October 3, 2023 - 6:45pm
Manchester
“They have tried to make me into a hate figure because I tell the truth,” Suella Braverman complained today on stage at the Conservative conference in Manchester. But in the room there was (almost) nothing but love.
The Home Secretary made herself the main character of this conference before it even began, with her renewed statement of intent to leave the European Convention of Human Rights dominating headlines. Back in May she soft-launched her leadership campaign in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in London. Then, she positioned herself on the Right of the Tory Party, hitting the familiar targets of identity politics and elite interference; her biggest cheer came when she reiterated that women do not have a penis.
This week in Manchester, the figure at the lectern was more serious. Drawing once again on her family history, the Home Secretary said that “the wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century was a mere gust compared to the hurricane that is coming”.
When it came to the Human Rights Act, she joked that it should have been called “the Criminal Rights Act”, and got another loud whoop for taking aim at “bogus asylum seekers”.
Then something strange happened. The Home Secretary looked to Jeremy Corbyn for inspiration. Having referred to the Conservatives as “the trade union of the British people”, she requested her raucous audience indulge her for a moment. The hall fell quiet. As soon as she said that “I think we should adopt as our motto these lines from the poet Shelley”, most in the audience realised what she was about to say.
“Rise like lions after slumber,” she began, echoing the lines from Shelley’s poem The Masque of Anarchy which Corbyn put to use on the Glastonbury stage six years ago. Reaching the end of the sequence, she proclaimed, “You are many, they are few!” Braverman likely isn’t as keen on her Romantics as the former Labour leader, but it was a smart choice from an unapologetic populist.
The crowd was thrilled as she stressed that the Conservatives “stand with the many”. One heckler, a Conservative London Assembly member, was kicked out after calling the speech a “homophobic rant”, but there were no cans of orange paint nor teenagers armed with glue.
The Opposition was attacked as out of touch, brimming with “luxury beliefs” and all presumably occupying the same elevated corner of Hampstead. A man two rows in front clapped together flip-flops bearing Starmer’s face, some merch bought from the Conference gift shop. I spotted him afterwards and asked him what he’d made of it all. “She’s going to be the next leader of the Conservative Party,” he said, sounding like a proud father. As the throngs moved out into the foyer, he can’t have been the only one leaving with that view.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeMaybe a bit off topic, but the right really needs an immediate response when they are smeared as rac!sts, fasc!sts, misogynists and transphobes. This happens all the time without response.
You should also include when you are smeared as being moronically stupid – that happens all the time too and you don’t seem to have any response to that either!
You’ve yet to respond other than mindlessly to the valid criticisms of the absolute drivel you can’t stop yourself from posting.
Are you up to the challenge? Must do better, but i really don’t think you’re capable.
Steve-O is triggered – look out!
You’ve just added repetitive and predictable to your lack of ability to comment with intelligence.
You should add “cowardly’ to the list, due to hiding behind a pseudonym.
Oh look, the comic relief is back.
More like feeling a pool of unidentifiable liquid seeping into your clothing as the reason why the perfect seat you just scored on the metro was available. Please don’t feed trolls.
As long as the responses are polite and calmly withering – then keep it going. I do however prefer it when the criticisms are discussions between other commenters – rather than directly with the troll . Don’t forget that their insecurity means that they can only really take satisfaction from direct responses, as they make them feel more important than the actual reality of their irrelevance.
‘Poo Fash is triggered – look out!
You should also include when you are smeared as being moronically stupid – that happens all the time too and you don’t seem to have any response to that either!
I’m not sure how much longer it is going to be possible for the usual suspects to smear people like Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch as rac!sts or m!sogynists without the penny dropping. So I am not sure they need a ‘response’, other than to let the smear hang around like a bad smell emanating from whoever made it.
As for transphobes, according to the standard woke lexicon anyone not literally delusional (ie anyone who believes in biological reality) is a transphobe, so wear that label like a badge of pride.
A problem is that there are groups on the far right who are proud to be racist, fascist etc. These attributes are not a smear for these political groups. The attributes are essential ideological elements. The moderate-right will always be scrutinised and smeared by opponents because the moderate-right are ideologically closer to the far right. The moderate-right need to say categorically how they are different from far right, in my view.
Interestingly, Braverman, in her conference speech, spoke about the smears against her, and she also suggested, if I understood her correctly, that if moderate governments didn’t deal with the migrant crisis, then the deterioration in the situation could mean more extreme governments taking over. Worrying, and hopefully scare-mongering, but she may have a point.
