Suella Braverman’s long list of controversies

Published

2 years ago

November 9, 2023

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Suella Braverman has whipped up a fresh storm of controversy with comments on rough sleepers, pro-Palestinian protesters and police.

It marks the latest chapter in Ms Braverman’s rapid rise to power and controversial time in one of the cabinet’s top jobs.

Here Sky News looks at the rows that have overshadowed her time in the role.

Pro-Palestinian protesters ‘hate marchers’

The home secretary has described pro-Palestinian protesters as “hate marchers”.

In an article for The Times newspaper, she went even further, adding: “I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza.

“They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups – particularly Islamists – of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland.

“Also, disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday’s march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas.”

In response, one former Tory cabinet minister said: “This is wholly offensive and ignorant of where people in Northern Ireland stand on the issues of Israel and Gaza.”

She also accused police of being biased in favour of left-wing protesters.

She claimed: “Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response, yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored even when clearly breaking the law.”

Homeless tents a ‘lifestyle choice’

Ms Braverman stoked controversy with her claims rough sleeping is a “lifestyle choice” and outlined plans to restrict homeless people from using tents.

The home secretary’s crackdown would have reportedly targeted “nuisance” tents, such as those blocking shop doorways, and would have meant charities handing out camping equipment faced being fined.

Pointing to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the US, Ms Braverman said these were examples of where “weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor”.

Her proposal was branded “cruel and ignorant”, with critics accusing her of seeking “to dehumanise people and create a scapegoat in society”.

Here’s exactly what she said.

Speeding row

Ms Braverman was accused of breaking the ministerial code of conduct by asking civil servants to arrange a private speed awareness course after she was caught speeding in 2022.

Rishi Sunak faced pressure to take action and consulted his independent ethics adviser, who advised further investigation was not necessary.

Ms Braverman defended her actions, saying “nothing untoward happened”.

Mr Sunak said that after receiving a letter from Ms Braverman – in which she apologised for causing “distraction” – his decision was “these matters do not amount to a breach of the ministerial code”.

India ‘reservations’

After being knocked out of the race to become Conservative Party leader – and Prime Minister – in the second round of voting, Ms Braverman backed eventual winner Liz Truss – and was rewarded by being appointed home secretary in September 2022.

But within weeks she appeared to defy her own prime minister by revealing she had concerns about government plans to allow more visa flexibility to people coming to the UK from India.

She told The Spectator magazine: “I do have some reservations. Look at migration in this country – the largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants.”

Her comments reportedly sparked a furious backlash in New Delhi and were said to have almost torpedoed trade deal talks.

‘Tofu-eating wokerati’

Ms Braverman also caused a stir as she defended the government’s controversial Public Order Bill, which was aimed at cracking down on disruptive protests.

Describing demonstrators, she claimed those taking part included “the Labour Party, it’s the Lib Dems, it’s the coalition of chaos, it’s the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, dare I say, the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for the disruption that we are seeing on our roads today”.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper branded Ms Braverman’s words “astonishing”, adding: “The home secretary actually talked about a coalition of chaos, we can see it in front of us as we speak.”

Email ‘mistake’

But Ms Braverman’s first stint as home secretary then ended after 43 days when she resigned after breaching government security rules.

It emerged that she had sent an official document from her personal email to a backbench MP – which she admitted had been a “mistake”.

But in her resignation letter she took aim at then prime minister Liz Truss, accusing her of breaking “key pledges that were promised to our voters”.

She also expressed “serious concerns about this government’s commitment to honouring manifesto commitments”, particularly on immigration.

Migrants ‘invasion’ row

Ms Braverman returned as home secretary less than a week after being forced out – after being reappointed to the role by the new prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

But within days she sparked another row after claiming that illegal immigration was “out of control” – while also describing migrants coming to the UK as an “invasion”.

It came amid another controversy as Labour accused her of being silent on Channel crossings and overcrowding at the Manston processing centre in Kent, where outbreaks of MRSA and diphtheria had been been reported.

The site was designed to hold 1,000 people for up to 48 hours, but at the time there were around 4,000 migrants there – more than any UK prison population.

