Suella Braverman’s speech: a self-hating bid for Tory leadership?
The UK’s Tory Home Secretary has continued her hate campaign against immigrants in a speech to an American think tank – earning widespread condemnation from all but her own Tory cronies.
She was discussing policy, which means she would have needed to get permission to say her words from the Cabinet Office.
Commentators may be right to suggest that it is a first move in a bid to become leader of the Conservative Party, challenging Rishi Sunak’s ever-weakening position.
(Sunak appears to have given up any pretense of trying to run the country and seems to be devoting himself to projects that will make money for himself and his family.)
Of course, as she did have permission (the speech was signed off by Downing Street), then the Tories should lose votes from gay people and women – because she promoted discrimination against both those segments of the population in her speech; this is now Tory government policy.
The fact that she was speaking to a US think tank suggests that she was making a pitch to the kind of international oligarchs who provide much of the Tory Party’s funding (do I have to attach the word ‘allegedly’ to that?) in order to gain support for such a bid.
But the speech also opens up the main fault with Braverman’s candidacy – for anything: her opposition to immigration indicates hatred of the very mechanism that has put her in a position even to make her speech, let alone seek power as a world leader.
Her own prime minister is of Indian descent, yet has risen to become the political leader of a country that is not, ancestrally, his. Doesn’t that, alone, destroy her arguments?
She is, herself, a daughter of immigrants, but the way she speaks about them reveals not the calculated reasoning of a seasoned politician but the irrational hatred of an unbalanced child.
Remember when Jewish people were labelled “self-hating” if they campaigned against the policy of Israel to persecute Palestinians on the lands that country has illegally occupied? It was a misnomer, because they did not hate their religion, culture or ethnicity – just a policy of a country that claimed to represent that religion, culture and ethnicity.
But that issue brought the phrase “self-hating” into modern parlance and we may now attach it to Braverman with far more accuracy than was ever applied to it in relation to Jews.
She is the daughter of immigrants; she does clearly hate them (and, by extension, their offspring), so she’s very definitely self-hating.
And she knows it’s her weak point, too. That’s why she went on the attack when she was challenged about it after her speech:
Smart Q from @Stone_SkyNews, basically asking Braverman how she squares the fact that her parents and her would not have the life they do, if the criteria that she seeks to apply to others had been applied to them.
She answers a different question that she invented instead. ~AA pic.twitter.com/mvYTpe60Ln
— Best for Britain (@BestForBritain) September 26, 2023
Why is it offensive’? Ever since the witch hunt the right have adopted the term ‘offensive’ when THEY want to call up identity politics as a defence for using race to bolster their power https://t.co/3ryl0n4Nyv
— Jackie Walker – HRH, MP, MBE, ABC (@Jackiew80333500) September 27, 2023
In this part of her speech, Braverman claimed that multiculturalism – allowing people of other cultures to settle in the UK – has failed because they don’t integrate into society:
Multiculturalism "has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it"
Home Secretary Suella Braverman gives speech on migration in Washington DChttps://t.co/cEf464fMw1 pic.twitter.com/3tctxaWiPS
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 26, 2023
Her arguments about the results of immigration are not new; they are the same arguments that were put forward by Enoch Powell in 1968. Fortunately, we had people like Jonathan Miller to present the other side, back in those more enlightened days:
On days like today, it’s important to remember the words of the wonderful Jonathan Miller when challenging the dog-whistling of those in power.pic.twitter.com/ddjcZeZyCZ
— Eddie Burfi (@EddieBurfi) September 26, 2023
The claim that people come here to create communities of their original countries, rather than integrate into our culture, falls because only a minority do this:
It's a good question, that should be asked of the minority of people who come here and do that. If the language barrier is a problem for you, perhaps you could ask it of UK "ex-pats" living in Spain or France, who behave the same way (also a minority).
— Mike Sivier (@MidWalesMike) September 27, 2023
Braverman is the daughter of Mauritian and Kenyan immigrants who integrated into UK society. Her prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is of Indian extraction but has also integrated into UK society. They are both living proof that her claim is false.
In fact, the debate over immigration goes back centuries; Shakespeare discussed it – and it is appropriate to end this article with a speech from the man who is considered to be England’s greatest writer.
If you claim to love England, Britain, the UK, and the culture that we have built, then you should love and live by these words:
"This is the strangers’ case
And this your mountainish inhumanity."Hastily recorded Sir Thomas More's speech, written by William Shakespeare, on immigrants yesterday. @SuellaBraverman’s speech was disgusting. #r4today
pic.twitter.com/Af3h3wW2V1— James Foster (@JamesEFoster) September 27, 2023
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Of course women hating and refugee hating Suella Braverman obtained permission from the fascist tory Cabinet Office boys to utter her hateful speech! So Braverman we women don’t matter because we supposedly do not experience persecution or male violence because our sex is female. Neither do female refugees because they are all just greedy ‘economic migrants’ seeking to exploit the riches of western countries!
The fascists must be delighted to view a woman who isn’t white utter such hatred and contempt for refugees and women in general. Conveniently Braverman forgets she too is a migrant, her boss that carpet salesman Rishi Sunak is also a migrant and innumerable UK citizens are also migrants because their ancestors migrated from other countries to the UK!
Braverman claiming certain groups do not ‘experience persecution but merely discrimination’ is fascism and very quickly the definition of who is a ‘real refugee’ becomes no one – because there are no refugees just supposedly greedy women, children and men seeking to enter rich white countries!
Multiculturalism: What about people who go to the Henley Regatta and Royal Ascott. What has Braverman got to say about that?
Why does she not denounce such examples of multiculturalism?