At first glance, Suella Braverman seems to have been created to make Priti Patel seem acceptable. It’s possible that Braverman is more polite than Patel when confronted with officials offering unwelcome advice, but on the substance of her policies she is just as extreme and, more to the point, doomed as her predecessors.
It is now well over a decade since David Cameron promised to get net migration down to the tens of thousands, and more than six years since the Brexit referendum Leave campaigns promised that the UK would “take back control” of Britain’s borders. The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised an Australian-style points system, a rather vague commitment, and “there will be fewer lower-skilled migrants and overall numbers will come down”.
Ms Patel did enact an Australia-style points system and the Rwanda refugee deputation scheme (legally paused and not in the 2019 manifesto). However, she did not succeed, at least as far as her critics were concerned, in controlling migration. Hence her departure and the arrival of the energetic Ms Braverman. Predictably, she is taking an even tougher approach; equally plainly, it won’t work.
