Suella Braverman cannot survive another breach of the ministerial code

The dreaded flash, the three points, the “Notice of Intended Prosecution” or the option of a speed-awareness course instead – quite a lot of us have been there. It is hardly surprising that, at this point, a home secretary might calculate that there could be political downsides to having to attend, with members of the public, in person or on Zoom, what is, in effect, a seminar for lawbreakers – however minor the infraction.

And so, given these courses are put on by private contractors, Suella Braverman asks her staff to investigate whether it might be possible to arrange to take the speed-awareness course in private, as a one-on-one session. In the grand scheme of things, it is not the most enormous moral transgression.

But the trouble is, on the face of the available evidence thus far, it is a breach of the ministerial code. Non-political civil servants have been asked for their assistance in sparing the home secretary’s blushes, and to provide her with political assistance, and they have quite correctly refused.

Besides, the blushes are half the point. Anyone who’s done a speed-awareness course will know that the inconvenience, the mild embarrassment, is very much part of the process. And the law should apply equally to all.

The home secretary is hardly alone in not wanting to have to take part in such an exercise. Piers Morgan, Anton du Beke and Jason Manford have all had to cope with a certain degree of public embarrassment after other attendees on their speed-awareness courses decided to tell the press about it. And that’s fine. It may only be a speed-awareness course, but the old rule still applies – justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done. It is not meted out in private for the benefit of those on its receiving end.

You would expect a home secretary and former attorney general to understand such things, and not to embarrass her civil servants by seeking their assistance in conniving her way out of it.

It makes life difficult for Rishi Sunak, but it also makes life easy. His early days as prime minister were overshadowed by the entirely farcical situation in which he reappointed Ms Braverman as home secretary just days after she had resigned, under Liz Truss, for breaching the ministerial code. The commons and the country were treated to the laughable spectacle of the home secretary defending herself by saying she had “done the right thing” in resigning as home secretary, even as she was somehow already home secretary again.

This time, no such farce can be allowed. Outside Downing Street only eight months ago, Mr Sunak promised “a return to integrity, professionalism and accountability” in government. Those words are already a millstone around his neck. He should never have reappointed Ms Braverman, but on top of that, he has lost his deputy prime minister over bullying allegations, he’s been fined for making a political video while not wearing a seatbelt, and he quietly published his tax return in the middle of Boris Johnson’s interrogation about Partygate.

If the home secretary is found to have been in breach of the ministerial code for a second time, there is no way in which both she and Mr Sunak’s reputation can survive.