"They Never Wanted To Stop The Boats" Suella Braverman

TRIGGERnometry

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman discusses her departure from the Conservative Party and her alignment with Reform UK. She critiques t

Key takeaways

• Braverment argues that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is the only way to effectively deport illegal migrants.
• She accuses the Conservative leadership, including Rishi Sunak, of 'performing' toughness on immigration without the actual will to implement policy.

Main topics

• Small boats and illegal migration
• ECHR and legal barriers to deportation

Notable quotes

I am liberated to speak honestly against what I see as institutional cowardoid and deceit.

Conclusion

A deep dive into the ideological shift within the British right, movin

Transcript preview

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It's Trigonometry at sheath.com. Speaker 1 (1:05) People are scared. They've lost faith in the government. They have no confidence in the authorities. They're beginning to organise themselves, mobilise themselves and take the law into their own hands. I was bound by a prime minister who didn't really want to stop boats. He takes a very liberal view on migration, which is why he didn't want to cut immigration. He was ambivalent about stopping the boats. I mean, he once privately said to me that, why are so many people... upset about the boats. These people come here and work. That's good for the economy. Rishi Sunak said this to you? Of course, yeah. He said that to me when he was chancellor. When Speaker 2 (1:41) Rishi Sunak was chancellor, he said, I don't understand why people are upset about the boats. These people come here and work. Yes. Speaker 2 (1:49) Wow Speaker 3 (1:52) This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College. Right after this episode, go check out their incredible online courses, which are absolutely free at hillsdale.edu Speaker 2 (2:03) slash trigger. Speaker 2 (2:06) So, Ola Bravman, welcome back to Trigonometry. Hello. Good to be back. It's great to have you back. Last time, of course, you came on the show shortly after no longer being, let's say, a Rishi Sunak's Home Secretary. Yes. And a lot has happened since, not least you've written a book, which is why we're happy and keen to have you on. But let's talk, you talk about your family history first in the book. And, you know, with the where are you from question, which we'll touch on perhaps later. But interesting for us, of course, and for our audience would be having left the Conservative government at the time, you were still a member of the Conservative Party. And I remember asking you one or two slightly more pointed questions and you being very diplomatic about your answers. You've since, of course, left the Conservative Party, you've joined Reform. So. What can you tell us about why the Conservative government failed this country, which I think universally is recognised, including within the Conservative Party now, that you couldn't say at the time? Speaker 1 (3:06) Yes, well, that's a very good introduction because I actually wrote this book for all of those people, including myself, who are bluntly furious with the last Conservative government and the last Labour government, but most recently the last Conservative government, for... the damage that they did to this country. And now I'm no longer in the Conservative Party. I am liberated to speak honestly against what I see as institutional cowardice and deceit, frankly. I said it internally time and time again when I was Home Secretary, when I was holding a great office of state, the most senior woman in the government, trying to... get the Conservative government to do the right thing on small boats, on visas, on Islamism, on anti-Semitism, on our streets. And it refused time and time again. Speaker 2 (4:05) What is it? Speaker 1 (4:06) The Conservative Party, last Conservative prime minister, Conservative cabinet members. And by that, I mean Rishi Sunak, I mean Jeremy Hunt, I mean Kemi Badenoch, I mean Tom Tugendhat, many of those people who are still running. the Conservative Party today. And so, what I said out in my book actually is, you know, from David Cameron through Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Kemi Bejanog, it's different faces, but it's the same tactics, it's the same deceit, it's the same modus operandi, same family. You know, promise big, go big on the rhetoric, but deliver very small and actually fail people. Speaker 2 (4:48) We had journalist Dan Hodges on the show recently, and I actually thought it was a great discussion. He made some interesting points. But the one aspect of it that Francis and I both found quite frustrating is when it came to the issue of small boats. And let's be honest, that issue is now becoming the number one issue other than the economy, which is obviously huge as well for a lot of people in this country, not just sort of the fringes of the right. It's gone mainstream, fair to say. And there was this sense, no matter what we said, It was always, oh, it's too difficult. It's too complicated. You can't do this. So you say, are you saying we should invade France? You know, it's all of that. You as Home Secretary were attempting to do something. No offense to you in saying this, but you failed like everybody else. I failed. Speaker 1 (5:32) I'm honest about that. Speaker 2 (5:33) Yeah. It's undeniable. Why is it such a difficult issue? Because, Soheila, this may be a very simplistic, I'm just a normal person, maybe a very simplistic way of phrasing it, but I just think about it like this. At any other time in history, if tens of thousands of men, which is what this is, were coming into your country, some people would say invading your country. You know, we can argue about that. Tens of thousands of people were coming on boats into your island nation. The king of the country would organize a group of armed men to go down there and stop it. At any time in history, that would have been recognized as the rational response. I'm not saying we should do that today, but I'm just saying throughout history, protecting your borders would have been seen as possibly at some points the only responsibility of the state and certainly its primary responsibility. How are we now in a position where even people like you who at least want to do it, can't do it. Speaker 1 (6:31) It's because of lack of political will. And so I was basically the only Home Secretary