The political fate of Britain’s beleaguered home secretary Suella Braverman will become clearer this week as she prepares for the outcome of a crucial legal case about her plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The UK’s supreme court will rule on Wednesday over the legality of the scheme, championed by Ms Braverman, to send to Rwanda asylum seekers who arrive in Britain via “irregular means” such as small-boat crossings. The government has challenged a decision by an appeal court to block the scheme on human rights grounds.
If the supreme court overturns the appeal and gives the Rwanda plan the green light it could strengthen Ms Braverman’s political position, which has been under threat following a week of controversy. Labour has called for her to be sacked for pressuring London police over Palestinian protest marches and also for saying that homelessness was a “lifestyle choice”.
Ms Braverman’s grip on her job appeared to be slipping towards the end of last week as a series of top cabinet members, including chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt, distanced themselves from her over her accusation that police were biased in favour of left-wing “mobs” on pro-Palestinian marches. She also defied prime minister Rishi Sunak’s office last week by refusing to make certain changes to an article that she wrote on the police for the Times newspaper.
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The first glimmer of comfort from within the cabinet for Ms Braverman emerged on Sunday, when defence secretary Grant Shapps, a Sunak loyalist, accused Labour of “playing politics” by blaming her for inflaming tensions that led to violence in London on Saturday by far-right English nationalists. However, Mr Shapps declined to state whether she would still be in her position this time next week. “A week is a long time in politics and I never make predictions about these things,” he told Sky News.
Ms Braverman is expected to remain as home secretary at least until Wednesday’s court ruling. But speculation is mounting that Mr Sunak may then bring forward a cabinet reshuffle to remove her, especially if, as some government sources predict, the supreme court blocks the Rwanda plan.
London on Remembrance Sunday was calmer than it had been on Saturday, when London’s Metropolitan Police arrested more than 100 English nationalist counter-protesters who fought with officers and attempted to confront a pro-Palestinian march that Ms Braverman had wanted the police to ban.
The Palestinian march of about 300,000 people, who were calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, set off from Hyde Park at about 12.45pm on Saturday. This was two hours after the English nationalist counter-protesters had rushed police barriers at an Armistice Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
The Palestinian march wound its way relatively peacefully through the western edge of central London, before crossing Vauxhall Bridge to a rally addressed by anti-war figures such as former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Ms Braverman had dismissed the pro-Palestinian gathering as a “hate march”, but there was little evidence of any overt support for Hamas’s October 7th attacks on Israel on the long segments of the march observed by The Irish Times. Police on Sunday, however, said they were investigating allegations that some marchers held signs that were anti-Semitic or glorified terrorism.
The chant “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free”, which is seen by many as Islamist code for the destruction of the state of Israel, was ubiquitous on the march. Organisers have denied that the chant means the destruction of Israel.
Meanwhile, scuffles between police and far-right English nationalists were widespread on Saturday. Many of them gathered to drink at the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square for the afternoon. Shortly afterwards, The Irish Times witnessed police arresting scores of nationalists at the White Swan Pub in Pimlico, as the pro-Palestinian march passed by.
