06 November 2023 , 19:32
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We have a hate preacher in Government in Suella Braverman.
We have a gaslighter-in-chief, not a Home Secretary. Since this column identified her as the most dangerous politician of her time, Braverman has metastasised into exactly that.
The good people of Fareham have no idea just how big a responsibility they have, come the next election, when it comes to deciding her fate. A chaser of her own notoriety, the most charitable description of Braverman is that, like Dominic Cummings, she is an equal opportunities hater with the end goal of dividing us.
Whether you are Black or White, gay or straight, up to your eyes in debt or on the streets homeless, Cruella has a policy to demonise you. Despite the many war veterans, councillors from all sides and Jewish participants among the tens of thousands taking to the streets demanding peace in the Middle East, Braverman has written them all off as hate marchers.
Of course she has.
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Never mind the fact that, ahead of Remembrance Sunday, organisers have liaised with police and made clear that disrespecting monuments has never been on the agenda. Nor are there plans for the march to go near the Cenotaph.
Why let those facts get in the way of a good culture war?
The result? Obtuse, shaven headed, testosterone-fuelled bruisers emerging from the swamp that is Twitter to use her incendiary language as a flimsy excuse to threaten a battle in central London.
With that row still simmering, Braverman has set her sights on the homeless. In a plan set for Tuesday’s King’s speech, she is proposing new laws to restrict those living on the streets using tents, arguing that many of them see it as a “lifestyle choice”. Thankfully, just as tens of thousands have stuck two fingers up to reject her rhetoric over the bloodbath in the Middle East, the public isn’t having her on the homeless either.
I quite like the idea floating around that we should dig out our spare tents, stashed away in the attic or the shed and hand them over personally to the homeless. What could Cruella – a woman who would empty the tin of a homeless person to find some pennies for the Guy – do then? There is currently no law against generosity. Especially when it involves our own property.
In any case, isn’t hers the Government that, in December 2019, promised to end rough sleeping by 2024? We knew it was never going to happen and so did they. So what better way to distract from yet another of their abject failings than to go completely the other way.
Cities like Helsinki that have tackled the issue have done so with firm, tangible proposals like Housing First, a policy that has made Finland the only EU country where homelessness is significantly falling. Braverman doesn’t have solutions, which is why she resorts to hate and the culture wars that get people pointing fingers at each other for their problems, instead of the charlatans who have been in power for the past 13 years.