European Union!”. Again, little response from the Conservative backbenches, and Starmer had a good retort: “Forget the private jets. He’s on some sort of private planet of his own”.

So, another very difficult PMQs for Rishi Sunak — and, once more, on a topic the Conservative Party should be eager to shout about. 

Of course, the Rwanda plan is right now the subject of a fierce intra-party dispute for the prime minister. In this way, Starmer’s mocking tilt at the latest iteration of the Rwanda policy succeeds, at once, in exposing and deepening this clear divide. It was telling that so few Conservative backbenchers were willing to cheer the prime minister’s current approach.

The government’s flagship proposal, therefore, once referred to as “red meat” for Conservative backbenchers, is now instead the clearest source of Sunak’s present political travails.

PMQs verdict: Starmer 4, Rishi Sunak 2.

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website, providing comprehensive coverage of UK politics. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here.

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Boris Johnson has been accused of “the usual lies and bluster” ahead of his appearance before the Covid inquiry as unions and campaign groups respond to the former prime minister’s alleged “briefings” to the media, which he denies.  

The former prime minister, who was at the helm throughout the pandemic, is facing a two-day grilling at the Covid inquiry.

The former PM is expected to apologise on behalf of the government about the early handling of the crisis, while insisting he got the big calls right.

It comes as previous witnesses, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, have conceded lockdown should have been introduced earlier than 23 March.

Others who have said that the lockdown should have come sooner include Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, then the chief scientific adviser, and Lord Sedwill, then the cabinet secretary

Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, has claimed that the government’s original plan was “herd immunity by September”.

Matt Fowler, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, told the Guardian: “Boris Johnson’s team appear to have been leaking his witness statement left, right and centre ahead of his appearance tomorrow. Unsurprisingly, the claims he’s making are the usual lies and bluster.

“The inquiry has already entirely debunked the claim that ‘he got the big calls right’. In reality, when news of the pandemic first struck, Johnson treated it all like it was a joke, and as cases began to rise he delayed locking down, causing thousands of unnecessary deaths, such as my dad’s. Even worse, when the second wave came around he repeated all of the same mistakes, leading to even more people dying than in the first wave.”

Matt Hancock: I didn’t read SAGE meeting minutes at start of Covid pandemic

Nathan Oswin, who leads on the inquiry for the TUC, told the newspaper: “This inquiry is about learning the lessons of what went wrong so that we can save lives in the future. It shouldn’t be abused by politicians looking to salvage their legacies and rewrite history. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak must play by the rules and put people above their own political fortunes.”

Briefings have been deemed to be not within the rules of the inquiry if they rely on any materials provided to the inquiry, such as witness statements. 

Chair of the inquiry Heather Hallett warned against briefing out details of witness statements in October.

A source close to Johnson told the Guardian that the former PM’s team had not leaked any evidence in advance. “We are as upset about this as they are”, they said. 

Covid inquiry: Matt Hancock labels Dominic Cummings a ‘malign actor’ and cause of ‘toxic culture’ in No 10

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Since taking over the Home Office, James Cleverly has insisted at pains that the time for “talking” about the department’s key responsibilities is over — people are “sick” of it. He declares that it is long past time ministers took “decisive action” on migration, legal and illegal.

Cleverly’s emphasis here, of course, is a not-so-subtle swipe at Suella Braverman, his predecessor in the department. Announcing a five-point plan to curb legal migration in parliament on Monday, Cleverly asserted he is “taking more robust action than any government before” on the issue. On cue, the recently dispossessed Braverman climbed atop her social media soapbox to declare the package is “too late” and insist the government “go further”.

In stressing his doughty professionalism and reputation for competent administration acquired at the Foreign Office, Cleverly is seeking to draw a line between himself and his predecessor. But, in doing so, he also identifies what has been described as the “curse of the Home Office” — the widening chasm between rhetoric and action in the department which intermittently, perhaps inevitably, swallows its incumbent whole. 

The unfortunate career trajectory of Priti Patel is our most pertinent case in point. When she was handed the Home Office keys in July 2019, Patel was lauded as a “darling” of the Conservative Party right and oft-touted as a grassroots favourite for the post of prime minister. In turn, she embraced her image and stoked expectations; viewed in full, it made a perceived lack of delivery even more politically potent. 

