Transcript: What’s Suella Braverman’s game plan?

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘What’s Suella Braverman’s game plan?’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Camilla Cavendish
It’s quite clear that whether you’re a father or a mother, it would be much better to have a system where children were given much greater voice. But I think otherwise what we’re seeing, especially with fewer funds in the courts, is that cases are clogging up, and the misery and pain that families are suffering is terrible.

Lucy Fisher
The FT’s Camilla Cavendish there talking about law and disorder in England’s family courts. Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Well, tackling the family courts was not in the King’s Speech this week, but we’ll come back to Camilla a little later about just what needs to change. In fact, the King’s Speech faced criticism that it was a little thin all round, leaving Rishi Sunak open to the charge that his is a government that has frankly, run out of steam. So coming up, we’ll be discussing what has made it on to the government’s legislative programme and what Downing Street has succeeded in keeping off the list. Plus, we’ll be asking the question of the week: just what is the home secretary, Suella Braverman, playing at? With me to chew it all over is my FT colleague Miranda Green. Hello, Miranda.

Miranda Green
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And the FT’s Robert Shrimsley. Hi, Robert.

Robert Shrimsley
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
Homeless people in tents, pro-Palestinian marches, asylum seekers — Suella Braverman has a long list of people she wants to tackle, and in an article in The Times newspaper this week, she added the Metropolitan Police to that roster, accusing them of bias in allowing a pro-Palestinian march to take place on Armistice Day this weekend. They were playing favourites, she said. Here’s what the former chief inspector of the constabulary, Sir Tom Winsor, made of it all.

Sir Tom Winsor
These political objections can be made by many, many people. But a home secretary, of all people, is not the person to do this.

Lucy Fisher
So Robert, firstly, let’s just get into the substance of exactly what the problem with this article is. Just unpick for us why so many of her own colleagues on the Tory benches are so furious with her.

Robert Shrimsley
Well, I mean, I think it has a couple of points to it. The first of all is that it’s a fairly strong attack on the way the police work to suggest that they have favourites. It’s not the first intervention she’s made on this. She has led for the government on attempting to get the pro-Palestine march that was due to take place on Saturday cancelled because of the clash with the Armistice weekend. And she’s in the past referred to it as a hate march. She’s used very intemperate language.

So the two charges against her is that she’s interfering with operational independence of the police and that she’s doing so with very intemperate language. The article itself not only talks about the police having essentially playing favourites, but also has a very strange line about Northern Ireland, where it talked about the march not really being a march of protest, but being a march of power, rather like, let’s say, the Orange Order marches. She took up Northern Ireland marches, but that’s what she’s talking about. And instead she’s saying it’s about an attempt to take the streets and to show real power on the streets. So she’s really setting this whole thing up as being more than a demo but a genuine confrontation between demonstrators and the state. And I think people just think she’s gone preposterously over the top in a number of ways.

Lucy Fisher
And Miranda, I want to come on to the politics of all this in a second and how this article came about and who did or didn’t give it clearance. But just looking ahead to the protest, which looks at this stage like it is going to take place on Saturday, Armistice Day, but not Remembrance Sunday, the next day. Is she, frankly, guilty potentially of stoking tensions and inciting a high risk of civil disorder?

Miranda Green
Well, it does seem inflammatory because it seems like raising the stakes and raising the tension around an event that’s already a matter of some concern rather than in the role of home secretary seeking to, you know, unite people and calm tensions and, you know, work in a constructive way with, for example, the police. So it does seem as if she’s being inflammatory and she’s stoking those tensions, which is kind of irresponsible, which I think is probably why quite a lot of her colleagues want to distance themselves from it.

