Sacking one’s home secretary would normally be seen as a dramatic move but, as it turned out, it was not even the most eye-catching decision of Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle. Bringing back a former prime minister and making him foreign secretary is one of the most unexpected appointments of modern times. Only the restoration of Peter Mandelson to the cabinet in 2008 by Gordon Brown is comparable. In terms of the quality of the cabinet, exchanging Suella Braverman for David Cameron is a huge improvement. Yes, I know many who never supported the Conservatives will complain about austerity. Even some Tories will complain about the decision to call an EU referendum in 2016. But he is a figure of substance who transformed ...

Suella Braverman has finally been sacked as Home Secretary after a week of mounting tension over her position. She has released a statement saying “it has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve as home secretary”, adding: “I will have more to say in due course.” Rishi Sunak has come close to sacking her before, but the decision will still not have been easy. Last week, I wrote of the Prime Minister’s political headache over Braverman: as she enjoys the support of a faction of the Tory party that never wanted Sunak as PM, getting rid of her was seen as too risky. The comment piece she wrote for the Times last week accusing the Metropolitan Police of double standards ...

There’s a situation in chess known as a “zugzwang”: when one player finds themselves facing a state of play where every possible move will weaken their position. This is, to put it bluntly, where Rishi Sunak now finds himself in regard to his increasingly errant Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. This is hardly the first time Braverman has caused headaches for the Prime Minister. You could argue that appointing her in the first place a year ago, six days after she left Liz Truss’s cabinet for breaching the ministerial code, was a recipe for trouble. Since then, Braverman has strained the concept of cabinet collective responsibility to the limit, repeatedly making comments – on social media and in speeches – that play to ...

Barack Obama’s election win 15 years ago this month remains one of those rare moments in history when people remember exactly where they were. The victory of America’s first African American president was a global moment of hope that democracy and politics could lead to real change. Fifteen years later, however, hope is in short supply in America and Britain. But the Obama campaign still has important lessons for the Labour Party ahead of a UK general election next year – which could arrive within weeks of a likely third consecutive Trump-dominated US election. The genius of the 2008 Obama campaign was that it struck the right balance of hope and realism for an electorate that was desperate for change but ...

Suella Braverman is stealing the show. Rishi Sunak brought her into cabinet to shore up support on the party’s right. Her cabinet membership may now depend on whether No 10 signed off on that Times article (more below) – as it claimed to have done with her recent speech on the failures of multiculturalism. The politicians make the laws and the police enforce them. But that supposed operational independence is being undermined by a government making clear its disapproval that the pro-Palestinian march this Armistice Day is taking place. The law allows the police to ask the home secretary to ban a march if there is a serious risk of disorder. The Metropolitan Police have so far judged this not to ...

A Labour frontbencher has become the first to resign over Keir Starmer’s stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict as the party's internal crisis deepens. Imran Hussain, who served as shadow minister for the New Deal for Working People in deputy leader Angela Rayner’s team, wrote to the leader saying he cannot demand a ceasefire while staying in post. He said it had “become clear that my view on the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza differs substantially from the position you have adopted”, adding that he wanted to be a “strong advocate” for a full ceasefire: “It is clear that I cannot sufficiently, in all good conscience, advocate for a ceasefire from the frontbench given its current position.” The Bradford East MP was one of ...

When I spoke to Humza Yousaf recently, he was scathing about his main opponents. The First Minister admitted that Scottish Labour, which is now neck and neck in the polls with the SNP, “have a spring in their step – I don’t underestimate them at all.” However, he is clearly sharpening his party’s attack lines ahead of the general election and the 2026 Holyrood contest. “What I’m very confident of is that we can beat them in the battle of ideas,” he said. “I can’t think of a big idea from Scottish Labour or Anas Sarwar [the party leader], and you can get away with that for a little bit of time in opposition, but there comes a time when you’ve got ...

With the pomp and pageantry of the King's Speech over, MPs gathered in the Commons to begin a marathon six days of debate on Rishi Sunak’s programme for government.  The opening salvos were punctuated with the gentle jokes traditionally made after the official opening of parliament, but Keir Starmer today wasted no time in drawing battle lines with the Prime Minister. He began by claiming the Conservatives had become a "divisive" party that saw "the country's problems as something to be exploited rather than solved", then turned his attention to Suella Braverman. The Home Secretary is widely believed to have one eye on the next Tory leadership contest and is a recurring thorn in Sunak's side, splitting opinion among Conservative backbenchers. Several Tory ...