Thus, the Rwanda plan flowed alongside repeated migration crackdowns; but, in the end, ConservativeHome’s final cabinet “league table” of Boris Johnson’s premiership found Patel had a negative 13.4 per cent satisfaction among surveyed party members. “In Patel’s case”, Paul Goodman and Henry Hill of ConservativeHome considered, “the main reason is clear: small boats”. Now languishing in the post-Home Office wilderness, Patel does still audition for the role of party leader when the opportunity presents itself. But collective wisdom suggests she has gone the way of other ambitious forbears in the department. After Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid, another “big beast” had been claimed by the curse. 

The modern manifestation of the “curse”, therefore, is underpinned by a simple truth: “small boats” are much easier to talk about than to “stop” outright. Rishi Sunak’s politically sensitive fifth pledge, therefore, has put booster rockets under the salience of the “stop the boats” creed and — in turn — the “curse” looms larger still. That is the brutal reality that awaited James Cleverly, himself touted as a future leader, when he entered the Home Office on reshuffle day last month.

Then there’s Suella Braverman’s scorched earth politics — which haven’t helped matters much either. One reading of Braverman’s stint at the Home Office is that her frequent freelancing, posturing and right-wing pandering was, at every turn, a strategic gambit to force her way out before the curse claimed her and her leadership credentials. 

How Rishi Sunak could fight a ‘stop the boats election’

In this way, she would deploy her office as a platform for a future leadership challenge, at once placating figures disappointed by Patel and slowly signposting a “betrayal narrative”. As home secretary, particularly in her final months, she consciously took positions on multiculturalism, migration and “culture wars” that her colleagues in the department couldn’t themselves reasonably adopt. And all the while, she would save her correspondence with the PM, ready to be leaked to the Telegraph when the time came. 

In recent weeks, we have arguably seen Braverman’s strategy play out in real-time. Having had her desired martyr status conferred upon her in the recent reshuffle, she has taken to writing her own hagiography — majoring on missed opportunities on legal migration, an ignored pre-accession pact with Sunak and a multi-point Rwanda “Plan B” spurned by an uncommitted PM. In turn, she calculates that the Home Office curse will claim her successor, leaving her free to march forward to a future leadership election with a clear “change” platform. 

The Home Office is, of course, James Cleverly’s second “great office of state” after his period as foreign secretary.  And in his previous post, he was judged to have greatly restored morale after it fell to rock bottom under his predecessors, Liz Truss, Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson. Could he do the same in Braverman’s wake? Might the curse have met its match in the delivery-orientated, well-liked and self-confident Cleverly?

Certainly, Rishi Sunak’s decision to shift Cleverly sideways into the Foreign Office probably suggests that the PM, like the rest of SW1, reads Conservative Home. In the grassroots survey which preceded the reshuffle, the then-foreign secretary emerged with a +71.8 net satisfaction, with a 26-point gap between himself and third place. 

By shifting him sideways, Sunak was calculatedly putting Cleverly’s popularity up as collateral for his coming political torment. Cleverly’s reputation would prove a ready source of political capital as, successively, the Supreme Court ruled on Rwanda and net migration figures were released. 

Thus, Cleverly’s dire in tray has — unsurprisingly — had a transformational impact on his ratings among party members. In the latest Conservative Home survey, Cleverly’s ratings plummeted from first with 72 points to 10.6 points. The situation had undoubtedly been made worse by his post-reshuffle interview with the Times newspaper, in which he suggested the Rwanda Plan was “not the be all and end all” of the government’s “small boats” strategy. 

The “curse”, it seemed, was already looming large over Cleverly’s Home Office tenure; a tricky departmental question time followed as Cleverly’s deputy, the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, undertook to manoeuvre himself into more forthright positioning. 

So, under siege from within his department and without, Cleverly has consciously sought to fulfil his promise as the new home secretary and prioritise “action”. On Monday, he went some distance further than expected with his “five-point plan” to curb legal migration, roundly placating party sceptics. 