But, you know, let’s remember, it is part of a pattern with Suella Braverman, right, as you said in your intro, because quite a lot of her colleagues, you know, very senior fellow cabinet members included, have also wanted to distance themselves from her remarks saying that homeless people were making a lifestyle choice, which she did the weekend in the days running up to the King’s Speech. And also, you know, back around the time of the Tory party conference when she talked about a hurricane of immigration, which was felt to be really intemperate language again. And, you know, there is, you know, our general election next year in the UK could be running in parallel with the US general election. You know, we can see the dangers of polarisation when you try and pit groups against one another for political ends. And I think a lot of people in the Conservative party itself, as well as her opponents on the other side of the House, feel that this isn’t a route that the UK wants to go down and are actually worried about this sort of politics as well as this particular example this week.

Lucy Fisher
So Robert, Miranda’s absolutely right, isn’t she? This is a pattern of behaviour. Suella Braverman seems to be getting bolder by the week and it’s been a particularly busy seven days for her from the homelessness tent restrictions that cough, cough little plug for the FT’s own scoop there on that story. Now, the suggestion she’s gone rogue with this article which Downing Street was shown a copy of in advance. And our understanding is they requested edits that were then ignored by the home secretary. What do you think her game is here? Is this all about her leadership ambitions?

Robert Shrimsley
Yes, of course. That’s exactly what . . . By the way, I do think one caveat is we get a bit po-faced sometimes about the Home Office interfering with the operational independence of the police. Home secretaries are always doing this. They always have home secretaries criticising the police for doing something or not doing something. So, you know, I don’t think that’s acceptable, but I think her strategy is absolutely crystal clear. She’s rather brilliantly, in a way, running against her own department. She is standing like a sort of mourner at her own funeral complaining about the way the Home Office is failing to do things and all the things that she’s notionally in charge of aren’t happening. And she’s focused entirely not even on the general election but on the leadership election that she assumes is going to follow the general election and on being the rightwing candidate in that election. And she’s playing actually a fairly effective game because they don’t want to sack her because they think she’ll be more trouble outside the tent than in, which she will, although recently . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Is that still true?

Robert Shrimsley
But that’s the question. The question is whether recent weeks have will have led Rishi Sunak to the conclusion that she’s about the same amount of trouble either way. But contrary to what some people think, I don’t think she wants to be sacked. There is a view that says her strategy is to get herself sacked and then be the tribune of the true Conservatives on the right and saying, you know, they threw me out and it’s nothing to do with me or the election defeat. I think her strategy is to push it as far as she can and hopefully stay in, not be blamed for anything that goes wrong in the Home Office because she’s running against it all the time and emerge as the true rightwing contender in the leadership election after an election defeat and leave the Kemi Badenochs and James Cleverlies to fight it out for the other slot in that contest. And I think so far she’s played it fairly well. The issue what’s happening now, I think, is her opponents have sensed maybe she’s gone too far and that maybe we can push the Conservative party out of love with what she’s doing.

Miranda Green
I think that’s absolutely spot on. And actually, what’s so interesting about that idea of Robert’s that she’s trying to run against her own department, the Home Office, is that it’s kind of in the tradition of Boris Johnsonism, isn’t it, you know, to be the insurgents fighting the blob, fighting the way government is this kind of lazy machine that, you know, we wanna come in and change the way that Britain is governed. And to do that from the position of home secretary is pretty damn cheeky. I also think, though, that article in The Times is quite cynical in the sense of when she talks about the march and that this idea of the Metropolitan Police having favourites on the left. You know, she’s pushing those cultural buttons, right? She chooses the examples of Black Lives Matter versus the people who are anti-lockdown and wanted to have protest marches against the lockdown restrictions very deliberately. It’s quite exploitative of tensions and divisions that are already there.

Lucy Fisher
Can I put the proposition to both of you though that does she have that much clout within the party? Are there that many Tory MPs behind her? Because something I’ve been struck by this week is how few publicly have come out in support of her, either over rough sleepers, more latterly over her comments about bias in the police and also privately, you know, we’ve seen anger erupting in the Tory WhatsApp groups. You know, nowadays they always tend to leak. But you know, there hasn’t been that many people. It seems to be a small clutch of red wall MPs, the New Conservatives, the new grouping of rightwingers led by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates. Beyond that, does she really have as much of a base as she might think?

