'Suella Braverman's message equivalent of Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech'

27 September 2023 , 21:04

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Suella Braverman (Image: Pete Stonier / Stoke Sentinel)

Some numbers to start with. Most refugees - 70% in fact - head to countries neighbouring their own. The UK takes in fewer than France, Germany, Poland and Turkey.

As of November 2022 there were 231,597 refugees, 127,421 pending asylum cases and 5,483 stateless persons in the UK. Just 0.54% of the UK’s 68 million population. Unsurprisingly, Suella Braverman left those bits out of her speech this week. She wants a culture war. Not for us to join forces to deplore the mess her party has left the country in.

The Home Secretary wants to succeed PM Rishi Sunak and knows xenophobia plays well with the party’s far right. She’s hoping you buy into the lie that those needing our help are an existential threat to your way of life. Her message is this generation’s equivalent of Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech – fear and division for those who don’t have time to study the details.

Is this country perfect? No. Do we have issues to work through? Absolutely. Indeed, Braverman would lap up a new survey revealing fewer than half of Black Brits felt proud to be British. Ours is a country with a complicated past. But we work to create peace and harmony.

If you can't see the poll click here

'I wouldn't have made Channel crossing if I could apply for asylum from abroad'

Braverman threatens that. Her willingness to weaponise her colour to legitimise hate, abuse and division cements her position as the UK’s most dangerous politician for years. She believes you will be too mortified to even consider doubting her because, well, if a Brown woman of Kenyan/Mauritian heritage says it, it must be true. Wrong. She must be challenged.

Despite her reprehensible politics, Braverman remains an exemplar of UK multiculturalism’s success. She’s a cabinet minister serving under the first British Asian PM in Rishi Sunak. Facts remain the antidote to her poisonous rhetoric. She doesn’t allow them to get in the way of the true story. But we will.

Darren Lewis