who genuinely wanted to stop the votes and meant it. And what I came up against, and the reason why I failed, was that I was bound by a Prime Minister who didn't really want to stop the votes, a Chancellor of the Exchequer who didn't really want to stop the votes, a Conservative Cabinet who lacked the political will. And what becomes very clear, and what I blow the whistle on really, was it was all a performance. So it was all about talking tough. Speaker 1 (7:05) parroting and trumpeting the tough rhetoric, performing. Speaker 1 (7:13) But actually behind the scenes, once the doors were closed, wholly lacking the requisite will to do the right thing legally, politically and diplomatically. So what is the answer to this? Speaker 2 (7:25) Yeah, well, tell us, because Dan Hodges says there's no way to solve this. He's wrong. OK, so how do you solve this? Speaker 1 (7:30) Entirely a way to solve this. And you can see by what other countries have achieved, it has been stopped in other countries. So what needs to happen? And this is what I was. banging my head against the brick wall with Rishi Sunak and members like Kemi Badenoch and everybody in the Conservative Party, pretty much, was we first of all need to lead the European Convention on Human Rights. I mean, I sound like a broken record on this, but I will keep saying it until it is done, because I saw, not just as a Home Secretary, but even before that as Attorney General, and even before that as a lawyer, working in the immigration courts before I was an MP, how our human rights laws have been weaponized against the British people and in particular against the British state. So every time a Home Secretary wants to detain an illegal migrant or deport them, she is met with infinite number of legal claims, many of which are fabricated, but largely based on human rights grounds. namely Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. That's the prohibition against torture, inhumane and degrading treatment. So a migrant will arrive with nefarious intentions for the UK, maybe from Afghanistan on a boat. We try and deport him. He says, Article 3. If you send me back even to France or let alone Afghanistan, you're violating my human right against torture because I'm just going to get tortured in Afghanistan. And he can make up some political party that he's in. He can make up some kind of oppressor or grievance that there might exist in Afghanistan, but in Iran. if they're from Iraq, if they're from Eritrea. Eritrea is the country of choice at the moment. If you come and claim that you're from Eritrea, you've got a slam dunk appeal through the courts. So Article 3 is often used as a way to stay into the UK and subvert the state's ability to deport. Article 8 is the other. mischief in the European Convention on Human Rights. That's the right to a private life. So someone might be here, they might be a foreign criminal, someone who's come here and raped or murdered or dealt drugs. And we arrest them and we convict them for breaking our laws. We put them in prison. But we say, hey, this person's from Jamaica. We want to deport them back to Jamaica. And they say, Article 8. You can't deport me because I've got a baby. I had a baby six months ago in the UK. And so if you send me back to Jamaica, you're violating my human right to a family life. And generally, that will be a winning argument in the courts. And so this Convention on Human Rights, which started out with noble aspirations and contains words with which no one would disagree, the right to life. I don't disagree with the right to life. I don't agree. I don't disagree with the right, the prohibition against torture. I agree with the right for a fair trial. has been distorted, stretched, and expanded over the years so that it has actually become a charter for illegal migrants rather than a document protecting common sense, fairness, and human dignity. So Speaker 2 (10:49) explain this to me, Sveala, because last time we talked about this, and since in your commentary, and today, you say there was a lack of political will, Rishi Sunak, other members of the Conservative Party. And the central argument in the book, as I understand it, and do correct me, is that a lot of the reason that our governments and Whitehall, civil service, et cetera, refuse to deal with immigration is they see it as a way of rigging the economic stats, basically, right? But that is not true of illegal immigration. And this is the bit that I've never understood in this argument. What is the rationale for a Rishi Sunak or a Boris Johnson or whoever? not to take this path that you wanted to take because this can't be about the economy, right? This is something else. So what's going on? Speaker 1 (11:31) So on the ECHR issue, I was the first Conservative minister to say publicly as Attorney General in 2022 that if we wanted to stop the boats, we needed to leave the ECHR. Now, you might think, based on the premise of your question, that if that was the solution, and I said that as a serving attorney general and a former barrister defending the Home Office in immigration cases, that would carry some weight. And people like Rishi Sunak and Kemi Bagnott would say, yeah, maybe we should do that. Why did they refuse so violently? The opposition to it within the Conservative Party was very, very strong. I was a fringe view in 2022, 23, even 24. to say we needed to leave the ECHO. Why? It's a rerun of the Brexit debate. It's the same kind of arguments. Well, you know, that would be diplomatically damaging for the UK's reputation abroad to withdraw from this international convention. You'd be putting us in the same group as Russia, which was kicked out of the Council of Europe. We don't want to be in the same group as Russia. You're destroying civil liberties. How dare you say that we could leave the East HR? We're a respectable country that prides itself on civil liberties protections. So those are the kinds of red herring arguments, all eminently rebuttable, but which are routinely trotted out by the remainer wets, the establishment liberals, which make up the largest part of the Conservative Party to oppose leaving the East HR. And that was the... They won that argument. I lost the argument within the Conservative Party. And, you know, that's why I left the Conservative Party, because they ultimately don't agree with that policy. They say superficially that they've changed their mind. Three years later, you know, they caught up with me and Kemi said, oh, actually, maybe