What Next For Suella Braverman After Her Failed Leadership Bid?

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Rachel Reeves will accuse the previous Conservative government of having “covered up” the state of public finances in a significant House of Commons statement this afternoon.

The chancellor is expected to reveal a £20 billion “black hole” in the books due to the previous government overspending on “unfunded” pledges and signal Labour’s intention to cut government departments.

Reeves will also unveil plans to get a grip of public spending, including public sector cuts, a new Office of Value for Money (OVM) and a pledge to have just one fiscal event per year to return stability to the markets.

The most controversial element of today’s proceedings centres around what Labour did and did not know of this “black hole” prior to the party’s election victory. The Conservatives, for instance, have accused Reeves of “trying to con the British public into accepting Labour tax rises”, insisting that the “books” were well and truly open throughout the campaign. That’s thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), they say, Britain’s fiscal watchdog.

Meanwhile, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said it is “striking” that the £20 billion “black hole” is the same size as the Conservative Party’s recent cuts to National Insurance in government. Read Johnson’s instructive comments here.

And I have more background on Labour’s plan to weaponise their dismal inheritance in my weekend long-read; find that here in case you missed it.

But today: some thoughts on the Conservative leadership contest as the nomination stage draws to a close.

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The big news in the Conservative leadership race today is that Kemi Badenoch, the shadow housing secretary, is in; and Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is out.

As with so much of the still unfurling contest, it’s a tale of two op-eds, both penned for conservative-supporting papers.

Braverman’s typically vociferous missive in the Telegraph is scathing of colleagues who, she says, labelled her “mad, bad and dangerous” in recent weeks. Braverman also apologised to the “thousands” of activists who had urged her to stand: “I’m sorry. I cannot run because I cannot say what people want to hear.”

The former home secretary claimed she had the requisite backing (10 MPs) to enter the race by the 2.30 pm deadline today. But “getting on to the ballot is not enough”, she concluded.

Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, confirmed her leadership bid in an article for The Times, courting support thusly: “If I have the privilege to serve, we will speak the truth again.”

Commenting on the party’s recent election routing, Badenoch said the Conservatives deserved to lose because the government was “unsure of who we were, what we were for and how we could build a new country.”

She added: “So, it is time to renew. The country will not vote for us if we don’t know who we are or what we want to be. That is why I am seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party to renew our movement and, with the support of the British people, to get it to work for our country again.”

Badenoch, the race’s frontrunner, now joins James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Robert Jenrick and Mel Stride, who declared last week, and Dame Priti Patel, who launched her bid at the weekend.

The question set to dominate the contest through August will be whether Badenoch’s present supremacy can sustain before the MP voting rounds begin in September. Over the weekend, in a sign of the incipient contest’s bitterness, Badenoch accused her rivals of deploying “dirty tricks” to spread “dishonest” and damaging claims about her to the media.

That said, Suella Braverman’s decision not to contest the Conservative leadership election will be welcome news for moderate MPs, who view her as a symbol of the division from which the party must depart.

It also suggests that Braverman, with her recent comments, went too far for many MPs on the party right. A series of Conservatives thought to be her allies simply abandoned her campaign over recent weeks, bailing in favour of the race’s new insurgent right-winger, Robert Jenrick.

Danny Kruger, who supported Braverman’s leadership bid in 2022, is reportedly running Jenrick’s campaign. Sir Desmond Swayne, an erstwhile Braverman backer, has endorsed Mel Stride. And Sir John Hayes, Braverman’s political mentor and a significant figure on the Tory right, is also said to be supporting Jenrick.

Viewed in full, Braverman’s Telegraph op-ed is a monument to unfulfilled ambition, and hence contains plenty of swipes — some subtle, some not — at her progressing rivals.

Addressing her party’s failure at the last election, Braverman writes:

“We did not cut immigration despite saying we would; we raised taxes to a 70-year high whilst pledging the opposite and we over-reacted to Covid which disabled our public services. We failed to tackle the long tail of Blairism contained in the Human Rights Act, Equality Act and European Convention on Human Rights, despite complaining about them. And it was on our watch that transgender ideology and critical race theory seeped into our institutions, notwithstanding our rhetoric”.

The former home secretary goes on to regret the “vilification” she faced for “accepting these truths”, adding: “The traumatised party does not want to hear these things said out loud.”

Braverman also cautions that Labour’s victory was not some freak “loveless landslide” (a phrase Cleverly has used); condemns those who have branded Reform “racist” (Tugendhat said Reform has a “pattern of racist and misogynistic” during the election); hits back at those angry at recent “infighting”, insisting MPs should have heeded her warnings; and warns Tory members “of [candidates] reinventing themselves as ECHR-sceptics” (a reference to Tugendhat’s recent remarks). Of course, these comments all come after Braverman labelled Robert Jenrick a “centrist Rishi supporter” earlier this month.

The former home secretary closed her op-ed with this revealing paragraph: “Whoever takes charge will, I know, have the best intentions and I will support them from the backbenches for a Conservative revival, a privilege for which I am deeply grateful.”

The sentence serves both as a warning to the race’s eventual victor and a hint as to Braverman’s future plans. It suggests, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the onetime standard-bearer of the Brexiteer right plans to style herself as the authentic voice of conservative values this parliament — ready and willing to call foul when her leader steps out of line.

Of course, whoever emerges triumphant in the Conservative contest is unlikely to pass the former cabinet minister’s political purity tests — nor will they much care to. Neither Badenoch nor Jenrick — and certainly not any moderate victor — will want, let alone be able, to accept Braverman’s “truths”. And her isolation will only deepen accordingly.

This begs a further question: after months of posturing, both inside and outside government, where does the political energy stoked by Braverman now flow? What possible outlets exist on the backbenches for the spotlight-demanding but influence-deprived ex-cabinet minister?

In this regard, it is arguably instructive that Braverman still refuses to attack Nigel Farage or Reform, choosing instead to view the party as the legitimate expression of popular conservative grievance.

As such, if the next Tory leader refuses to address the Faragist threat on Braverman’s terms, will Reform prove her — as one more aggrieved Conservative — ultimate destination? That, of course, depends on whether Nigel Farage can bear sharing the spotlight (a large if indeed).

But having “bowed” out of the leadership race in such a hostile fashion — and with the eventual victor unlikely to rule in Braverman’s image, the countdown on the ex-home secretary symbolically defecting may well have begun.

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Budget ‘black hole’ is same size as Rishi Sunak’s pre-election tax cuts, says IFS chief

Lunchtime soundbite

‘Whilst I disagree with her diagnosis, I do welcome her contribution to that debate and long may she continue to contribute to our Conservative family’

— Shadow veterans minister Andrew Bowie, a supporter of Kemi Badenoch, says he hopes Suella Braverman will stay in the Conservative Party after she decided not to stand in the party’s leadership race.