Even her colleagues held back from endorsing her comments, with immigration minister Robert Jenrick telling Sky News: “In a job like mine, you have to choose your words very carefully. And I would never demonise people coming to this country in pursuit of a better life.”

‘Cowardly attack’ on civil servants

Ms Braverman was then accused of carrying out a “cowardly attack” on civil servants in March 2023 after an email was sent to Tory supporters blaming government workers for blocking plans aimed at stopping small boats crossing the Channel.

The letter claimed an “activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” had prevented the government from tackling the issue.

The email, which prompted fury from the FDA civil servants union, had the home secretary’s name at the end, implying she had written and signed it.

However, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case later said someone else was responsible and insisted that Ms Braverman “did not see, sign off or sanction the email” before it was sent – while Conservative chairman Greg Hands apologised “for the error”.

Rwanda rows

Ms Braverman has also attracted controversy over her enthusiastic backing of the government’s policy of deportation flights to Rwanda. The policy was launched in April 2022 under her predecessor Priti Patel, but is yet to get off the ground.

The first flight was set to take off in June 2022 with four people on board, but was halted after a number of legal challenges and an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights, which said the plan carried “a real risk of irreversible harm”.

Ms Braverman, who visited the country in March for a tour of potential migrant housing, previously described front page news confirming the deportation of people to Rwanda as her “dream”, and said it was her “obsession” to see a plane take off under the scheme.

But both her rhetoric and the policy have been heavily criticised, including by refugee charities. They have described the plans as “cruel and nasty” and argue they will do nothing to deter people from travelling across the Channel.

‘Far-right narratives’

Ms Braverman was further criticised earlier this year for claiming that grooming gang members are “almost all British Pakistani”.

She also told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: “What we’ve seen is a practice whereby vulnerable white English girls, sometimes in care, sometimes who are in challenging circumstances, being pursued and raped and drugged and harmed by gangs of British Pakistani men who’ve worked in child abuse rings or networks.”

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Dozens of organisations, medical bodies and business leaders urged her to withdraw the comments, accusing her of “amplifying far-right narratives”.

The remarks were also criticised as factually inaccurate given a Home Office-commissioned study in 2020 found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white males under 30.

‘Leadership pitch’

Ms Braverman was also accused back in May of undermining Rishi Sunak with a speech at the National Conservatism conference which some saw as a pitch by her to become new Tory leader.

Former cabinet minister Robert Buckland suggested to Sky News at the time that she should “concentrate on the job” of being the home secretary.

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UK central bank still ‘disproportionately cautious’ about stablecoins

Published

3 hours ago

November 14, 2025

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UK central bank still ‘disproportionately cautious’ about stablecoins

The UK’s central bank, the Bank of England (BOE), has released a proposed regulatory regime for stablecoins. The consultation paper took into account the perspectives of the crypto industry, but some observers say it remains restrictive.

BOE released the document on Nov. 10 — some two years after it announced the initial discussion paper. The original offered a vision for crypto that many in the industry claimed would doom the UK’s digital asset space.

The BOE said that it received comments and feedback from a broad range of 46 different stakeholders, including “banks, non-bank payment service providers, payment system operators, trade associations, academia, and individuals.”

The UK’s central bank may have scrapped some more hardline requirements, but some in the industry believe that it isn’t enough. Tom Rhodes, chief legal officer at UK-based stablecoin issuer Agant, said the bank remains “disproportionately cautious and restrictive.”

*The bank also released a roadmap for further rulemaking. Source:* *Bank of England*

Bank of England still cautious on stablecoins

The new iteration presents a number of improvements on the 2023 version, Rhodes told Cointelegraph.

“The latest proposals do include some innovative features, such as direct BOE liquidity lines and the ability to repo reserves for liquidity purposes.”

He said that, as it concerns the UK market, “these proposals can be further explored and potentially expanded to create a more competitive backing asset regime, without compromising on stability.”

But despite the “welcome progress in the BOE’s sentiment towards stablecoins,” it has been “unusually vocal about the perceived risks of stablecoins,” said Rhodes.