Robert Shrimsley
Well, I think that’s a really good question. As you say, you’ve got those, the New Conservatives as they’re styled, and then you’ve got the sort of the cornerstone group, as it’s called, this group of traditional Conservative MPs led by her close ally, Sir John Hayes, in a group that we might want to refer to as the Monday Club, which have moved on a bit, though maybe not that much. And she’s got that cadre of people. But I do think historically the Conservative party has tended to choose the candidate of the right in its leadership elections. So if she can lock up that position, then who knows how much further it can go in the analysis and self-immolation of a post-general election defeat. And what she will be hoping is that all the people who have some instinctive agreement with her see her as a useful cipher for getting the Conservative party to go in the direction they want to go.

Lucy Fisher
What should Sunak do about her? I mean, this whole round does seem to be tearing the party apart. We’ve got one deputy chairman of the Conservatives, Nickie Aiken, going on record saying it’s setting a dangerous precedent to question the operational independence of the police. On the other hand, you’ve got Lee Anderson of the right wing of the party, also a deputy chair, saying, no, look what’s Suella Braverman’s saying is what the public think. She’s only saying what others are privately saying behind closed doors.

Robert Shrimsley
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Suella Braverman is being more aggressive and bolder at a time when Rishi Sunak looks weak. We’re all hearing reshuffle rumours. A strong leader, if he disapproves of what she’s doing, would remove her. But he’s not a strong leader.

Lucy Fisher
But it makes him look weaker, Miranda, to leave her in post or can he afford to leave her till next week till that reshuffle comes?

Miranda Green
Well, that’s the great danger, isn’t it, for a prime minister, as Robert says, in a weak position. Do you want somebody on the backbenches who becomes a kind of fulcrum and gathering point for your rebels, particularly if they’re discontented about the government agenda, worried about their own seats, staring defeat in the face next year, potentially. So that would be the danger of kicking her out. I mean, I think the bigger question here is so interesting, isn’t it, ‘cause it’s really thinking about come next year, how badly does the Conservative party lose? And do they then choose a leader after defeat who takes them off to the wilderness by going far to the right for such a long time that the country is then without a sort of decent, challenging opposition for a long time, or do they stay on fairly moderate territory with somebody else?

Lucy Fisher
Robert, we know that the Supreme Court next week will be issuing its verdict on the government’s Rwanda deportation policy. How does that change the calculations for Suella Braverman, her team viewed through the lens of her leadership ambitions? And how does that potentially change the calculation for Sunak about whether he keeps her in post?

Robert Shrimsley
I think it’s really interesting. I think if the government wins in that judgment, and there’s still the possibility of an appeal up to the European Court of Human Rights. It’s not the end of the process. But if it wins on that, he might feel more bolder and more able to act. If he loses, then is he gonna want to run the backbenches arguing against her? I just want to make one other point on her situation. Although her language in her article on the marches was ridiculous and intemperate, Rishi Sunak also called in the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to try and strong-arm him to cancel the march. So I don’t think we should assume that she’s wildly out of sync with him on this issue, even if her language is.

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Lucy Fisher
So I think we can safely say that Suella Braverman stole the show from what the government intended to be the main event this week, which was, of course, the King’s Speech. King Charles turned up in his full royal regalia to tell assembled MPs and ermine-clad peers what the government has in mind for the year ahead. Miranda, can you sum up what we heard?

Miranda Green
Well.

Lucy Fisher
Won’t take you long.

