5 Times Reform's Latest Tory Recruit Suella Braverman Left Westminster Baffled
Suella Braverman has become the latest big-name Tory to defect to Reform UK.
The former home secretary became the 27th ex-Conservative MP to make the switch to Nigel Farage’s party when she was unveiled at a press conference on Monday.
Although she has been relatively quiet of late, Braverman was regularly in the headlines when she was a cabinet minister – and rarely in a good way.
Here are five occasions when her bizarre outbursts left Westminster stunned.
1. Claimed sleeping rough ‘is a lifestyle choice’
Braverman was still home secretary in Rishi Sunak’s government when she posted on Twitter (now X): “The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.”
She spoke out as she unveiled plans to stop charities giving tents to rough-sleepers.
Her remarks drew widespread condemnation, including from her own colleagues.
Claire Coutinho, who was energy secretary at the time, said: “Before I came into parliament, I did a lot of work in social justice, I actually worked with people who are homeless.
“I think the reason people get into that position are complex and very varied. I wouldn’t actually use the language of ‘lifestyle choice’.”
It proved to be one controversy too many for Sunak, who sacked Braverman nine days after she posted the tweet.
2. Attacked the ‘tofu-eating wokerati’
In October 2022, when she was still serving as home secretary in Liz Truss’s government, Braverman went to town on the liberal metropolitan elite she hates so much.
Unveiling plans to crack down on public protests, she told MPs: “It’s the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, dare I say, the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for the disruption that we are seeing on our roads today.”
Her bizarre comments drew criticism from her opposite number at the time, Yvette Cooper, who said: “The home secretary actually talked about a coalition of chaos, we can see it in front of us as we speak.”
3. Claimed to have seen a land border between Italy and Turkey
Hosting a phone-in on LBC last January, Braverman left listeners baffled with an embarrassing geographical gaffe.
Discussing what other countries have done to tackle illegal immigration, she said: “Italy have reinforced their borders. They built a wall, I went to see that wall, they built a wall on the land border between Italy and Turkey.”
Anyone with access to a map could quickly ascertain that this was impossible, given the two countries are around 1,200 miles apart.
To be fair, Braverman did hold her hands up later, insisting she had meant to say Greece instead of Italy.
4. Said she ‘will never be truly English’
She may have been born in Harrow and raised in Wembley, but Braverman claimed last year that she “will never truly be English”.
The MP said she was born in England, “raised speaking the Queen’s English and educated in England” but “I am not English”.
Braverman said her parents, part of the Indian diaspora, were born in Kenya and Mauritius, but claimed they are also not English, despite having British citizenship.
“How many generations must pass before one can claim to be English? Five? Six? It is a question without an easy answer,” she said.
That would mean a person would have to know their ancestors have been born and raised in England since at least the 1800s to be known as English.
5. Suggested the UK could become ‘the first Islamist nation with nuclear weapons’
In a speech exactly a year ago to the right-wing Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington, Braverman warned that the UK could “fall into the hands of Muslim fundamentalism” and become like Iran.
She said: “Vice-president JD Vance said at the National Conservatism conference, at which I also spoke in the summer, that the UK was going to be the first Islamist nation with nuclear weapons. I don’t think he was joking.
“Is it an impossibility that 20 years from now it will be the UK, not China or Russia, that will emerge as the greatest strategic threat to the USA?
“Born out of a broken relationship and weak leadership, what happens if the UK falls into the hands of Muslim fundamentalism, our legal system gets substituted for Sharia Law and our nuclear capabilities vest in a regime not too dissimilar to that of Iran today?
“Regardless of whether one thinks that is a realistic outcome, which I do not, should we not have the courage to ask these questions?”