Time for Tories to swap personality for actual policy, says Esther Krakue

On Monday, in case you were asleep, the PM brought back previous Prime Minister David Cameron to serve as Foreign Secretary, appointed MP Esther McVey as Minister without portfolio – a de facto “common sense tsar” role – and, in the most shocking twist, sacked Suella Braverman as Home Secretary.

The latter has triggered a backbench revolt, the most blunt resignation letter of all time from Mrs Braverman, and a letter of no confidence from Andrea Jenkyns. Perhaps the first of several. So was this reshuffle a wise move or electoral suicide? If Mrs Braverman’s rant is anything to go by, she believes it’s the latter.

She levelled a series of scathing criticisms at her former boss, effectively painting him as passive, untrustworthy, and uncommitted to delivering for the country. In doing so, she set herself up as an alternative post-election leader. So far, so Westminster. One of her most damning claims was that her support was “a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and enabling him to become Prime Minister”.

A curious assertion. If she was so popular with the party’s base, wouldn’t she have come higher than fifth in the leadership race?

And this leads to her second peculiar claim: that she only accepted the Prime Minister’s offer to serve “on certain conditions”, conditions she then accuses him of betraying. On the nature of Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman’s “deal”, we will never know the whole truth. After all, we were not there.

But it must also be recognised that Mrs Braverman’s actions made her position as Home Secretary simply untenable despite her undoubted popularity among the right-wing of the Conservative Party.

For a senior minister to make callous statements about homelessness in unapproved articles is not only unacceptable, it also distracts from the mission of the Government.

Mrs Braverman deliberately fuelled a media frenzy, which is a testament to her lack of political acumen and communication skills – two key traits needed for the role of Home Secretary.

I am not unsympathetic to the former Home Secretary. After all, her frustrations are valid, and it’s not uncommon for senior ministers to disagree with the Prime Minister. Sometimes more publicly than others. But in such cases, it’s incumbent upon them to either follow the Ministerial code and toe the line or resign.

Mrs Braverman harboured her resentments until she forced her own sacking, giving her the opportunity to denounce the Prime Minister and posit herself as the “true” high priestess of Conservatism. Who can work with someone more interested in their own political ambitions than running the country?

Ironically, she ended her letter by saying that “service requires bravery and thinking of the common good”. It is hard to think she thought of the “common good” when she described homelessness as a “lifestyle choice”. The reality is that Mrs Braverman’s amateurish style of doing business made her unelectable and radioactive.

And the Government is better off without her.

Now it is important for the Prime Minister to not be sidetracked by this latest brouhaha.

Although the former Home Secretary has penned the mother of all tantrums, it doesn’t mean she is entirely wrong. On one point we can agree: we are still waiting for results.

Where is the reform on legal migration by increasing salary thresholds to visas? Or changes to the international students’ route into the UK?

How will the channel crossings be curbed now that the Supreme Court has struck down the Rwanda policy? Not to mention reducing NHS waiting lists and growing the economy (Rishi scored a rare victory yesterday with news that inflation fell to its lowest rate in two years in October).

These are the things that matter to voters. Like many, I wanted Mrs Braverman to succeed. But her personal shortcomings saw that there was a lot more work to be done.

Had she remained in post, she would be alongside the PM hailing the fact small boat crossings are down by a third on this time last year. Instead, the fallout from her dismissal underscores yet again how dysfunctional the Tories are.

No party survives politicians who put personal ambition before the “greater good”. We saw that with Boris. This is a battle for the soul of the Conservative party – it’s time to swap personality for policy.