‘Enough is enough!’: Cleverly reveals five point plan to ‘curb immigration abuses’

And, that same evening, Cleverly boarded a plane to Rwanda tasked with penning a fresh asylum accord with the African nation. The Rwanda plan, having been overseen by four successive home secretaries (if you include Grant Shapps’ brief stint), is probably the clearest manifestation of the “curse of the Home Office”. A photo-op with one’s Rwandan opposite number is nothing less than a rite of passage for a Conservative home secretary; still, the expectations that are raised as a consequence normally bode ominously for the said home secretary’s future political prospects. 

Having signed the fresh treaty yesterday, therefore, the intended signal coming from Cleverly is that he is engaging with his Home Office brief with the same doughty professionalism that characterised his stint at the Foreign Office. In doing so, he intends to break with recent precedent at the department and with it, he hopes, the “Home Office curse”. 

But success is still far from guaranteed. In the coming days, he alongside the prime minister is expected to proceed with the second part of the government’s plan to fix the Rwanda scheme: legislation to prevent new court challenges. And, as Cleverly and Sunak finalise their new Rwanda is actually safe bill, they must decide whether to infuriate his party’s moderate MPs or those rallying around Suella Braverman on the right. It seems increasingly like a zero-sum factional game. 

The One Nation group of Conservative MPs have warned that overriding the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) under the emergency Rwanda legislation is a “red line” for the group. Whereas the Conservative right, comprised of caucuses like the Common Sense Group, the New Conservatives and the European Research Group, is adamant that the forthcoming legislation must allow ministers to override the ECHR.

Right now, it appears that Cleverly is sipping from his poisoned Home Office chalice with enthusiasm. He has sought to narrow the chasm between rhetoric and action as home secretary — while pointedly majoring on departmental “delivery” and “action”. Thus, if Priti Patel is remembered as a “failed” home secretary and Suella Braverman (she hopes) a “foiled” one, Cleverly eyes a third way. 

But it remains to be seen whether Cleverly can emerge from the tumult of the next few days unscathed, let alone bolstered. Ultimately, the long lens of history may soon declare that it is Kemi Badenoch — the new grassroots favourite according to Conservative Home’s latest survey — who is the single biggest beneficiary of Cleverly’s run-in with “Home Office curse”. 

Week-in-Review: New right-wing movement, backed by Kemi Badenoch, spells doom for Rishi Sunak

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website, providing comprehensive coverage of UK politics. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here.

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Boris Johnson arrived at the Covid inquiry in central London three hours early this morning. It means he managed to avoid the groups of protesters who have now gathered outside.

The former prime minister, who was at the helm throughout the pandemic, is facing a two-day grilling at the Covid inquiry.

The former PM is expected to apologise on behalf of the government about the early handling of the crisis, while insisting he got the big calls right.

It comes as previous witnesses, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, have conceded lockdown should have been introduced earlier than 23 March.

Other officials who have said lockdown should have come in sooner are Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, then the chief scientific adviser, and Lord Sedwill, then the cabinet secretary

Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, has claimed that the government’s original plan was “herd immunity by September”.

In a written statement to the inquiry, extracts from which were published in November, Johnson said: “It is true that I have reflected (no doubt out loud and no doubt many times) about whether the lockdowns would do (and did do) more harm than good.”

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09.27 am — Aamer Anwar, a lawyer from Scottish Bereaved Families, says evidence so far has exposed a culture of “incompetence, of arrogance, of blaming everyone else but themselves.”

He said: “In recent days as predicted, the UK Covid inquiry has come under sustained and orchestrated attacks from sections of the media. This has been to defend Boris Johnson. But for the families we represent, this inquiry has robustly acted without fair or favour.

“Boris Johnson is expected to issue an apology this morning, yet he will claim he saved thousands of lives. For many of the bereaved that will be a grotesque distortion of the truth.

“In Boris Johnson’s words, instead of solving a national crisis his government presided over a total disgusting orgy of narcissism. He did let the bodies pile up, and the elderly were treated like toxic waste.”

08.32 am — Previously at the Covid inquiry: Matt Hancock admits he didn’t read SAGE meeting minutes at start of Covid pandemic

Matt Hancock: I didn’t read SAGE meeting minutes at start of Covid pandemic

08.28 am — Boris Johnson was ‘trying to do the best he could’ through pandemic, minister insists.