Suella had a point and we should copy this policy because it seems to be quite popular. And reforms said it. And Nigel's been saying it for years. So let's just copy it and hope no one notices that we don't really mean it. But the truth is. the vast majority of Tory MPs are implacably opposed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights because of those reasons that I set out. And, you know, it is another big fat Tory lie. Speaker 2 (13:47) Do you know, I am all for people having different opinions about different issues and being opposed to policies on matters of rationality and principle and workability. But those are some terrible arguments, aren't they? Speaker 1 (13:59) Correct, I agree. But they were compelling and they still are compelling amongst the liberal elites Speaker 2 (14:05) within the Conservative Party. Why is that? We have up to potentially a million illegal immigrants in this country at this point and the number keeps going up. Those are not good reasons for that to be happening. They're just not. Speaker 1 (14:20) They would all say, so I had this argument countless times with my Conservative colleagues, with people like Kemi Begnaud, with Rishi Sunak. And I recount my exchanges with Rishi Sunak. I would say, listen, Rishi, we're trailing in the polls. You might call an election next year or the year after. We've got this boats crisis. It's the number one issue that people are furious about. You've got to go big on it. And he's like, yeah, I know I've got to make it priority. That's why, you know, I'm making, I'm coming up with a slogan, whatever it takes, stop the boats. I'm having press conferences. I've got this snazzy, you know, podiums and all these kind of events. And I keep... getting the headlines for it. And I said, well, you've got to go. You've got to go big on it. And, you know, if you fix this, you know, it will be, you might win the next election because this is a make or break issue. But what you've got to do to fix it is you do have to do necessary and somewhat difficult things. You've got to leave the ECHR. You've got to re-empower the British state to actually detain. at the border and deport. If you leave the ECHR, the Rwanda scheme will work. The whole reason why we couldn't get those flights off the first time around was because of the ECHR. It was because of judges in the European Court of Human Rights sat in Strasbourg, who at 11 o'clock on the night of those planes on the tarmac waiting to take off, issued an injunction and said, no, stop those flights. stop the Rwanda scheme. And then that was the fatal blow to the Rwanda scheme. If we weren't a member of that court, those flights could have taken off. And we would have started the whole Rwanda scheme with the accommodation ready and with the Rwandans ready to cooperate with us. I went over there to see the buildings that were being constructed to house these illegal migrants, all very humane, you know, UN-recognized scheme. All of that was fatally flawed because we were scuppered by... human rights laws applied in UK courts and the Strasbourg Court. And I said to him, we've got to do this. And he said, well, you know, that would, it would be, you know, we don't want to upset international law. It would be too, it's too radical. It's too dangerous. And what he meant by that is there's too many Tories in the party, including himself, who just didn't want to upset the apple cart. Speaker 3 (16:43) We're having this conversation, Sweller, and we're using the words radical, we're saying dangerous. But I'm telling you right now, there is a lot of people out in the real world who are radicalized now, and the situation is very dangerous because they have consistently demanded not only the immigration be lowered, but illegal immigration be clamped down upon. It's not happening. So, and we can see this with other aspects, with people taking the law into their own hands. And what concerns me is there's a lot of people going, yeah, I agree with him, mate. And that really, I'm sorry, but that's on the government. That's on the Conservative government and that's on the Labour government. Speaker 1 (17:24) Correct. People are at the end of their tether and they are on the brink. And I really fear for public order because you're right, Francis, people are beginning, they've lost faith in their governments to solve this crisis. They see what's happening day after day and it is spreading in my constituency of Fair and Waterlooville. Illegal migrants have arrived in Portsmouth, just on the edge. We can see the waterfront from my constituency. Two weeks ago, it was Portsmouth. Last week, it was Gosport. This is no longer contained to Kent and Dover. This is everywhere. And people are seeing the impact in their communities with asylum hotels, women and girls getting attacked by illegal migrants. I visited Piddington a few weeks ago, and I met the women of Piddington who were having sleepless nights, literally, because of the prospect of over a thousand fighting-age illegal migrant men being housed on the outskirts of this very small rural village in Oxfordshire. And so people are scared. They've lost faith in the government. They have no confidence in the authorities. And you're right. They're beginning to organize themselves, mobilize themselves, and take the law into their own hands. And that is... You know, when we get to that point, I really fear for public safety and I fear for, yeah, as I said, public order. I Speaker 3 (18:59) can't remember what day it was last week, but I think it was around about over 700 illegal migrants came into this country. And then... In one day. In one day. And then I'm seeing... Both online but also people that I know the temperature really starting to rise and my question is when are the government going to wake up because this situation Let's be frank. It's only going to escalate It Speaker 1 (19:25) is it is only escalating it's it because the numbers are still you know, the government says Oh, well, there are fewer arrivals compared to last year as you say The dinghies are getting bigger the numbers per day are still incredibly high And the threat is getting closer to home. And so I think that, and people are getting more and more furious about it. They're getting scared. They're scared and they're angry. And I'm scared and I'm angry, actually. And having, you know, I served as Home Secretary and I have no confidence in the government. 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