Lord Hannan of Kingsclere was a Conservative MEP from 1999 to 2020, and is now President of the Institute for Free Trade.
“It’ll be Suella next,” I told an MP when Dominic Raab was forced out. “They’ll go after any minister who tries to do conservative things. How did Shakin’ Stevens nearly put it? The Blob won’t stop.”
I was being whimsical. But here we are, a month on, and absurd allegations are being levelled at the Home Secretary – amplified, naturally, by imbecilic broadcasters.
I can’t say definitively that the leaks have come from civil servants. It is no secret that the Home Office resents Braverman’s attempt to crack down on immigration. Indeed, its officials have gone so far, though their trade union, as to challenge her policies in court.
But politics is a rough game, and it is possible that smears originate elsewhere.
What I can say definitively is that these accusations are hogwash. Braverman was caught exceeding the speed limit. When she later became Home Secretary, she found herself surrounded by the mass of security that engulfs holders of that office. Not unreasonably, she asked whether, to avoid all the fuss and attention, she might attend the speed awareness course alone. Told that she couldn’t, she decided instead to take the points.
No part of that sequence implies misbehaviour, other than the original driving infraction, which is hardly a disqualification for office.
Some people are pretending to be outraged that she asked her civil servants for advice. But, given that the issue was her security detail, who the hell else was she supposed to ask?
It is hard not to spot a pattern in the ministers who suddenly find themselves targeted by the Whitehall machine: Raab, Braverman, Priti Patel, Boris Johnson. All of them voted Leave, and all were trying to drive through policies that the mandarinate hates.
If you bluntly tell your officials to do their jobs, you are accused of bullying; if, like Braverman, you are by nature polite, you find yourself undermined in other ways.
The question of legal immigration is a complex one involving, as almost all political questions do, trade-offs and imperfect choices. Immigration, when well managed, tends to boost economic growth. But there are non-economic factors to consider, from the speed at which communities can assimilate change to the rising pressure on an already inadequate housing stock.
Some of the arguments about immigration turn out, on closer inspection, to be arguments about welfare, and in particular about the refusal of British people, to a greater degree than in any other country, to return to work after the lockdowns.
It’s a problem which few, with the heroic exception of Fraser Nelson, want to address. But if British workers won’t take jobs, even well-paid jobs which require neither qualifications nor training, employers can hardly be blamed for looking elsewhere.
Legal immigration, as I say, is complex. But illegal immigration is not. The clue is in the name. If people should not be in this country, their removal ought to be uncontroversial.
Securing our borders is a necessary prerequisite for any conversation about numbers of lawful settlers. As long as voters see that we have no effective control over illegal immigration, they will not buy arguments for legal immigration.
Braverman has set to work with a will, making legal changes that will facilitate the removal of sans-papiers and pursuing the Rwanda scheme through the courts with, so far, a great measure of success. Naturally, her approach has prompted strenuous opposition from, among others, refugee charities, Liberal Democrats, bishops and Home Office officials.
The Braverman speeding row is an unwanted headache for Rishi Sunak. You could sense his frustration when, at the recent G7 summit in Japan, British broadcasters kept harping on about a minister’s driving licence, advertising their own pettiness to the world and, in the process, making our country look clownish.
Yet the Prime Minister has little option but to back his Home Secretary. If she is brought down, it will signal to ministers that their best option is to go along with the Europhile Blob in their respective departments.
Historians will look back in wonder at our recent resignations. A sitting prime minister was removed over uneaten cake on the advice of a civil servant who, it later emerged, was planning to work for the Leader of the Opposition.
Then, a deputy prime minister was forced to resign – and is now leaving the House of Commons – because he stared too hard at someone, held up his hand for silence in a meeting, and threw tomatoes into his bin with excessive force. Now, a home secretary is threatened over a speeding fine.
Is this really the way to conduct our affairs? How reduced we are as a nation, how diminished as a people.