Editorial: Sacking of Suella Bravernan signals Rishi Sunak’s cabinet retreat to a failed consensus

Morning View (Photo: gina)

​The ex prime minister is, at 57, arguably more suited to high office than when he entered Downing Street in 2010 aged a too youthful 44.

The problem is that he is a politician of the status quo, and has arrived when the cabinet minister who most challenged that status quo has been sacked. Suella Braverman is said to have defied Downing Street demands to change her essay in The Times, leading to her dismissal. She also wrote things that suggested she is uninformed on Northern Ireland.

But in essence she was right about the appalling Met policing of Islamic hate elements in pro Palestinian marches that are otherwise made of up people who hate Israel so much that they will turn a blind eye to Hamas supporters, or are so naive that they do not even see such extremists in their midst.

The police and BBC implied that the big problem on Saturday was the ‘far right’. Almost the opposite is true: it is testimony to Britain’s deep reserves of tolerance and decency that week after week of celebration of Hamas barbarians has not led to much discernible ‘Islamophobia’.

If Mr (soon to be Lord) Cameron was being appointed to a cabinet full of people who see that immigration is out of control and Muslim extremism has flourished under a cultural free-for-all then he might be a diplomatic counterpart to blunter politicians. Instead he will shore up a failed consensus.

Mr Cameron will, it is to be hoped, maintain Britain’s strong support for Israel and Ukraine. But he is unlikely to be robust with the EU about NI. From 2010 to 2016 Mr Cameron was an instinctive unionist prime minister. He feared that Brexit might damage the UK, warning about Irish Sea checks. But he is the sort of voice who will neither strongly articulate unionism amid a nationalist advance nor denounce hate mongers amid an Islamist one.