Miranda Green
No, indeed. But it was a bit thin. And, you know, as the final outlining of a governing programme as we come up to an election, it ought to be used really to make a very clear argument about what your government’s central mission is. And it didn’t seem to do that for them. There was a bit of kind of, well, this is all around the theme of criminal justice and, you know, tough on crime. But there wasn’t even that much there on that particular amount of territory. There were some missed items that should have been in there if they were honouring 2019 manifesto commitments on some things like mental health, which sounds soft, but actually are taken quite seriously, you know, among the voting public. And even quite key things like on housing, leasehold reform, they were going ahead with some of the measures but not others. So there were a lot of holes that leave them open to attack, I think it’s fair to say, and that what’s the central narrative? You know, what is the Sunak pitch to voters that he is gonna say, keep me in power because you can see what my intentions are, you know, apart from stopping smoking and regulating pedicabs.

Lucy Fisher
The pedicabs bill. I mean, for anyone who doesn’t know what a pedicab was, and I have to say, some people in the FT parliamentary office were having to remind themselves it’s a bicycle with a carriage on the back seen only in, you know, the entertainment . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
Yes, we rely on sedan chairs.

Lucy Fisher
(Laughter) Seen only in the entertainment districts of major cities. When I saw that, Robert, I just thought exactly of a column you wrote a few weeks ago about how parochial Rishi Sunak’s outlook has become. It’s really a small beer that leaves him open to ridicule.

Robert Shrimsley
Yeah, I mean, funny enough, there are quite a few people who talk about pedicabs in London, so it’s one of those things, this is fine. I mean, the last King’s Speech of a parliamentary session is often quite thin and it is often very partisan because you’re trying to frame them. But I think Miranda absolutely nailed it. I came away just thinking, what’s the story you wanted here? What’s the headline? You know, we had the party conference where he’s trying to present himself as the change cand— I am the change. I am a dramatic break with the past. And he’s got two or three moments to prosecute that argument. And the King’s Speech is one of them.

And you just came away thinking, well, there’s some good stuff, there’s some bad stuff, there’s some stuff, you know, there’s pedicabs. But what is the argument you’re trying to make to the public off them? I’m sort of, I’m quietly competent, you know. So are you the change candidate or are you the continuity candidate? And what you really came away from thinking is you don’t know what you’re trying to say. And that means you don’t really have a strategy. You don’t really understand what position you’re trying to put yourself into to win the election. And I think that’s why he’s gonna have more and more trouble over the coming year, why there’s gonna be more things like Suella Braverman, because people are sensing weakness and indecision.

Miranda Green
Do you think it’s mean to compare the pedicabs to John Major’s cones hotline?

Robert Shrimsley
Yeah, because . . . No, cones were nationwide. (Miranda laughs)

Lucy Fisher
Just a quick word, Miranda. King Charles, his debut as monarch unveiling the agenda. All eyes were out for whether he would give any tell in his facial expressions, in his voice about his personal views on any of these bills. Did you detect that at all?

Miranda Green
No. But I mean, I think I was particularly looking at it when the drilling for North Sea oil and gas came up because that can’t possibly, given his well-known environmental concerns, be something that he would he would sort of want to emphasise. It is quite interesting. I mean, so far, we’re not long into it, are we? But so far, he has, you know, played what I believe in cricketing terms is called a straight bat — steering clear of expressing any sort of political judgment, even with the movement of an eyebrow. Whether he’ll keep that up, who knows.

Robert Shrimsley
I thought he sounded just incredibly bored.

Lucy Fisher
Yes, I thought that . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
I thought his voice was really flat and he just sounded rather dull. But it wasn’t, I mean, I suppose I’m over-remembering the Queen’s, versus the Queen’s Speech and they probably weren’t that interesting either. But he sounded like, you know, (mimics the King) and then at 4:00, I shall be going down to the stateroom to meet the ambassador from so and so. And then I’ll be going over here and probably have tea at five. You know, it was really sort of low.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, well, I was lucky enough, you have a sort of a ballot for tickets among the reporters and I got one. So I was in the chamber for it and yeah, the atmosphere felt a bit flat there too.