One of the more controversial restrictions in the paper was limits on what the BOE called a “systemic retail stablecoin.” In the paper, this is defined as a stablecoin that is “widely used by individuals to make everyday payments such as for shopping and receiving salaries.”

The central bank wants to see limits of 20,000 pounds for individuals and 10 million pounds for businesses that accept it as a form of payment. This is an increase from the initial proposal, but the idea of limits on how much crypto you can hold didn’t sit well with some.

Crypto influencer Aleksandra Huk wrote, “Bank of England wants to cap stablecoin holdings at £20,000. Who gave them the right to tell us what to buy, where to store our money and how much we can have? […] Honestly, this is the best advert ever for privacy coins and for leaving the UK.”

There are a few caveats to the suggested rule. Geoff Richards, head of community at the Ontology Network, noted, “The proposal applies only to sterling-denominated stablecoins used in UK payment systems that could become ‘systemic.’ Not USDT, not USDC, not random DeFi tokens.”

Ian Taylor, board member of crypto industry advocacy group CryptoUK, told Cointelegraph that he understands the central bank’s more cautious approach, at least as it applies to the stablecoin limits:

“The Bank of England has a mandate to protect against financial stability. And that financial stability is connected to the banking system. So insofar as banks take deposits and they issue loans against those deposits […] creates credit, this is an economic benefit to any economy that we have.”

The BOE is rightfully worried that taking deposits out of banks would reduce their ability to lend, affecting financial stability. “So, that’s why they want to baby-step this.”

Rhodes said that the “vast majority” of UK stablecoins will not fall under the regime anyway, at least not as stated in the paper. He noted that Mastercard was only recognized as a systemically important payment system in 2021 and that non-systemic stablecoins will be regulated under the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) ruleset, “which is less restrictive.”

Still work to be done as UK opens up to crypto

Access to central bank liquidity and deposit accounts at the BOE was a welcome update for stablecoin issuers. But crypto industry representatives believe that there is still room for improvement in the central bank’s plan.

Regarding the stablecoin caps, “The systemic thresholds remain uncertain,” said Rhodes. He said it would be helpful to have clarification from His Majesty’s Treasury when an issuer has reached sufficient scale to “pose a risk to the UK economy as a whole, before they will recognize the issuer as systemic.”

Taylor also noted the difficulty of enforcing these stablecoin caps. If the government is licensing an issuer, then they’re the ones “responsible for monitoring each individual client or customer, whether wholesale, corporate or retail, as to how many stablecoins they’ve given them.”

The problem is that many people get their stablecoins on secondary markets or a “host of different sources.” People can receive stablecoins as compensation at work or on an exchange or peer-to-peer transaction. “So, the actual operational enforcement of that I question, and we’ve seen no detail in regards to that.”

Overall, “clarity and speed” will make the UK stablecoin ecosystem more competitive, said Arvin Abraham, partner at Goodwin Procter. He told Cointelegraph that regulators need to give issuers “a clean runway and predictable timelines” to navigate the approvals process.

Speed isn’t the government’s strong suit, however.

The British government has been working on crypto regulations since 2017, when it first adopted Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer requirements for crypto-related businesses like exchanges. Now, eight years later, the central bank is still developing its policies based on industry feedback.

The slow pace of progress presents a problem. According to Taylor, “We’ve been consulting on a wider framework to regulate stablecoins for almost five years, and we still haven’t gotten any actual license framework in place, which is problematic for a number of reasons,” he said.

“It doesn’t help businesses that want to launch stablecoins in the UK. They don’t have a clear roadmap of how to do that,” he said, “which in turn forces them to move offshore to jurisdictions where there are other regulatory frameworks already live.”

This is for a number of reasons, Taylor explained, including consecutive changes in government, as well as a lack of “real champions in any of our key stakeholders, be that the current government, be that Treasury, be that the FCA.”

Progress on crypto regulations may be slow in the UK — slower than many in the industry would like — but for Abraham, “The Bank is being pragmatic and fair. The overriding message is that innovation is welcome, but if you want your token to function like money, you need money-grade controls.”

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