It would be a mistake for the Tory Right to go with Suella Braverman

Of course it was inevitable. Suella Braverman was so clearly defiant of Cabinet collective responsibility that she made it impossible for the Prime Minister, struggling to maintain his credibility, to keep her in office. But leaving the more squalid power struggle aside for a moment, let’s look at the substantive matter.

This is the heart of it: what the former home secretary was saying about the most dangerously contentious issue of the day was inherently – presumably deliberately – inflammatory. It may not have been factually incorrect to say that the police were taking too soft an approach to militant Palestinian activism. It was not necessarily wrong to suggest that the British people were being let down by the Government’s apparent failure to get to grips with a volatile minority in its midst.

What was unacceptable was that she framed these opinions in inflammatory terms which undermined the moral argument that might have been made against the “hate” she wanted to condemn. At a time when irrationality and loathing were becoming serious threats to civil order, she was raising the temperature rather than lowering it. What she advocated sounded more like recrimination and revenge than an attempt to bring reconciliation. 

Maybe you believe that at least some of the forces at large in these events are uninterested in reconciliation or rational argument, and that may be true. But a liberal democratic society cannot – must not – deal with such a phenomenon by discarding its own principles and standards of behaviour.

Needless to say as a Jew, I am deeply affected by the virulent anti-Semitism that has been on display during the pro-Palestine demonstrations. But for the life of me I cannot see how labelling these events “hate marches” can possibly help to alleviate anyone’s anxiety or distress. If anything, it is likely to heighten fear in the Jewish community and alienation in the Muslim one. To put it bluntly, I do not want to be defended in these terms and I do not want the reasonable Muslims I know to believe that their relationship with this country is damaged beyond repair.

There is now much talk of Mrs Braverman becoming the heroine of the Tory Right and making use of this exit from government as a basis for a leadership bid. If this happens it will be profoundly misjudged. Being on the Right of the Conservative party ought to mean believing in free markets, small government and low taxation because that is the philosophy that ultimately results in the greatest opportunity, fairness (in the true sense of the word), and, ultimately, human happiness. It is the enemies of those ideas who try to portray the Right as hard-hearted, intolerant and indifferent to hardship.

So how could anyone in the top league of British politics not have realised that using the term “lifestyle choice” in connection with homelessness made you sound like Marie Antoinette? For the Tory Right to adopt this brand of leadership will not just put it out of touch with a huge swathe of the British electorate: much more important, it will discredit the political and economic policies which should be its true mission.