Miranda Green
It is tricky though, isn’t it? Because since it turned out to be quite a damp squib, all eyes are now on Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement as something that might revive Tory morale, give them something to sell on the doorstep, maybe give them even this coherent narrative that, as Robert said, is missing. And as we know, Jeremy Hunt’s own position as chancellor is talked about as vulnerable. So that’s a lot of pressure on November the 22nd.

Lucy Fisher
Well, that brings me to a concrete question I want to put to you both. And firstly, in the light of a poll that landed from YouGov on Thursday that showed the Labour lead over the Tories has now stretched to 24 points. Or to put it another way, Labour now has more than doubled the support that the Tories have in the country. The Tories are on 23, Labour is on 47, at least according to this poll. So my question to both of you is, is it all over for the Tories? Is there any way, 12 months out, when the polls are at this state, that they can pull it back from the brink and potentially remain in power after the next election? Robert, you first.

Robert Shrimsley
I think it is well over for the Conservatives. I don’t know how bad the defeat will be, but I’m confident that it’s bad enough for them not to be able to stay in government, barring one of those huge existential shocks that none of us could predict in advance.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda?

Miranda Green
Yeah, I think it’s now a question of the degree to which they lose. But that is really important, as we mentioned before, because actually the quality of how well we’re governed in a sense, always depends on the quality of the opposition. So if the Tory party loses really badly and kind of leaves the field for a few years, it won’t be good for the electorate as a whole.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, here’s another issue that didn’t get a mention in the King’s Speech: the state of England’s family courts. But there are plenty who think they are ripe for urgent reform. Among them is the FT contributing editor and columnist Camilla Cavendish. In 2009, her campaigning led the government to change the law and finally give accredited journalists access to what had been up until that point, secret courts. Last month, she wrote an essay for the FT asking what needs to be done to further improve the system, particularly when it comes to the issue of parents battling over custody of their children. Here’s what she told me.

Camilla Cavendish
So the family courts see about 55,000 families every year. And they’re civil courts, not criminal courts, and they deal with disputes over children or finances usually. And very often it is custody battles between parents.

Lucy Fisher
And you’ve been reporting on this area for years, as I mentioned. Just explain some of the history of that, like how did your interest first become piqued by this area and what did you look into first?

Camilla Cavendish
So I was a feature writer on The Times many years ago, and I went to various criminal court cases, which I thought would be interesting. And I wrote about a man called professor Sir Roy Meadow, who became notorious because he was a doctor who was an expert witness in several murder cases where his testimony led to wrongful convictions of women for murdering their own children. I wrote a piece about that because I thought it was incredible that an expert could have quite so much influence on judges.

And I got a phone call from a man literally calling me from a phone box saying, would I come and meet him and his wife because they had a story to tell. And, you know, being a young journalist, I thought, fine, I’ll go. I never wrote about their case because legally, it was impossible to do it. I learned that the woman had lost her daughter, completely lost her to a former partner that she was convinced was a paedophile. She’d been sharing custody with this man. The daughter had been increasingly anxious and upset about staying overnight with him, would be very drawn and pale.

The mother went to court to say, look, can we have supervised access? And the ex-partner brought a case against her with an expert who said the mother has coached the daughter to lie. And a judge decided that the ex-partner should have full custody of that child and the mother shouldn’t see her again. Now, that was so extraordinary and awful. I didn’t really believe it. I saw a lot of the papers. I now think it was probably true. But I never wrote about that case. And it’s haunted me ever since.

So recently, as a result of a number of conversations with women who approached me and reading quite a lot of new reports, I decided to take another look at what’s going on in those custody battles. This is not when social workers take a child for adoption, which is what I used to write about.

Lucy Fisher
Mm-hmm.

Camilla Cavendish
This is basically, you know, it’s a he-said, she-said case. It’s when two parents, unfortunately, fall out with each other and they end up going to court because they cannot resolve the dispute and it’s incredibly sad. But what I am concerned about is that there are still unqualified, unregulated experts who have a lot of influence in courts. And despite recent judgments actually saying that these people shouldn’t really be practising, there is no law against them practising.

