Suella Braverman resigns as the PM swaps former allies for Sunak supporters

Liz Truss has used a minor breach of the rules on the security of official documents as a pretext for further surrendering her government to the Sunakites. Suella Braverman, the home secretary, sent a draft ministerial written statement to an MP from her personal email.

It looks as if the prime minister, possibly advised by the chancellor, decided to use this minor breach of the rules as an excuse to get rid of a minister who has openly defied her pro-growth policy of allowing more immigration.

That argument appears to have come to a head at a meeting yesterday, when Braverman was resisting pressure from Truss to announce a liberal policy on increasing the number of visas for skilled workers. According to Paul Goodman, the editor of Conservative Home, it was “the mother of all rows about migration”, about a plan “which would make it easier for the Office for Budget Responsibility to say the government would hit its growth target”.

Braverman was fairly explicit about this in her resignation letter. She said: “I have concerns about the direction of this government.” She said she was worried about the government’s commitment to manifesto promises, “such as reducing overall migration numbers”.

Quite by coincidence, she sent an email today that was a “technical infringement of the rules” and reported her mistake to civil servants. It seems that Truss seized her chance to try to reinforce her precarious position. The policy is not a straightforward Truss-versus-Sunak issue. Truss has been consistently quite liberal about immigration, whereas Rishi Sunak has been just as supportive of the Rwanda asylum seekers plan.

But the personnel question is a further attempt by Truss to throw herself on the mercy of the Sunakites. In just five days, she has now sacked two of the three people she chose for the great offices of state, and replaced them with supporters of her leadership election opponent. Grant Shapps, the new home secretary, felt he was unfairly treated when he was sacked as transport secretary, and was considered to be one of the organisers of the attempt to push Truss out and replace her with Sunak, without a leadership election.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

Her former supporters are being cast out. Braverman’s resignation letter contained two sharp barbs aimed at the prime minister on her way out. She said: “Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics. I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility; I resign.”

Braverman was considered to be the leading member of the European Research Group faction of the parliamentary Conservative party, but Truss has decided that they are no longer the key to her survival. Braverman may have also undermined her own position somewhat by her overwrought rhetorical attack yesterday on tofu-eaters blocking roads in environmental protests.

Truss is even more securely a prisoner of the Rishi Sunak Party. It is the only way she can prolong her tenuous hold on her office, but it only poses the question that Keir Starmer asked in the Commons today even more insistently: what is the point of her? One by one, her cabinet will be filled by Sunak supporters, and policy by policy, her government’s programme will be Sunak’s programme. The logical conclusion is that Sunak himself should be prime minister. But when?