Suella Braverman: Migration to blame for Tories’ electoral woes – I warned Sunak to tackle it

Suella Braverman has blamed the Conservative Party’s “depressing” electoral position on its failure to tackle migration, as she said she had urged Rishi Sunak to take action.

In an interview with The Telegraph, the former home secretary said she believed the Right would not be divided if the Government had taken action on migration sooner.

Ms Braverman said she was not supporting Reform and made clear she was not attacking the Prime Minister, whose record on tackling inflation she praised.

However, she said: “We shouldn’t have this split on the Right. If we’re a proper Conservative Party that just does what we promised to do, like cut migration and cut taxes, we would not have this division… and we’d have another 15 per cent added on to our polling right now.”

She added: “I do think that had we done better on immigration, I don’t think we’d be dealing with this problem right now. I urged the Prime Minister for years to take some action on illegal immigration… I was blocked.”

Her comments follow a YouGov poll on Thursday that showed Nigel Farage’s Reform UK had overtaken the Tories for the first time in the campaign, respectively polling at 19 per cent and 18 per cent.

She said the poll was “predictable” and “depressing” but she hoped the party could recover. “This is Rishi’s campaign. I’ve been wrong on some things. Hopefully, I’ll be wrong about this too,” she said.

Her comments come amid warnings from senior Tories that support for Reform could hand Labour a “super-majority”.

Boris Johnson made his first direct intervention in the campaign on Friday by offering any Tory MP a personal campaign video by him if they wanted it.

A source close to Mr Johnson told The Telegraph that “every Conservative MP who has asked for a digital endorsement from him will get one”. So far around two dozen MPs have been sent videos similar to the one posted to social media by Sir Simon Clarke, the former levelling up secretary, who is standing in the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency.

It comes amid growing concerns among Tory candidates over the gaffes that have dogged the campaign, including the Prime Minister’s decision to leave the D-Day commemorations early and his parliamentary private secretary’s decision to make a £100 bet on a July election, just three days before Mr Sunak announced it.

Some candidates have been distancing themselves from the national campaign in the belief that it could save their seats and there are indications that some might air their concerns publicly.

The Tories’ manifesto has proposed an annual cap on migration, reducing it every year of the next Parliament, and pledged to rewrite asylum treaties but stopped short of pledging to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Mrs Braverman privately urged Mr Sunak to introduce an overall cap on immigration when she became home secretary along with other measures subsequently adopted and lobbied to leave the ECHR.

She said that as long as Britain remained in the ECHR, the Rwanda deportation scheme faced problems. “They might get a token flight,” she added, but was sceptical about suggestions that it could be up to 90,000. “You have to block off all the individual challenges before they happen in primary legislation,” she added.

Reform has capitalised on the Tory divisions by pledging to leave the ECHR, impose a freeze on immigration and introduce a migrant tax that would force employers to pay a higher National Insurance rate of 20 per cent for every foreign worker they employed, an idea previously suggested by Mrs Braverman.

Earlier in the week, she said the Tory party should embrace Mr Farage. In her Telegraph interview, she said she believed Mr Farage would vote Tory if the party had cut migration and taxes. She said she would welcome him as a party member “if he was supporting the Conservatives and wanted the Conservatives to win”.

Mr Sunak, who is taking a break from the campaign trail to meet world leaders in Italy, predicted a Tory comeback as he stressed, “we are only halfway through this election” and that he is “still fighting very hard for every vote”.

‘A global emergency’

He insisted that voting Reform helps Labour, saying the choice between his and Sir Keir Starmer’s party will “crystallise for people between now and polling day”.

On Friday night, Mr Sunak said the G7 countries would work together to tackle illegal migration for the first time as he declared the problem a “global emergency”.

The seven leaders agreed at the end of their two-day summit in southern Italy to form a coalition to prevent and counter the smuggling of migrants.

Speaking at a press conference, Mr Sunak said he and summit host Giorgia Meloni, the Italian premier, led the discussion on migration in which leaders agreed to enhance border enforcement.

He said: “Illegal migration is now a global emergency. More people are moving across borders than at any time in our history. We cannot stand by and watch this human tragedy unfold.”

The Prime Minister said the G7 was doing more to tackle people traffickers. “We all agree that it is for sovereign nations to control their borders and not the gangs,” he said.

“The G7 has today launched a new coalition to counter people smuggling.”

Mr Sunak said he and Ms Meloni saw “eye to eye” on the need to tackle illegal migration.