Policing minister Chris Philp told Sky News: “None of us had seen a pandemic on that scale before. The last time it happened was the Spanish influenza epidemic, I think, in about 1918.

“We were in uncharted territory. He was trying, as far as I could see, to make the right decisions in a very difficult, fast moving situation.

“There’s no doubt, looking back with hindsight, you can look back and point to things that could have been done better, or that could have been done better.

“These are really difficult decisions. Even with hindsight, it’s not completely clear what the answer is.”

08.26 am — Boris Johnson accused of ‘the usual lies and bluster’ ahead of Covid inquiry appearance

Matt Fowler, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, told the Guardian: “Boris Johnson’s team appear to have been leaking his witness statement left, right and centre ahead of his appearance tomorrow. Unsurprisingly, the claims he’s making are the usual lies and bluster”.

Boris Johnson accused of ‘the usual lies and bluster’ ahead of Covid inquiry appearance

08.20 am — Good morning and welcome back to “Politics Live”, politics.co.uk‘s rolling coverage of the day’s key moments in Westminster and beyond. Here you can keep up to date with today’s major parliamentary debates, press conferences and news events in real time.

Here’s what’s happening today:

• Boris Johnson faces a two-day grilling at the Covid inquiry 
• Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak face-off, as usual, at prime minister’s questions from noon

Stay with us and we’ll bring you all the latest developments as they unfold.

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The government has introduced measures it says will deliver the biggest ever cut in net migration after the release of figures last week showed levels had reached a record high. 

Home secretary James Cleverly announced the “five-point plan” in a statement to the House of Commons yesterday in a bid to curb immigration, which he said was “far too high”.

The figures published last month revised up previous estimates for net migration for 2022 from 606,000 to 745,000. The ONS said in the year to June net migration fell back to 672,000.

Among the changes is the proposal to hike the minimum salary needed for skilled overseas workers from £26,200 to £38,700.

“Enough is enough”, Cleverly told the commons yesterday. 

He added: “We are curbing abuses to the health care visa. We are increasing thresholds, cutting the SOL discount, increasing family income requirements, and cutting the number of student dependents”.

‘Enough is enough!’: Cleverly reveals five point plan to ‘curb immigration abuses’

Reacting to the plan yesterday afternoon, former home secretary Suella Braverman said the package was “too late”. 

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) she said: “I welcome the measures announced today to cut net migration. They are a step in the right direction. But we need to be honest. This package is too late and the government can go further”.

She added: “If the salary threshold rise only takes effect in Spring 2024, we won’t realistically see its impact until the 2025 ONS numbers. Had this been introduced a year or even 6 months ago, we would start to see a fall in the numbers before the next General Election”.

“As well as these proposals, we should go further: shortening the graduate route – not just reviewing it again; & we need an annual cap, set by Parliament, across all visa routes, so we don’t get into this terrible situation again & government can be properly held to account”.

“I put forward similar measures 6 times in the last year.  I’m glad that the PM has finally agreed to introducing some of them now but the delay has reduced their impact”.

It came after shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper accused the prime minister of veering around like a “shopping trolley” on migration in the commons yesterday. 

Cooper said: “The previous prime minister was accused of being a shopping trolley, veering around from one side to the other. The current prime minister is clearly veering, but he certainly isn’t steering.

“He’s just climbed into someone else’s shopping trolley and he’s being pushed around all over the place. So can the home secretary tell us where is the workforce plan on social care, on engineering, on bricklaying, on all the shortage occupations that their total economic failure has left us with?”.

She added: “The Conservatives are in chaos. They’ve got no serious plan for the economy, no serious plan for the immigration system, no serious plan for the country. Britain deserves better than this”.

Yvette Cooper: ‘The PM is veering around like a shopping trolley on migration’

SNP home affairs spokesman Chris Stephens warned the plan would cause “irrevocable harm” to the care sector, as he questioned why children would be included in the category of dependants who now need to earn £38,700 before being allowed to enter the UK.

Despite Braverman’s criticism, Conservative MPs who have been critical of the government’s migration policy largely welcomed the proposals last night. 

Former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke said on X that the changes were a “massive step in the right direction”. 

The New Conservatives group of right-wing MPs, led by Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, said it was “brilliant to see that common sense has prevailed”.

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