7 months ago
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Suella Braverman's powerful and thought-provoking speech in Washington last week on clamping down on mass migration had cossetted liberals spluttering into their teacups in outrage.
If any tuned in to the Home Secretary's address to the Tory party conference, they'd have been advised to first put down their fine china. This was her previous oratory shot through with steroids.
To roars of delight from a packed auditorium, she reeled off the Conservatives' most popular hits. The need to strengthen Britain's borders, get tough on criminals, exploit the benefits of Brexit and eliminate the pernicious scourge of wokery.
For daring to hold such opinions, Mrs Braverman has been subjected to a vicious, sustained and deeply personal campaign of vilification by the liberal-Left.
Special condemnation was reserved for her predication that a 'hurricane' of migration could bring millions to Britain.
DAILY MAIL COMMENT: If any tuned in to the Home Secretary's address to the Tory party conference, they'd have been advised to first put down their fine china
The virtue-signalling elite accused her of deploying the 'language of the far Right'.
But their reaction is mistaken. Her suggestion that borders are out of control, that immigration should be cut and that this poses a challenge to the West would be endorsed by the vast majority of voters.
The liberal insistence that illegal migrants crossing the Channel by the boatload are refugees is simply preposterous. Large numbers of these mainly young men, who have passed through safe countries before paying smuggling gangs thousands, are economic migrants looking for a better life.
It is deeply ironic that Mrs Braverman, a woman of Indian heritage, is accused of pursuing a racist agenda by rich, middle-class white males such as Gary Lineker.
What do they know about the difficulties communities face due to the effects of mass migration? Do they use the crumbling NHS? Have they tried to get children into oversubscribed schools? Or struggled to find an affordable home?
Of course not. They are insulated by their wealth. But there are signs they are falling on the wrong side of history.
Many countries are now seeking fair but radical solutions to turn back the tide of illegal migration. Mrs Braverman rightly refuses to be deflected from this mission.
The Home Secratary also spearheaded the fightback against Labour yesterday by igniting an intense new war on 'wokery'.
For some time, our public institutions – from Parliament to the NHS, BBC and even our great universities – have been captured by identity politics promoted by a vociferous minority. She is correct to warn that this country would 'go properly woke' if Labour won power, because the party is in thrall to the trans extremists, race ideologues and green zealots.
While Black Lives Matter activists vandalised the Cenotaph, Sir Keir Starmer 'took the knee'. As women's rights groups objected to transwomen – biological males – accessing female-only spaces, Labour's leader insisted women could have penises.
By standing up to woke fundamentalism, the Tories would be kicking at an open door politically. So Health Secretary Steve Barclay's proposal to ban trans people from wards reserved for the opposite sex is welcome. That would help protect the dignity, privacy and safety of women.
And Science Secretary Michelle Donelan's promise to reverse 'the steady creep of political correctness' within the research community should be applauded.
Yes, these moves might trigger howls of outrage on social media, Sky and the BBC. But in ordinary parts of Britain, right-thinking people who are increasingly exasperated and afraid of the relentless march of wokery will say 'good on you'.
It would draw a clear dividing line between the Tories and Labour before the election.
But mere rhetoric from the conference stage won't make it happen. Rishi Sunak and his troops must put their shoulders to the wheel and take action.
