November Has Come

This week: why is Suella Braverman; are e-bikes really better than public transport; and some notes on sleeper trains.

One of the highlights of the rolling crisis of Suella-gate – by which I mean, the only moment I can think of which induced laughter, not despair or disgust – came on Monday afternoon, when the home secretary claimed she had been the victim of a “political witch hunt”. The reason this amused me is that it’s inherent in the idea of the witch hunt that the accused is not, in fact, going around hexing people they don't like, in the presence of a broomstick and a sinister black cat.¹ 

The problem for Braverman is that, as she herself admitted in literally the same sentence, she definitely did the thing she is being accused of. She used her government phone and email address in a manner which posed a risk to national security, which is not the sort of thing you’re supposed to do as a minister, even if you’re not the one responsible for the security services which, as it happens, she is. She also claimed, in the same statement, that she has “taken responsibility” for her mistakes, and while there are many ways you could describe the record-breaking six days in the wilderness that followed her resignation, I’m really not convinced that’s one of them.

So while many of those who criticise the home secretary may feel revulsion at her use of far-right rhetoric – while many of us may have responded with the rhetorical equivalent of building a pyre while a priest sniffs around the place in a big hat – those things are basically a sideshow. The fact Suella Braverman’s personal decisions led directly to the overcrowding which caused outbreaks of scabies and diphtheria among Channel migrants is disgusting. But it’s not actually the thing she did, and admitted to doing, and which should objectively disqualify her from ever holding ministerial office again. The reason there’s a witchhunt is that she already confessed to being a witch.

Why, given all this – given the fact the entire first week of headlines regarding Rishi Sunak’s premiership have been dedicated to the inadequacies of his home secretary – did she get the job in the first place?