Wow, only one comment in support of Suella Braverman and that one came via Australia.
She really is unpopular among the self styled elite.
If you showed her comments, without her name attached to them, to most of the people who are attacking her you you find that they agreed with her. I am beginning to like her because of the type of people that she annoys
Very well said Keith
As a Caucasian woman living in barbaric Australia I greatly admire Suella Braverman. Perhaps there is still a chance for common-sense to return.
The important difference being that many more of us agree with her than with him…quite possibly because she very obviously loves this Country…whereas he mostly despises it, as indeed do many of the party he once led…
Bit ironic that an immigrant has to say all this but at least it’s said.
Where have all the comments gone, long time passing?
Where have all the comments gone, long time ago?
Where have all the comments gone?
UnHerd pulls them every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
Great to hear a Conservative. but I must add that the Blob didn’t just turn up. They’ve been here for a long time during Conservative rule, effectively deciding what the Party can and can’t do. The Conservative party sadly is good at the talk talk but not the walk walk. Must do better.
Let’s put Braverman’s language to one side – we knows that the next Tory leadership campaign in operation and the type of person she needs to appeal will like this stuff.
The more important question is why is she acting and speaking as if she’s in Opposition? She’s the bleedin Home Secretary for chrissake and been a member of the Tory Govt for 5 years. Has she not worked out she’s in charge and has been for some time?
All this nonsense about ECHR is exactly that. Whether we are in the ECHR or not is not going to stop the Boats one iota. And besides no case of deportation to Rwanda has even got near the ECHR. We await our own Supreme Ct ruling. And the reason it’s there is she, her predecessors and supporters, have made a total pigs ear of the Rwanda plan. Mismanaged and misconceived. As a famous Rwandan politician said ‘donor money is there to be milked’ whilst also neutralising any UK criticism of how Rwandan Govt conducts itself. Clever from their point of view, idiotic from ours. And the trickle that may get there won’t stem the flow.
Once she’s nailed a return deal of real consequence, or a multilateral approach to the Boats in the Med, or even an effective Home office processing system – and let’s reiterate she’s in charge – she can perhaps legit claim some credit. In the meantime she’s mugging off alot err… well here’s the real problem, alot of Mugs.
Corbyn’s poetic soul was how they managed to screw him, because he let them, even though on economic and foreign policy he was demonstrably right then, and apart from a possible softness to his anti-war edge over Ukraine, he is more obviously so than ever now. Until someone wrote that line for her, then Braverman had never heard of Shelley. An interviewer should quiz her on his life and work. Begin by asking her to pronounce Bysshe.
Are you the blogger David Lindsay who was imprisoned for harassment?
https://capx.co/i-take-no-satisfaction-in-the-imprisonment-of-my-online-abuser/
That is all about to fall apart:
https://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2023/10/five-weeks-to-go.html
What is your evidence that the British-educated Cambridge graduate Suella Braverman had never heard of Shelley, and what university did you attend?
I am really looking forward to watching the Tories tear themselves apart after the shellacking they are going to get next year!
Sunak will be gone 5 minutes after he is booted out of Downing Street, no doubt to live a life of Santa Monica luxury. Bunter is no doubt out there somewhere planning his Churchillian return, oblivious to the fact that he is widely considered a joke.
Braverman, Badenoch and Pritti Vacant will be left to battle it out for the far right wastelands with the novel concept that taking the Trump line will be a winning strategy with the wider electorate. They will be left fighting it out with Nigel Farage and Laurence Fox for the GB News crowd.
It will be hilarious!
Beyond even Labour’s rule change to make it everything short of mathematically impossible for more than one candidate to stand for Leader, the Conservative threshold is whatever the Executive of the 1922 Committee feels like setting at the time. Not quite a year ago, that was 40 per cent of the party’s MPs, in order to ensure that Rishi Sunak would be the only candidate. Next time, it will be at least that, if not 50 per cent, or, if no one reached that bar, then whoever had the most nominations. So, Sunak again if he wanted it, or Jeremy Hunt if he did not. And that will just be that. Again.
That might avoid you getting another swivel eyed loon like Truss, although it seems that, insanely, she thinks she has a route back.
For those of us who live in the real word, electing a leader based on the party membership makes little sense. A prime minister has to have the confidence of parliament, and the opinion of angry Daily Telegraph readers has little to do with anything other than periodically electing their local MP.
But by all means, go ahead and elect a grotesque puppet like Braverman and see what happens…