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Braverman and Badenoch battle to become Tory right’s favoured candidate to succeed Sunak

Suella Braverman has warned the UK risks “communal disaster” in a speech designed to shore up her position as the standard-bearer of the Tory right – as rival Kemi Badenoch battles to prove her own credentials.

The two Cabinet ministers are seen as frontrunners to be the next Conservative leader if Rishi Sunak is forced to step down after the general election.

In a keynote speech to the National Conservatism conference on Monday, the Home Secretary denounced an “unexamined drive towards multiculturalism” combined with politics that emphasises identity.

She insisted “you cannot have immigration without integration” as she also called for a cut in the numbers being allowed into the UK – denying that it was hypocritical for her as the child of immigrants to push for lower migration.

Meanwhile, Ms Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, is battling allegations from some Brexiteers that she has abandoned a promise to remove as many EU laws as possible from the statute book.

She has invited MPs to a Q&A on the Retained EU Law Bill to “counter the narrative that there has been some U-turn on Brexit”, i understands.

The Prime Minister is also seeking to strengthen his own position, hosting Conservative backbenchers for a garden party in 10 Downing Street last night.

Allies of Ms Braverman believe she is now more likely than Ms Badenoch to win the support of the Tory right, while the Business Secretary denies any suggestion she is backtracking on Brexit.

The Home Secretary told the National Conservatism conference in Westminster that her Conservative philosophy was instilled in her by her parents. “Ours, like my parents’, is a politics of optimism of pride, national unity, aspiration, and realism,” she said. “The left’s is a politics of pessimism, guilt, national division, resentment, and utopianism.”

Ms Braverman said that people who come to the UK “must not commit crimes”, “need to learn English and understand British social norms” and “cannot simply turn up and say: ‘I live here now, you have to look after me’”.

Her parents “embraced British values”, she said, adding: “The unexamined drive towards multiculturalism as an end in itself, combined with identity politics, is a recipe for communal disaster. We cannot have immigration without integration. And if we lack the confidence to promote our culture, defend our values, and venerate our past, then we have nothing to integrate people into.”

Ms Braverman said that while preventing “illegal migration” in the Channel is the Government’s priority, they “must not lose sight of the importance of controlling legal migration as well”, saying she wants HGV driver, butcher and fruit picker jobs to eventually be filled by Britons.

A preview of her speech was seen as a warning to Cabinet colleagues against relaxing immigration rules in a bid to boost economic growth.

But Government sources insisted that Ms Braverman’s speech was signed off by the Prime Minister.

Cabinet sources also sought to play down splits with other ministers after i reported that Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, had successfully watered down an attempt to crack down on student visas.

A Treasury source said: “Jeremy has said many times we need to move to a high skill, high wage economy no longer dependent on unlimited cheap labour – hence the Budget focused on getting Brits back to work.”

An education source meanwhile highlighted Government programmes like skills bootcamps to train up domestic HGV drivers, insisting these are “going very well”.

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, said: “The true face of the modern Tory party has revealed itself today. Rather than focus on the cost of living crisis, the state of the NHS, crime or house building, Tory MPs and cabinet ministers have instead chosen to hold a carnival of conspiracy theory and self-pity.

“Beneath the outward veneer of respectability, the Tories have nothing to offer the country beyond more failure, more excuses and more divisive politics. Until Rishi Sunak finds the backbone to stand up to the cranks in his party, he will always be in hock to those painting a bleak, defeatist vision of our country’s future.”

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