www.theguardian.com Open in urlscan Pro
2a04:4e42:600::367  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

https://www.google.co.uk/search

<form action="https://www.google.co.uk/search" class="dcr-g8v7m4"><label for="src-component-201594" class="dcr-0">
    <div class="dcr-1eoq5xi">Search input </div>
  </label><input type="text" id="src-component-201594" aria-required="true" aria-invalid="false" aria-describedby="" required="" name="q" placeholder="Search" data-link-name="nav2 : search" tabindex="-1" class="selectableMenuItem dcr-11nw881"><label
    class="dcr-0">
    <div class="dcr-1eoq5xi">google-search </div>
    <div class="dcr-190ztmi"><svg width="30" viewBox="-3 -3 30 30" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true">
        <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd"
          d="M9.273 2c4.023 0 7.25 3.295 7.25 7.273a7.226 7.226 0 0 1-7.25 7.25C5.25 16.523 2 13.296 2 9.273 2 5.295 5.25 2 9.273 2Zm0 1.84A5.403 5.403 0 0 0 3.84 9.274c0 3 2.409 5.454 5.432 5.454 3 0 5.454-2.454 5.454-5.454 0-3.023-2.454-5.432-5.454-5.432Zm7.295 10.887L22 20.16 20.16 22l-5.433-5.432v-.932l.91-.909h.931Z">
        </path>
      </svg><span class="dcr-1p0hins">Search</span></div>
  </label><button type="submit" aria-live="polite" aria-label="Search with Google" data-link-name="nav2 : search : submit" tabindex="-1" class="dcr-1ecm11e">
    <div class="src-button-space"></div><svg width="30" viewBox="-3 -3 30 30" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true">
      <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M1 12.956h18.274l-7.167 8.575.932.932L23 12.478v-.956l-9.96-9.985-.932.932 7.166 8.575H1v1.912Z"></path>
    </svg>
  </button><input type="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" value="www.theguardian.com"></form>

Text Content

Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Print subscriptions
Sign in
Search jobs
Search
US edition
 * US edition
 * UK edition
 * Australia edition
 * International edition
 * Europe edition

The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian


SUPPORT THE GUARDIAN

Help sustain independent journalism in 2024
Support us

Support us
 * News
 * Opinion
 * Sport
 * Culture
 * Lifestyle

ShowMoreShow More
 * News
   * View all News
   * US news
   * World news
   * Environment
   * US politics
   * Ukraine
   * Soccer
   * Business
   * Tech
   * Science
   * Newsletters
   * Wellness
   
 * Opinion
   * View all Opinion
   * The Guardian view
   * Columnists
   * Letters
   * Opinion videos
   * Cartoons
   
 * Sport
   * View all Sport
   * Soccer
   * NFL
   * Tennis
   * MLB
   * MLS
   * NBA
   * NHL
   * F1
   * Golf
   
 * Culture
   * View all Culture
   * Film
   * Books
   * Music
   * Art & design
   * TV & radio
   * Stage
   * Classical
   * Games
   
 * Lifestyle
   * View all Lifestyle
   * Wellness
   * Fashion
   * Food
   * Recipes
   * Love & sex
   * Home & garden
   * Health & fitness
   * Family
   * Travel
   * Money
 * Search input
   google-search
   Search
   
   
    * Support us
    * Print subscriptions

   US edition
   * UK edition
   * Australia edition
   * International edition
   * Europe edition
   
 * * Search jobs
   * Digital Archive
   * Guardian Puzzles app
   * Guardian Licensing
   * The Guardian app
   * Video
   * Podcasts
   * Pictures
   * Inside the Guardian
   * Guardian Weekly
   * Crosswords
   * Wordiply
   * Corrections
   * Facebook
   * Twitter
 * * Search jobs
   * Digital Archive
   * Guardian Puzzles app
   * Guardian Licensing

 * The Guardian view
 * Columnists
 * Letters
 * Opinion videos
 * Cartoons


Photograph: Suella Braverman/@SuellaBraverman/PA
Photograph: Suella Braverman/@SuellaBraverman/PA
OpinionConservatives



SUELLA BRAVERMAN’S LETTER TO RISHI SUNAK IS A KEY CONTRIBUTION TO A HILARIOUS
NEW TORY GENRE

Zoe Williams



Their cod legalese and baffling histrionics have us rolling in the aisles – but
what are these wacky no-confidence letters trying to distract us from?

Thu 16 Nov 2023 03.00 ESTLast modified on Thu 16 Nov 2023 07.19 EST
 * 
 * 
 * 



So Andrea Jenkyns’s letter to Graham Brady calling for Rishi Sunak to go was, it
turns out, just the warm-up missive of no confidence. “Our democratically
elected leader Boris Johnson,” she wrote, “who bravely fought for Brexit when
parliament was in deadlock. Yes Boris, the man who won the Conservative Party a
massive majority, was unforgivable enough.”

It seemed like the main event to me: clumsy syntax, pantomime histrionics,
Jackanory cadence, ham-fisted recapping for the gerontocracy; could a
Conservative sound any dumber? Well, happily, yes. Later in the same letter,
Jenkyns warned of Keir Starmer and his imminent “socialist cabal” in Downing
Street, and the who-are-these-idiots bingo card was complete.



