Suella Braverman, now former British home minister, has been no stranger to controversies. While her recent comments on pro-Palestinian rallies resulted in her getting fired from office, let’s take a look at some of her other controversies:
Questioning London Police over the handling of a large pro-Palestinian march on Armistice Day, Suella accused officers of taking a softer stance towards left-wing causes. She said such ‘hate marches’ and ‘mobs’ threaten the Jewish community. This comment got her fired from her position.
In a post on X, the ex-home secretary called homelessness a ‘lifestyle choice’. Braverman said this while announcing that she will propose a new legislation aimed at limiting the use of tents by homeless individuals on the streets.
In September, Suella Braverman said that being gay or a woman should not be enough to qualify someone for refugee protection under international law and claimed that many people ‘purport to be homosexual in the effort to game our system, in the effort to get special treatment’.
Earlier this year, during an interview with Sky News, Braverman said that almost all British Pakistanis are involved in the sexual abuse of children and young women and that they ‘pursue, drug, rape, and harm vulnerable English girls’. This comment drew ire and Pakistan called it xenophobic.
Last year, Braverman came under fire for describing migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats as an ‘invasion’. “Let’s stop pretending they are all refugees in distress, the whole country knows that is not true,” she said at the time.
Also in 2022, during a discussion on the Public Order Bill to crack down on disruptive protests, she called opposition parties a ‘coalition of chaos’ and said, “It’s the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, dare I say, the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for the disruption that we are seeing on our roads today.”