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Nigel Farage began his second news conference of the day alongside Suella Braverman by declaring: “The centre right is finally uniting.” Really?
Mr Farage‘s introduction was then followed by 25 minutes of his latest Tory defector trashing her old party in the most vitriolic attack of any of Reform UK‘s new recruits.
The defections of Nadhim Zahawi, Robert Jenrick, Andrew Rosindell and now Ms Braverman have been greeted by their old party with more bile than any previous defections.
The Tories even reacted to the former home secretary’s walkout by claiming: “The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella’s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy.”
Mental health? Below the belt, surely?
Some senior Conservatives were appalled and a few hours later the party issued a “correction” with the offending – and offensive – sentence removed.
In his opening remarks, Mr Farage called the mental health slur “pretty abusive”, claiming: “We won’t lower ourselves to their level.”
Ms Braverman’s tirade against her old party may not have been below the belt. But it was pretty near the knuckle.
She used the word “betrayal” several times.
Suella Braverman followed Robert Jenrick in defecting to Reform UK. Pic: Reuters
On the refusal to ban “hate marches”, she said: “The Conservative Party should be disgusted with itself, frankly.”
She went on: “I was vilified and called Islamophobic by my own Conservative Party colleagues. Another great betrayal.”
She attacked Kemi Badenoch personally.
“The leader herself said I was having a nervous breakdown, something she seems to have repeated again today.”
Ms Braverman was sacked as home secretary by Rishi Sunak in 2023, she never returned to the cabinet or shadow cabinet. Pic: Reuters
Ms Braverman said she had been “politically homeless” for two years and “ashamed of the Conservative Party”.
Theresa May “messed up Brexit”, she claimed.
Kemi Badenoch was criticised personally by Ms Braverman. Pic: PA
The Tories had a “largely LibDem socialist-lite agenda”, a “woke ideology” and were a “social democrat left-leaning party”, she said.
And yet she claimed: “I don’t leave the Conservative party with malice or anger or bitterness. That passed a long time ago.”
Yet this was indeed a malicious, angry and bitter attack.
She told Sky News’ own Amanda Akass: “It’s a very toxic environment. There’s a witch-hunt.”
An hour earlier in the Commons, as the Tories gloated over the near-collapse of the Chagos handover, the veteran MP Sir Julian Lewis claimed: “The reason this bill may not go through is the work of the Conservative opposition in both Houses of Parliament and the words of the leader of the Reform party in Mr Trump’s ear.
Pic: PA
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“Does that not show what can be achieved when two parties make common cause in a very worthwhile aim to achieve a vital objective?”
Perhaps.
But it’s a very rare common cause.
Labour, delighted that Tory turmoil was once again overshadowing Labour civil war, claimed Mr Farage is “stuffing his party full of a band of failed Tories”.
And it’s certainly beginning to look a bit like that.
And is the right really uniting, as Mr Farage claimed?
Hardly.
Certainly not on the evidence of Suella Braverman’s brutal attack on her old party and the Conservatives’ response.
