Suella Braverman says anyone vandalising Cenotaph ‘must be jailed faster than feet can touch ground’

Published

11 months ago

November 5, 2023

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The home secretary has said anyone vandalising the Cenotaph on Armistice Day “must be put into a jail cell faster than their feet can touch the ground”.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Suella Braverman said she doesn’t want to “undermine” the police process by banning pro-Palestinian protests planned for Armistice Day next weekend, but that behaviour on the marches had been “utterly despicable”.

Police arrested 11 people on Saturday during a fourth week of pro-Palestinian protests in central London.

Pushed on her controversial language after using the term “hate marches”, she said “everybody is entitled to freely express their views” but said there is “no excuse… when that expression crosses the line into hate speech”.

She also confirmed she had never in her life attended a demonstration herself.

Politics latest: Sunak criticises pro-Palestine protests on Armistice Day

Rishi Sunak has voiced concerns about the prospect of pro-Palestine protests on Armistice Day, with the prime minister saying such a move would be “provocative and disrespectful”.

It comes amid reports tens of thousands of demonstrators are planning to take to the streets to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on 11 November. Demonstration organisers have pledged to avoid the Whitehall area where the Cenotaph war memorial is located.

The home secretary was speaking from the Greek island of Samos, where she has been learning about the government’s approach to illegal migration.

On Friday she visited a 120km long fence at the country’s land border crossing with Turkey, and on Saturday she was taken on patrol with the Hellenic Coast Guard off the coast of Samos.

Nearly a million people crossed into Greece by small boat in 2015, compared with 12,700 last year – fewer than the number of small boat crossings in the English Channel.

The home secretary said she was “not claiming success at all by any means yet” on her pledge to stop the boats, but refused to set a target for where she would like the numbers to be by the general election.

She said it would be “pretty obvious” if the pledge had been achieved.

Ms Braverman said the UK could learn from “a policy of deterrence, tough measures, bold measures with a focus on making it clear that illegal arrivals will not be tolerated” in Greece.

However, Greece’s approach has been criticised, with EU authorities calling on an independent inquiry into so-called “pushback” tactics.

The home secretary said: “No one’s talking about doing push-backs in the English Channel”.

Commenting on the trip, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said Ms Braverman had “headed overseas to distract from her shameful failures back at home”.

“The Tories have created chaos in our immigration system, with a record high asylum backlog, a 70% drop in removals and thousands of people stuck in hotels, costing the taxpayer an eyewatering £8m a day,” she said.

“Instead of trying to fix the mess the Tories have created, the home secretary boasts about her failing Rwanda scheme, which has already cost over £140m, without anyone being sent.

“Once again, Suella Braverman offers no answers, but instead seeks to stoke division and blame anyone other than her own government for the failure to deliver.”

Politics

Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer ‘very sensible’ to accept football tickets worth thousands

Published

4 hours ago

September 21, 2024

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Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was “very sensible”.

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes from a donor.

Speaking to Sky News at the start of the Labour Party conference today, the MP for Wigan said: “The problem that has arisen since [Sir Keir] became leader of the opposition and then prime minister is that for him to sit in the stands would require a huge security detail, would be disruptive for other people and it would cost the taxpayer a lot of money.

“So I think he’s taken a very sensible decision that’s not the right and appropriate thing to do, and it’s right to accept that he has to go and sit in a different area.

“But I know that he’d much rather be sitting in the stands cheering people on with the usual crowd that he’s been going to the football with for years.”

Ms Nandy also said while she has not accepted free clothes – joking “I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly” – she doesn’t “make any judgements about what other members of parliament do”.

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She said: “The only judgement I would make is if they’re breaking the rules, so they’re trying to hide what they’re doing. That’s when problems arise.

“Because the point of being open and transparent is that people can see where the relationships are, and they can then judge for themselves whether there’s been any undue influence.”

She asserted there had not been an undue influence in gifts accepted by senior Labour figures, adding: “We don’t want the news and the commentary to be dominated by conversations about clothes.

“We rightly have a system, I think, where the taxpayer doesn’t fund these things. We don’t claim on expenses for them. And so MPs will always take donations, will always take gifts in kind.

“MPs of all political parties have historically done that and that is the system that we have.”

She added: “I don’t think there’s any suggestion here that Keir Starmer has broken any rules. I don’t think there’s any suggestion that he’s done anything wrong.

“We expect our politicians to be well turned out, we expect them to be people who go out and represent us at different events and represent the country at different events and are clothed appropriately.

“But the point is that when we accept donations for that or for anything else, that we declare them and we’re open and transparent about them.”

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Sir Keir, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves said yesterday they will no longer accept donations in the future to pay for clothes.

The announcement followed criticism of Sir Keir’s gifts from donors, which included clothing worth £16,200 and multiple pairs of glasses worth £2,485, according to the MPs’ register of interests.

The register shows Ms Rayner has accepted clothing donations to the value of £2,230.

Sky News also revealed the scale of Sir Keir’s donations this week as part of our Westminster Accounts investigation.

Sir Keir was found to have received substantially more gifts and freebies than any other MP – his total in gifts, benefits, and hospitality topped £100,000 since December 2019.