Today in Brexitland, March 20, 2023

Say whatever you want about Suella Braverman, the worst Home Secretary of all time - but please, don’t bring her ethnicity into it

I talk about Suella Braverman a lot. I think she is a disgrace to the office that she holds. I not only disagree with her worldview profoundly, I sense a great deal of flippant opportunism in the way she talks about home affairs. If she was serious about her view that immigration into the UK should be much lower, she wouldn’t throw around stupid words like “wokerati”, or talk about the Rwanda scheme as part of her “dream”. These are the words of a fundamentally unserious person.

However, the one thing that makes me want to defend her, ever so slightly, is when someone on the left weaponises her ethnicity in a manner that is unhelpful at best, actually racist at worst. Bringing up Braverman’s skin colour and family background never serves to aid your argument against her and her policies - in fact, it always profoundly weakens them.

The first thing to cover here, just to get it out of the way, is the photoshopping of Braverman in front of Auschwitz. This was a terrible idea for several reasons. The first being that bringing the Holocaust into any argument is almost always a bad idea, but particularly when you’re doing it to try and make a cheap point. Secondly, she’s already doing something fairly egregious here. Making a poor comparison with the Holocaust simply opens up the criticism from the right that all complaints about the Rwanda policy are hyperbolic. In other words, she’s already doing something morally questionable at the very least, so you don’t need to bring in Auschwitz to try get your point across.

Yet I’m not here to talk about that today. What I really want to bring up is how bad I feel it is when people on the left racialise Suella Braverman as a means of trying to criticise her. Again, this is both counterproductive and abhorrent at the same time. And when you’re trying to fight against something you find morally objectionable, being morally objectionable yourself is never helpful. Here are some relevant examples.

Saying anything that gets into the territory of “Suella Braverman should be deported herself” is horrible and should be avoided at all times. All you’re doing there is suggesting that because she happens to be an ethnic minority, her right to be in the UK is somehow much less than if she was white. Think about it: if John Redwood was the Home Secretary and pursuing this same policy in exactly the same way, you wouldn’t be suggesting we deport him. You’re doing it because she’s Asian, come on. Whether you’ve thought about it or not, that’s what you’re doing. You are unconsciously adding to the far right narrative that the British citizenship of people who are ethnic minorities is somehow less valid than those of white people with ethnic roots in the country that stretch back further in time. If you don’t believe this narrative is correct - and I’m assuming here that you do not - don’t stray into that territory.

Lesser but still very bad commentary on Braverman is the idea that because she is Asian, she shouldn’t hold certain political points of view. Again, I can’t stand Braverman’s politics, but I would never suggest that she isn’t allowed to have the views she has - and particularly that she shouldn’t hold those views on account of her skin colour. To say that all British ethnic minorities should be left-wing or even pro-immigration is to, unconsciously or otherwise, suggest that while white people are obviously allowed to hold a plethora of political opinions, only certain prescribed ones are acceptable to hold if your ethnicity is of a certain category. Kind of difficult to see how there isn’t racism involved in that, again, unconscious or otherwise.

At its worst, this becomes a weird inversion of the old “cricket test” that ends up in exactly the same place: sure, people of all races and creeds are welcome to this country - provided they don’t get too far above their station. They are allowed to be among us only if certain opinions are adhered to. Otherwise, perhaps we should think about deporting them. You end up in that bad a place. You end up thinking that maybe we should send people to Rwanda after all.

In conclusion: give Braverman as hard a time as you like. I know I will. But please don’t bring her race into it. That’s what racists do, when you stop and think about it for a moment.