Look out, Rishi – Suella is coming for your job

In effect, the King’s Speech was written by the Labour opposition. Far from reviving the Conservatives’ fortunes, as Rishi Sunak’s allies had hoped, it only reinforced the impression that power is passing to Labour – and that Keir Starmer will write the next King’s Speech.

Several Tory MPs grumbled privately about the absence of a “retail offer” on the issues that will decide next year’s general election – the economy and public services. They worry that waiting for the manifesto will be far too late.

Sunak’s attacks on Labour in his Commons speech gave the game away. In another sign the Tories have run out of ideas, legislation was shaped by Labour’s policies. An unnecessary bill allowing an annual licence round for North Sea oil and gas was included only because Labour would not issue any new licences.

The King’s Speech gave us a preview of the Tories’ election campaign: better the devil you know. Sunak will claim the economy has turned a corner and issue stark warnings to undecided voters that an inexperienced Labour Party would make a mess of it.

The emphasis on crime and justice in the speech reflects the Tories’ jitters that Labour has overtaken them on these issues in voters’ eyes.

The Tories have talked themselves into believing they can turn Starmer’s record as director of public prosecutions into a vote winner for themselves. But Labour knows this is coming and is preparing what it thinks is a very strong case for the defence.

The public will surely notice the inconsistency of a government bringing in ever tougher sentences and emergency measures to release prisoners early because it has failed to provide enough places in overcrowded prisons. A series of reports in The Independent have highlighted our crumbling justice system.

Ministers struggled in media appearances to deny our story that men who subjected women to harassment, stalking or revenge porn could avoid prison under the government’s plan to scrap shorter sentences.

Sunak’s fightback on law and order is hampered by having Suella Braverman as his home secretary. In fact, she is no longer “his”, only hers. Her deliberately provocative language – on pro-Palestine “hate marches”, saying homeless people, “many of them from abroad”, have made a “lifestyle choice”, and that multiculturalism has failed – weakened her own arguments, even among people who might have had some sympathy if she had expressed them less stridently.

Her words, of course, are all about her campaign to become party leader after the election defeat many Tories expect. Even Tory enemies admit she is a contender. But perhaps her recent remarks have something to do with her being overtaken by potential rivals James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch and Penny Mordaunt in the beauty contest among the grassroots party members who choose the leader.

Sunak and other cabinet ministers are repeatedly asked about Braverman’s outbursts in media interviews, diverting them from their message. They cannot endorse her divisive, inflammatory language, knowing that some blue wall voters will be offended even if some in the red wall like it. That produces headlines about cabinet splits.

The government can’t speak with one voice on a central issue. Alex Chalk, the justice secretary and a rare One Nation Tory in a senior job, is sensible and a good media performer – but he and Braverman are chalk and cheese. Remarkably, we have a King’s Speech with law and order at its heart and the home secretary is absent from the airwaves, presumably to avoid more damaging headlines about the Tories’ approach to homelessness.

Braverman is said by friends to be frustrated that she is not getting her way on the Criminal Justice Bill, including her attempt to block charities from providing tents to homeless people. Perhaps she is goading the prime minister to sack her. Perhaps she will jump first. But she will need to find a better crusade than being cold-hearted towards the homeless. Back to “stop the boats,” I suppose. But that would be her failure as much as Sunak’s.

The home secretary has long outlived her usefulness to Sunak as a right-wing outrider who protects his back. She is undermining rather than helping his efforts to make law and order an election issue and making him look weak by keeping her in his tent. She is peeing inwards rather than outwards.

I detect that opinion among Tory MPs is shifting against Braverman. So she would be less of a threat to Sunak on the backbenches than previously thought. Plenty of Tory MPs, furious her “lifestyle choice” remark makes them look the nasty party again, think Sunak cannot allow her public display of disunity to continue.

“We can’t go on like this,” one told me. They are right: he should sack her in his forthcoming reshuffle.