Suella Braverman remained in post as home secretary on Thursday evening, even as Downing Street said it would investigate how she came to write an article for the Times without incorporating changes demanded by No 10. Braverman is now on record as having called into doubt the professionalism of the biggest police force in the country, which is likely to make relations between the Home Office and the Metropolitan police even worse than they were. She also appears to have made a direct challenge to the prime minister’s authority without facing a sanction. So how did the home secretary end up in this position, and what does the immediate future hold for her? What is happening this weekend? The row between Braverman and the Met centres on a pro-Palestinian protest that is planned for Saturday. The prospect of tens of thousands of people marching through central London demonstrating over Israeli actions in Gaza during remembrance weekend has caused alarm among some Conservative MPs, even though marchers are not planning to demonstrate on Remembrance Sunday itself and say they will avoid the Cenotaph.
In the buildup to the protest, Braverman has called on the police to ban it entirely, something the Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, says he does not have the power to do. Rowley was withering this week when asked about the home secretary referring to protests as “hate marches”. “She’s picked two words out of the English language there and just strung them together,” he said. “I don’t know what she means.” What happened on Thursday to cause some to think she might be sacked? For days, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, appeared to back his home secretary, promising to “hold [Rowley] accountable” for the commissioner’s decision not to stop the protest. On Wednesday, however, Sunak met Rowley in person and was clearly persuaded by his position. Sunak issued a statement after that meeting in which he criticised the marchers but recognised their “right to peacefully protest”. That statement appeared to have drawn a line under the issue, with the dispute between the home secretary and the Met having been resolved in the force’s favour. But Braverman reignited the issue on Wednesday night in an article in the Times in which she accused the Met of favouring leftwing protests over rightwing ones, and compared pro-Palestinian demonstrations with marches in Northern Ireland. Why did this get Braverman into trouble? The usual process for a senior minister writing an article about an important political issue is for them to show it to Downing Street first to get signoff. No 10 made clear on Thursday that while Braverman’s team had shown officials the article in advance, they had not then made significant changes that were demanded by the prime minister’s advisers. This appears to have been a major breach of ministerial responsibility and a direct challenge to Sunak’s authority. But while Downing Street said it would investigate how the article came to be published in that form, the prime minister’s spokesperson also said Sunak continued to have confidence in his home secretary. Why has she been so outspoken? Most Tory MPs believe Braverman is positioning herself for a leadership bid should the Conservatives lose the next election. This week’s events follow a pattern of her courting controversy by setting out a position well to the right of what the PM has already said in an apparent attempt to court Tory members. Some even believe she is trying get herself fired from her job and thereby become a martyr in the eyes of party supporters. Her allies, however, say she is saying what many inside and outside the party believe. Will she remain in post? Braverman appears safe for now, though with an investigation ongoing there may well be a decision taken to sack her or some of her staff within weeks. One theory is that Sunak is preparing a reshuffle as early as next week and that Braverman is trying to position herself in advance of an expected demotion. What will happen this weekend? No one knows how many people will turn up to the protest on Saturday, although by turning it into a live political issue Braverman has boosted its visibility. Some worry that by trying to use it as a culture war issue, the home secretary has made it more likely that violence could break out.