If nothing else, one thing is certain about the United Kingdom’s Conservative government: there’s going to be drama.
The latest Tory meltdown saw a major cabinet shakeup and the end of Suella Braverman’s contentious tenure as home secretary, sparked by rising dissent over her controversial plan to send asylum seekers — of any national origin — to Rwanda. James Cleverly, the former foreign secretary, replaced Braverman and former prime minister David Cameron has stepped into the foreign secretary role.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to fire Braverman and bring back Cameron looks like a pendulum swing away from the small but vocal populist members of his party, of which Braverman is emblematic. More moderate members of the party have pressed Sunak to get rid of her for months, though his doing so has inflamed Braverman, whose support in October’s vote helped him become prime minister.
Though Braverman’s firing seems to be tied to an inflammatory op-ed and subsequent violence around a pro-Palestinian rally held last week, there have been other signals that her position was untenable. While some of her hardline rhetoric and policy proposals were popular with right-wing members of Parliament, members in the centrist faction called for her firing, voicing concerns about her rhetoric, her competence, and her alienation of more moderate voters.
One of Braverman’s most divisive actions was her support for the controversial “Rwanda plan,” which the UK Supreme Court shot down just two days after Sunak fired her. Braverman and other advocates claim the African nation is a safe third country for people to settle in; however, the Court disagreed, ruling that Rwanda’s government could put those migrants at serious risk by deporting them to their home countries, where they could face ethnic, religious, or other forms of persecution.
Though Sunak has promoted the plan and has promised to push it through, whatever it takes, moderate…
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