But that was before Suella Braverman and her three-pager, which has been
variously described as “brutal”, “stinging”, “excoriating”, all those words in
the up-yours cluster, none of which means “nonsensical” – which is strange,
because her letter, triumphantly, makes no sense. This, way above any sideswipes
at the prime minister and his probity, is its purpose: to introduce a large
number of facts and ideas that are either very easily disproved or are rendered
ridiculous by their own internal logic.



Braverman rattles through her “successful programme of reform” on crime, with a
number of key words about knives, gangs, sexual violence; anyone would think
criminals had had a hard time over the past year of her tenure, which is the
exact opposite of the truth. It’s never been easier to get away with breaking
the law, and in the rare event that a conviction is secured, there’s no room to
imprison you anyway. Those assertions were just Braverman’s low-hanging fruit,
to distract the number crunchers.

She goes on to list the policies that Sunak has failed to prioritise: reducing
legal migration; stopping the small boats; delivering the Northern Ireland
protocol; issuing unequivocal statutory guidance to protect biological sex in
schools. There is, throughout the letter, this strong but haphazardly expressed
suggestion that these policies were always part of the Conservative platform,
either as a promise of Brexit, or as a pledge of the 2019 manifesto.

Perhaps this sounds churlish, but just to retain some objective reality: hating
on trans people was never part of the Brexit promise, nor was “biological sex”
ever mentioned in the 2019 manifesto. No offence to the architects of the Leave
campaign – if they’d realised how much division and unpleasantness they could
generate with this debate, I have no doubt they’d have shoehorned it on to a
bus: but single-sex spaces are a relatively recent front in the war against
woke, and the only way to frame them as a long-term promise of the Tory right is
if we accept that Suella herself is its representative on Earth, and any thought
that passes through her is by definition its will.



The text is peppered with legal-ish language – “notwithstanding clauses” and
“inter alias” – and this set off all the lawyers, wondering not for the first
time whether her skills in this area really match those one would expect from a
former attorney general. Whenever she reaches for her silk-speak, she gives off
the vibe of a litigant-in-person, raging around a court room with a glossary
hacked off Google, unaware that some of the language is quite technical and has
a specific meaning, hoping to mask her lack of command with the vivacity of her
ill-will.

To those who know the disconnect between what she thinks she’s saying and what
she’s actually saying, the impact is quite painful to watch, a permanent blow to
the sanctity of the law. To the rest of us, it’s quite fun in a basic way, like
a Channel 5 drama in which the villain is just about to get some comeuppance.

Her core proposition is this: she put Rishi Sunak into his position, in spite of
his lack of mandate from party members, by securing from him a secret agreement
in October 2022: that agreement, which included but was not limited to a promise
to ignore international law and become, necessarily, a pariah state, by
definition had no mandate, having occurred in secret. So while we can pore over
its terms in more detail when she publishes it, as seems likely – that’s the
main message of the letter – we know already that her thundering moral and
political certainties are built on quicksand. How can one person without a
mandate undermine another on that basis? How can one person who operates in
secret and follows no rules accuse another of those infractions? The more
closely you look at Braverman’s arguments, the thinner they are.

So here we are, in our wokerati happy place, finding the bit in the Venn diagram
where circular logic, authoritarian back-to-frontery and fantastical self-belief
conjoin. “These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised
the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They
are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit referendum.” Narrator: neither the
2019 manifesto nor the notion of Brexit circa 2016, in any of its forms,
mentioned any of her pet interests besides immigration.

The word “Orwellian” comes up way too often in 2020s politics, but relax: I use
it the way Brandon Lewis likes to break international law, in a “specific and
limited way”. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, there’s a division of the Ministry of
Truth called Pornosec that produces porn to distract the proletariat. These
letters of no-confidence – Jenkyns’s, Braverman’s and whoever’s comes next – are
curiously distracting, aren’t they? Fun like puzzles, dramatic in their
unbridled conflict, emotionally compelling as they describe the disintegration
of a discourse we all have to live in – I feel a bit Pornosecced. I can’t help
wondering what’s going on behind this scene.

 * Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

 * Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would
   like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for
   publication in our letters section, please click here.

Explore more on these topics
 * Conservatives
 * Opinion
 * Suella Braverman
 * Conservative leadership
 * comment

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

Reuse this content





MOST VIEWED


MOST VIEWED



 * The Guardian view
 * Columnists
 * Letters
 * Opinion videos
 * Cartoons

 * News
 * Opinion
 * Sport
 * Culture
 * Lifestyle

Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning
Sign up for our email

 * About us
 * Help
 * Complaints & corrections
 * SecureDrop
 * Work for us
 *  
 * Privacy policy
 * Cookie policy
 * Terms & conditions
 * Contact us

 * All topics
 * All writers
 * Digital newspaper archive
 * Facebook
 * YouTube
 * Instagram
 * LinkedIn
 * Twitter
 * Newsletters

 * Advertise with us
 * Guardian Labs
 * Search jobs


Back to top
© 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights
reserved. (dcr)