Suella Braverman A serial stoker of controversy with an eye on leadership

In a year-long stint leading the Home Office, Britain’s interior ministry, it is arguable that Braverman has stoked more political rows than any predecessor.

- Peter Walker

Subjects as varied as the supposed bias of police, which is raging now, to homelessness, sexual abuse, golly dolls and “the tofu-eating wokerati” have all been remarked upon.

The 43-year-old is a politician of stark paradoxes: an avowed Francophile who studied in Paris but became a staunch supporter of Brexit; the child of immigrant parents who yearns to deport immigrants; and a hate figure for many in parliament who, colleagues insist, is nonetheless kind and polite in private.

The common thread of her eight-year stint as an MP, most of it also spent as a minister, has been a propensity to court controversy, even division, with her views, and to court the support of the culture war-favouring hard right of the Conservative party.

It is clear that Braverman sees herself as a potential successor to her boss, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. Cooper, an experienced Labour politician who scrutinises Braverman from the opposition benches, accused her of being less interested in her day job than in running “an endless Tory leadership campaign”.

This future darling of the Conservative right was born Sue-Ellen Fernandes in Harrow, north-west London, the only child of Christie Fernandes, a Kenyan of Christian Goan origin, and Uma Fernandes, a Mauritian of Indian origin, who had both arrived in the UK in the 1960s.

Named after Sue Ellen Ewing, the leading female character in the 1980s US television drama Dallas, who was largely defined by her turbulent personal life and struggles with alcohol, Braverman shortened her name after teachers started to call her Suella.