And there was a number of reports, one from the Ministry of Justice, which is beginning to say, look, a lot of women in particular, but some men, are coming forward and saying, I’ve been in an abusive relationship. I’m really concerned about my children who may be subject to that abuse and I would like to limit the access the other partner has. And there are many, many women in particular who are alleging that the courts are turning a blind eye to this and saying, no, no, no, no, no. These kids, even if they don’t want to see the father, they have to keep on seeing him. And that’s what I’ve been writing about in the FT recently.

Lucy Fisher
And one of the concepts you’ve written about is alienation that the courts talk about, whereby often the mother is accused of somehow coaching her child to suggest they don’t want to see the father. Tell us a bit more about that.

Camilla Cavendish
You know, this is a really tricky area. The phrase “parental alienation” was invented by Richard Gardner, who’s a psychologist in America, and it’s very controversial. Obviously, it’s inevitable that when you have a terrible relationship, very few people are going to be able to restrain themselves from saying something negative about the other partner. What has happened, though, is that there’s a whole set of psychologists and lawyers who’ve grown up around promoting this issue of alienation and beginning to argue in courts that actually, as you said, some parents are taking this far too far. They’re basically turning the children against the other person. I’m quite convinced this does happen, by the way. I think it’s kind of human. But the problem is that women are finding particularly if they allege that they have an abusive or coercive partner, the immediate response from that partner will be, you’ve alienated my children.

Lucy Fisher
Well, it’s pretty horrifying to even think about. Tell us about the research done by the University of Manchester, who seem to be leading the way in finding out the impact on children who’ve been subject to some of these judgments.

Camilla Cavendish
So Manchester did a very small study of, I think, 45 women, all of whom had been in those kind of situations. The BBC did an allied investigation which found that one mother had actually killed herself in despair at these allegations of alienation. I wouldn’t want to overdo the Manchester research because it is quite a small study.

There’s also another report by the Ministry of Justice, which interviewed over a thousand mothers and fathers two years ago, which was commissioned by the government, and that has found that they think there is systematic minimisation of abuse allegations because, of course, the courts really want families to stay together. That is their statutory duty and they want children, quite rightly, to have access to their parents.

And one of the things I fought against for years was children being removed forcibly from their parents by social services, because that’s a pretty draconian thing. What is more draconian the state can do to you, take your child away. So it’s quite right that there’s a high bar.

But both Manchester and the Ministry of Justice are really suggesting quite strongly that the courts are too pro-contact and that in some cases there are mainly men, I’m afraid, who are convicted paedophiles, some of those in the Manchester study, who should not really be having access to their children.

Lucy Fisher
It’s just so shocking to hear. But it sounds like the government are alive to some of these issues. Are they looking at reform? What would you like to see them do?

Camilla Cavendish
I think the campaigners are very depressed that there hasn’t been any movement from the government since the Ministry of Justice report was published. It’s quite clear that whether you’re a father or a mother — and I have to say, this is this is about both — it would be much better to have a system where children were given much greater voice, particularly since the pandemic. And you could do that sort of outside of the court system. You could do that with the proper investigating magistrate even, you could do that with through social workers. So there are a number of changes that really could be made. But I think otherwise what we’re seeing, especially with fewer funds in the courts, is that cases are clogging up, they’re taking longer and longer and longer. And the misery and pain that families are suffering is terrible.

Lucy Fisher
And what about the issue you identified of psychologists who aren’t necessarily regulated? What can be done there?

Camilla Cavendish
Well, it needs to be clear that you cannot claim to be a psychologist unless you are a qualified clinical psychologist and registered. That is one thing that clearly just should be done. There’s no reason why amateurs with sometimes I have to say a financial interest in the outcome should be employed by courts in some of the most important decisions they make.

Lucy Fisher
The FT’s Camilla Cavendish. And if you want to read her full article, I’ve put a link in the show notes. Miranda, Robert, what did you take from that?

