Suella Braverman has revealed she ‘struggled’ as Home Secretary when she did not get the support of the Prime Minister or Cabinet colleagues to implement measures to lower migration.
Ms Braverman also said there was a ‘consensus’ led by the Treasury that more migration was a good thing and that the ‘gaslighting’ of British people over ‘white privilege’ and racism needs to stop.
Speaking to GB News, Suella Braverman said:
“My analysis of British politics is that there’s only room for one centre right party. There’s only room for one Conservative Party on the right of British politics. And at the moment, we have two. And that’s why Reform poses an existential threat to us right now. And as long as Reform continues to exist in the way it is, as long as it keeps taking away millions of voters who used to be part of our voting base, there is no chance that we are going to win elections.
“There’s very little I disagree with when it comes to Nigel Farage and I met thousands of people throughout this campaign, and many, many people said to me, I’m a lifelong Tory voter, but I’m going to vote Reform.
“They are feeling betrayed. They feel let down. They feel politically homeless because of our failures. So we have to address the issue of Reform. I’m not really interested in the form of what that takes, but we need to find an accommodation with Reform, with Nigel Farage, so that we can take the fight to Labour and win the next election.
“I would welcome anybody into the party who wants us to win, who supports the Conservatives, who will support Conservative candidates and councillors and support our effort to win elections. We can’t turn away supporters right now. We need allies, and we need friends, and boy, do we need them.
“I’ve already apologised [to the British public]. The first thing I said when I was re-elected on Thursday night was, I’m sorry because my party has let you down. I meant that to the British people.
“When I went into the Home Office in 2022 I was agitated, I was alarmed, and I was very, very concerned about the record number of visas which had just been issued in July 2022. We’d hit the 1 million mark of work and study visas.
“That’s not what I voted for when I voted to leave the European Union. It’s not what the British people voted for in 2019 when they chose us in that landslide election. And things were going in the wrong direction.
“I went in. I got an assurance from Rishi Sunak that he would work with me to lower legal migration and cut the number of visas by raising the salary threshold, imposing a cap on the number of visas, restricting the number of students, a whole host of things. I went in with a full and comprehensive program.
“Unfortunately, I was blocked. Now for your viewers and for those people who’ve not been in government, let me explain the reality of being in government. You could be the best minister. You could be the most charismatic, cleverest person in the room with the best idea.
“I just wanted to deliver a manifesto commitment to lower overall migration. But if the Prime Minister doesn’t agree with you, if no one around the Cabinet table agrees with you, you’re not getting anywhere. And that is the reality that I came up against.
“Could I have tried harder? I struggled. I struggled privately for 12 months, biting my lip, supporting the Prime Minister, trying to persuade from the inside. He didn’t agree with me.
I’m very concerned about the exponential rise in immigration, and I’m not talking here about the boats. The boats is a big problem, but the numbers are relatively small compared to legal migration, and as I said, when I went into the Home Office, I was really the only one around the Cabinet table who was moving, mobilised and motivated on this subject, having seen the previous data of the number of visas.
“I made the case. I made the case to the Prime Minister. I made the case to the chancellor. I made the case to the Education Department. I made the case to the Health Department. I made the case to the business department, to the Agricultural Department, all these departments where migrant labour is a factor and there was no support.
“There is a consensus. There’s an orthodox view, informed mainly by the Treasury, that more people, regardless of where they come from, regardless of what their skills are, regardless of what they’re earning, is necessarily a good thing for the economy in terms of growth.
“I fundamentally refute that, because there’s a massive oversight there in terms of growth per capita, which has been declining as the population increases, the cost and the pressure on housing supply, on public services, and also on national identity and cultural cohesion.
“And so I’m very concerned for a whole number of reasons about the unsustainable pace and scale of legal migration. People who come here need to contribute to our culture and to our way of life, and that’s what concerns me.
“We’ve got to stop telling the British people that they are racist. We’ve got to stop trying to guilt white people and we’ve got to stop branding all English people as racist.
“This concept of white privilege is a nonsense to me. Say that to the white working class boys in Britain who are the most underachieving when it comes to literacy and numeracy and school outcomes.
“Say that to young girls in some northern city towns, who were raped and abused by gangs of largely Pakistani Muslim men. So, I think we need to stop gaslighting the British people.”
