British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak decided today, Monday, to dismiss Home Secretary Suella Braverman, as part of changes Sunak is making to his team ahead of the general election expected next year. James Cleverly was appointed Home Secretary in the British government in place of Braverman.
In recent days, Sunak faced pressure and growing calls to dismiss the Home Secretary in his government after she said that police officers “play favourites” when it comes to demonstrations, and considered that they ignored “pro-Palestinian mobs” during protest marches against the war between the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas. She said: “In my view, there is only one way to describe these marches: they are hate marches.”
The former minister also stated that the British government is reviewing the laws related to demonstrations, saying: “If we need to change the laws, as we did last year to prevent protests, I will not hesitate to take action.”
In a statement issued by the British minister on 11 October, she said that “waving the Palestinian flag may not be legal”.
Despite her statement, demonstrators took part in weekly marches in which they raised tens of thousands of Palestinian flags in solidarity with the residents of the Gaza Strip.
Last week saw a dispute between the government and Braverman after she published an article in The Times in which she accused the police of double standards in dealing with pro-Palestine demonstrations compared with how they deal with far-right demonstrations.
The Prime Minister’s office revealed that it had requested amendments to the article, in accordance with the ministerial code for dealing with ministers, but Braverman did not take them all on board.
In her article, the former Home Secretary wrote that she does not believe these demonstrations are “merely a cry for help for Gaza”, but rather are more about what she described as “an assertion of primacy by certain groups, particularly Islamists”.
Tom Winsor, who previously headed a police inspectorate, considered that the minister’s comments were exaggerated and contradicted the principle of police independence.
Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said that Braverman had “gone out of control” and that Sunak was “too weak to act on it”.
The former minister had made statements described as hardline towards refugees, describing their arrival in Britain as an “invasion”, and she defended the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
This is the second time Braverman has been removed from the post of Home Secretary. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss appointed her to the post in September 2022, but she was later forced to resign after breaching the ministerial code in handling official documents.
