Suella Braverman rails against ‘experts and
elites’ in partisan speech
Home secretary attacks ‘radical left’ and identity
politics and warns against ‘fratricide’ on right
Peter
Walker Deputy political editor
@peterwalker99
Mon 15 May
2023 15.53 BST
Suella
Braverman has railed against “experts and elites” and what she called the
divisive politics of identity, in a highly partisan speech that is likely to be
viewed as setting out ideas for a post-election Conservative leadership bid.
Addressing
the National Conservatism conference in Westminster, the home secretary made
comments trailed in advance about the need for the UK to cut back on legal
migration and train domestic workers for jobs such as fruit picking.
The speech,
which was interrupted by two Extinction Rebellion protesters who were marched
from the hall, otherwise largely steered clear of specific policy areas.
Instead,
Braverman set out a highly personal blueprint for a political philosophy to
take on the “radical left”, including the Labour party.
Braverman
argued that conservatism “has no truck with political correctness”, in a
section of the speech that squarely addressed culture war issues.
“The
ethnicity of grooming gang perpetrators is the sort of fact that has become
unfashionable in some quarters,” she said. “Much like the fact that 100% of
women do not have a penis. It is absurd that we find ourselves in a situation
where this a remotely controversial statement.”
In one of a
series of attacks on Keir Starmer, Braverman said that “given his definition of
a woman, we can’t rule him out from running to be Labour’s first female prime
minister”.
On a
similar theme, Braverman said those on the left “are ashamed of our history and
embarrassed by the sentiments and desires expressed by the British public”.
She said:
“I think the left can only sell its vision for the future by making people feel
terrible about our past. White people do not exist in a special state of sin or
collective guilt. Nobody should be blamed for things that happened before they
were born. The defining feature of this country’s relationship with slavery is
not that we practised it, but that we led the way in abolishing it.”
Beginning
with a description of her father’s arrival from Kenya in 1968, and her mother’s
move from Mauritius to train as a nurse, Braverman said her politics, like that
of her parents, was “a politics of optimism, pride, national unity, aspiration,
and realism”.
She
continued: “The left’s is a politics of pessimism, guilt, national division,
resentment and utopianism. The left on the other hand sees the purpose of
politics as to eradicate the existence of inequality, even if that comes at the
expense of individual liberty and human flourishing.”
Attacking
identity politics, Braverman said it was “the politics of grievance and
division – it is illiberal and incompatible with social cohesion.”
In apparent
criticism of academics and other advisers, Braverman said Conservatives should
be “sceptical of self-appointed gurus, experts and elites who think they know
best what is in the public’s interest, even when that public is quite certain
that they need something different from what those experts are proposing.”
She added:
“Common sense and a shared understanding of who we are and what really matters
in life have vastly more to recommend themselves than does anything that
emanates from an ivory tower.”
Braverman
warned against the UK descending into a US-style culture war that pitted
various elements of the right against each other.
“I suspect
the form it takes in the UK will naturally differ in some ways to the form it’s
taken in the US,” she said. “But having observed events in the US in recent
years, I do want to sound a note of caution. One way that we Conservatives must
distinguish ourselves from the left is by not devouring ourselves through
fratricide.”
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