Suella Braverman’s trip to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration has put Conservative officials back on defection watch.
Though her husband Rael has already quit the Tories and will stand as a candidate for Nigel Farage’s Reform, CCHQ insiders believed that Braverman would prefer to bide her time in the party and wait for leader Kemi Badenoch to slip up.
But that has been thrown into doubt by Braverman’s visit to Washington DC, where she arrived on the same plane as far right activist Laurence Fox, sporting an identical black-and-white Make America Great Again cap.
Nervous Conservative staffers have also noted that videos produced by Braverman on her trip – including one at Trump’s pre-inauguration rally and another at the Capitol – end with the words “Suella Braverman, Fareham and Waterlooville” and a billowing Union flag. There was no mention of the party that (for now) she represents.
Interviewed by GB News at the inauguration, Braverman professed loyalty to the Tories but sounded more in thrall to Reform. “They’ve had a lot of success, you’ve got to hand it to them,” she said. “I think Reform is here to stay… I like Nigel Farage and there’s a lot of common ground between us.”
By contrast, Braverman said of her own party: “For too many years we were a centrist vanilla puddle.” She called on the Tories to become more like Trump, saying “the MAGA movement is authentically conservative, it’s about faith, flag and family which so many people in Britain are crying out for.”
In typical style, she then rounded on Labour’s “ridiculous personal attacks on Donald Trump” before being asked what advice she would give to Keir Starmer. “My advice to Keir Starmer is to stop being an idiot,” Braverman said.
