With a humiliating admission and a show of defiance, she has left Liz Truss even deeper in the mire
Suella Braverman’s “departure” as home secretary after not much more than six weeks in the job would be astonishing at any other time in modern politics. Right now, though, it looks like merely par for the course in a Tory party that seems utterly chaotic, unable to govern – and further proof, if it was needed, that Liz Truss’s administration may not make it into November.
If talk counted for more than actions in politics, Braverman would be top of the Tory pile. Her rise has been almost as fast as her sudden departure. A second-rate attorney general who happily politicised what was once a strictly defined advisory role in government, she eyed the leadership after Boris Johnson’s fall, and then cast herself as an alpha all-action home secretary. Now she will only be remembered as the one who didn’t last two months in the job.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
