What happened to Suella Braverman?

Read time: 3 minutes

In brief…

• Suella Braverman gave a speech at The Heritage Foundation in Washington where she adopted the slogan "make Britain great again".
• She suggested JD Vance "wasn’t joking" about the UK becoming “the first islamist nation” and said mass migration is an "existential threat" to western civilisation.
• The News Agents say the speech is “conspiracy laden stuff” that doesn’t serve to find solutions to real problems, but attempts to exaggerate them and make things worse.

What’s the story?

Suella Braverman has a new catchphrase, although 'make Britain great again' perhaps isn't the most original.

This is the message she’s been pumping out on social media and in the right-wing press, having jumped aboard the Trump-train after attending his Washington inauguration in January 2025.

Braverman was in the US to give a speech for The Heritage Foundation, the far-right group responsible for the extremist Project 2025 manifesto.

It's not surprising then that the speech was controversial.

In it, she posits the idea, originally from the now Vice President JD Vance, that in a couple of decades, the UK could be an Islamist state.

And while she goes on to say that she doesn't believe that will happen, she says it's worth talking about.

But, Lewis Goodall asks; "Is it really worth talking about? And why is Suella Braverman going around the world at least positing ideas that would once have been considered completely extreme?"

What did Suella Braverman say in her speech?

The former Home Secretary called out the three main political parties in the UK for "refusing to address the elephant in the room."

She said; "Millions of people coming into the UK do not have our best interests at heart and refuse to assimilate", adding that too many immigrants refuse to learn English, wear western clothes and many won't embrace to Judeo-Christian culture that "defines Britain".

She went on to call for "less rhetoric, less talk, more action, more arrests, more deportations, more convictions.

"Mass migration is an existential threat to the way of life in our country and to Western civilisation."

But it was Braverman's comments on the future of the UK that Lewis describes as truly "mental".The MP for Fareham and Waterlooville said she believes JD Vance "wasn’t joking" about the UK becoming “the first islamist nation” and added; “What happens if the UK falls into the hands of Muslim fundamentalism, our legal system gets substituted by Sharia Law and our nuclear capabilities vest in a regime not too dissimilar to that of Iran today?

“Regardless of whether one thinks that is a realistic outcome, which I do not, should we not have the courage to ask these questions?”

"Is it an impossibility that 20 years from now, it will be the UK, not China or Russia, that will emerge as the greatest strategic threat to the USA, born out of a broken relationship and weak leadership?"

What’s The News Agents’ take?

The content of Braverman's speech is so shocking, it's something you would expect to hear from the lips of Tommy Robinson, not a current MP and former Home Secretary, says Lewis Goodall.

“It’s conspiracy laden stuff that would make some of the most frenzied corners of the internet blush.”

But, Jon Sopel does agree with parts of Braverman's speech. To say there are “real problems” with the integration of people such as those who don’t accept the language, the culture or integrate into British society – is “spot on”, he says.

“But to say, when you have been the Home Secretary, that there are millions coming into the country without British interests at heart…

“Who's counting? What metric? Where are the numbers? Where are the stats that we can scrutinise? There aren’t any”.

Though there is some truth in her speech on assimilation, the language Braverman uses “leans into the great replacement theory,” Lewis says, “the idea that Muslims, or whoever it happens to be, are just coming to replace us one by one.”

Rather than trying to find a solution to a problem, Braverman is trying to "exaggerate" it, Jon says, by using language that has an "air of menace and danger."

"By exaggerating the problem, you make it worse, you do not make it better," Jon says.

The speech will serve not only to complicate Britain's relationship with America, which has a "ready audience" for this, but it will "complicate race relations" at home, making people feel more "alienated".

“Integration is essential, but work towards solutions, rather than building problems and stoking division, which this speech does.”

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.