Miranda Green
Well, Camilla’s original essay was very, very hard to read because the family circumstances are so upsetting. I mean, this question of authority is key to it, isn’t it? If somebody sets themself up as a medical authority, that feeds into the idea that the court then has the authority to intervene in a family in a very, very dramatic way. And if that medical authority isn’t there or somehow, you know, fraudulent, essentially, it really shouldn’t be happening. It’s a Kafkaesque situation for a parent to find themselves in. And that’s, you know, a branch of the state doing it to them. It needs urgent attention.

Lucy Fisher
Robert?

Robert Shrimsley
Well, I mean, Camilla’s been writing about this for a very long time, very bravely and then detailed and has built up a lot of expertise, which I haven’t got. But I was just struck listening to that and reading her article, that, you know, it’s clearly time to just have another look at this. And, you know, maybe if we had the home secretary or a justice secretary appropriately minded they could have a look at this.

Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s see if that reshuffle materialises.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There’s just time left for our political stock picks. Miranda, who are you buying or selling this week?

Miranda Green
Well, I was tempted to buy James Cleverly just because I’m sort of on the back of the Conservative home survey of members. But that seems a bit morally lazy. So going to the Covid inquiry, which has been going on again this week. I suppose looking at the entire panoply of craziness that was going on inside the Boris Johnson Downing Street operation at a time of total crisis in the in the pandemic, you attempted to kind of sell everyone who was remotely involved. So I think I’m gonna have to go with Simon Case, who, you know, is in fact, still in position, even though he’s on sick leave. He’s actually lasted quite a long time for somebody who was so involved and so complicit in what was going in there. I can’t see him lasting much longer.

Lucy Fisher
Do you think he’ll ever come back from this period of leave?

Miranda Green
Good question. If he does, it probably won’t be for an extended period of time.

Lucy Fisher
Robert.

Robert Shrimsley
But I’m also thinking about the Covid inquiry, and my instinct was that you should sell anybody who’s getting reported and buy anyone who’s managed to go in and out of the Covid inquiry without attracting a lot of attention. And on that basis, although I haven’t had the time yet to look at all of her evidence, Priti Patel went in and out of the Covid inquiry on Thursday without a lot of negative headlines and actually said a couple of things that seemed quite reasonable. And on the basis that if Suella Braverman’s stock is falling, the right needs somebody who’s saying the same kind of things and is less damaged, I just thought a very, very, very small flutter on Priti Patel.

Lucy Fisher
Well, I’m going to make a very small flutter on Boris Johnson. Bear with me. I know things have hardly been good, the testimony we’ve heard in the Covid inquiry, but I think it’s reached a floor, his stock, and it could now start to rise. We’ve started to see the beginning of the Boris Johnson fightback. His interview with Nadine Dorries for her book accusing Sunak of allowing the Tories to drift towards defeat. And it just feels to me he’s maybe beginning to get his mojo back a bit. He’s accepted this new role with GB News. To date, we’ve seen his Mail columns which have been pretty vanilla. I’m sure Mail executives . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
He hasn’t given his evidence yet though, has he?

Lucy Fisher
He’s not given his evidence yet, but the evidence will be part of the fightback. We’ve had so much mud sort of slung at him, we might hear him defending himself in some ways that are credible or at least in some ways that are entertaining.

Robert Shrimsley
Well, if you’re buying Boris Johnson, I’d be happy to sell him to you.

Lucy Fisher
OK, OK. Well, deal. Well, that’s all we’ve got time for this week. Miranda Green and Robert Shrimsley, thanks for joining.

Miranda Green
My pleasure.

Robert Shrimsley
See you.

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Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes, so do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners. There’s also a link there to our colleague Stephen Bush’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, please do leave a star rating or review. It really does help spread the word.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Philippa Goodrich. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Andrew Georgiades is the broadcast engineer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll meet again here, same time, same place next week.