The zombie home secretary is costing Sunak too much

It was appropriate enough that Suella Braverman was fighting for her political life on Monday. It was Halloween, and she had already returned from the dead.

- T O M P E C K

 The zombie home secretary only had to spend six days in her own grave before Rishi Sunak, in his infinite wisdom, dragged her out again.

He really does seem to think that things are going to be different now. More serious, more professional, more accountable. But, you know, there are still very desperate people chucking letters in bottles over the edge of a compound in Kent where there have been outbreaks of diphtheria and scabies.

And he still, entirely self-evidently, thinks these people’s little lives are of significantly less importance than the successful management of the Conservative Party – and more specifically, his inalienable right to lead it. Clearly, Sunak thought bringing Braverman back to the Home Offie was necessary to ensure that he could see off Boris Johnson. And it worked. But it’s not working out so well any more, is it?

George W Bush posited in his memoir, with some plausibility, the argument that if he really had known all along that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would he really have decided to completely destroy his reputation, knowing that none would be found? His critics suggest that what really happened is that he didn’t have the strategic brainpower to look that far ahead. Sunak finds himself in the same position, the victim of his own naivety in thinking that an entirely ridiculous decision to bring back a home secretary six days after her resignation was something that could be worried about later.