Sue-Ellen Cassiana Braverman
Sue-Ellen Cassiana Braverman KC (née Fernandes, born 3 April 1980), better known as Suella Braverman, is a British politician and barrister who became Home Secretary of the United Kingdom on 25 October 2022. She had previously held the position from 6 September to 19 October 2022 under Prime Minister Liz Truss. A member of the Conservative Party, she was chair of the European Research Group from 2017 to 2018 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2020 to March 2021 and September 2021 to 2022. She became Member of Parliament (MP) for Fareham in 2015.
In the January 2018 cabinet reshuffle she was appointed parliamentary under-secretary of state for exiting the European Union by Prime Minister Theresa May. In November 2018 she resigned in protest against May's draft Brexit withdrawal agreement. Braverman was appointed attorney general for England and Wales and advocate general for Northern Ireland by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle; she was appointed as Queen's Counsel automatically on her appointment.
Following Johnson's announcing his resignation in July 2022, Braverman stood as a candidate to succeed him in the July–September Conservative Party leadership election; she was eliminated from the ballot after the second round of voting. She subsequently supported Truss's bid to become Conservative leader, and was appointed home secretary on 6 September when Truss became prime minister. Braverman resigned as home secretary on 19 October following criticism for breaching the Ministerial Code by sending a sensitive official document to a political ally using her personal email address. Six days later, she was reinstated as home secretary by Truss's successor Rishi Sunak.
During the July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis, Braverman remained a minister, though on 6 July 2022, she called for Boris Johnson to resign. She stood in the ensuing Conservative Party leadership election, but was eliminated from the race in the second round of ballots, winning 27 votes, a reduction on her vote in the first round and the lowest of the remaining candidates. She then endorsed Liz Truss.
Had she succeeded in being appointed prime minister, Braverman said her priorities would have been to deliver tax cuts, cut government spending, tackle the cost of living challenges, "solve the problem of boats crossing the Channel", deliver "Brexit opportunities", withdraw the UK from the European Convention of Human Rights and to "get rid of all of this woke rubbish". She also said she would suspend the UK's target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In August 2022, The Guardian reported that Braverman's leadership campaign had received a £10,000 donation from a company owned by the climate change denier Terence Mordaunt.
In November 2023 Braverman was widely criticised for suggesting that sleeping rough was a lifestyle choice.[1][2][3][4]