Suella Braverman’s anti-immigrant speech welcomed with open arms by American right
Waking up this morning in the British ambassador’s mansion in Washington, dreary Britain must have seemed a world away for Suella Braverman.
Lured by the offer of a speech at a sympathetic, right-leaning think tank, Braverman took her chance to position herself as a world leader on the US stage during an official visit as Home Secretary.
It seemed like the unofficial launch of her leadership campaign as well: should Rishi Sunak fail in the next election then Braverman will be one of the top candidates to replace her.
Braverman’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) made headlines before she even gave it.
Calling to tear up the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention is not exactly a subtle way of getting attention.
Nor is saying that refugees should be refused asylum for “simply being gay or a woman”, but subtlety isn’t exactly Braverman’s style.
Braverman’s unapologetic, anti-immigrant rhetoric feels like a good fit among Trump supporters, the transatlantic soul brothers of the Brexiteers who helped her rise to lead the Home Office.
If Donald Trump himself had tuned in, he would have nodded his head in agreement at the idea of belittling a respected international treaty, as he did to the Paris Climate Accords.
In Braverman he would have likely recognised a fighter who was stirring things up and outraging liberals, the measure of success for most Maga loyalists.
Why didn’t she give her speech a week earlier at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, you may wonder?
There would have been too many uncontrollable variables and she risked people in the audience slow-clapping her or, worse, walking out.
Instead she was welcomed with open arms, just like the long line of Tory politicians heading to Washington before her, all seeking communion with their ideological cousins in the hope some of America’s power can rub off on them.
For somebody who prides herself in mocking liberal snowflakes, it feels awfully like Braverman was looking for a safe space.
In April, former prime minister Liz Truss gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think-tank that is further to the right than the AEI, in which she railed against wokeism and praised Ronald Reagan.
In January, Truss’s predecessor Boris Johnson was in Washington where he gave a speech at the Atlantic Council, another think-tank, and met with senators and Republicans to urge them to fund the war in Ukraine.
Liam Fox, the former secretary of state for international trade and defence secretary, has made several pilgrimages to the US, where he has been well received by the Heritage Foundation and others.
Before her speech, Braverman was introduced by Yuval Levin, director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the AEI. He hailed her as the “UK’s leading policy maker” on migration and said he was “very pleased she could take some time” to speak.
Braverman thanked the AEI for having “contributed so much to the intellectual foundations of the Conservative movement in the UK and the UK”.
Back home, Braverman’s critics were less charitable and Andrew Boff, a Conservative member of the London Assembly and patron of the LGBT+ Tories group, condemned her for “dog whistles” from across the pond.
But with this level of bonhomie, chances are she will be back again soon.
