Labour and the Liberal Democrats have urged Rishi Sunak to sack Suella Braverman after she accused the police of “playing favourites” with protesters.
Labour’s shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told Sky News the Prime Minister should “of course” sack the Home Secretary if he had not signed off on the views she expressed.
Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Lib Dems, said: “Rishi Sunak must finally act with integrity by sacking his out-of-control Home Secretary.”
Ms Braverman’s comments in a piece for The Times have ignited a political firestorm and come after Mr Sunak accepted that a pro-Palestinian march in central London on Armistice Day will go ahead.
The Prime Minister hauled Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley into No10 yesterday afternoon to seek assurances about public safety this weekend. Mr Sunak said he will hold Sir Mark “accountable” if there is trouble.
Senior Tories had called for the march to be blocked but Sir Mark said the threshold to apply to ban the rally due to a risk of serious disorder had not been met.
The latest row surrounding the Home Secretary comes after a series of Cabinet ministers distanced themselves from her claim that some rough sleepers have made a “lifestyle choice”.
The Home Secretary and her team defied No 10 by ignoring some of their requested edits to her article.
Four sources have confirmed to this newspaper that some changes demanded by Downing Street in the Home Secretary’s article in The Times, in which she accused the police of “playing favourites” with Left-wing protesters, were not incorporated in the final version.
The approach is at odds with the usual process for how Cabinet ministers get approval for newspaper articles, with No 10 normally getting final sign-off.
It means, in effect, that Ms Braverman and her team ignored specific requests from the Prime Minister’s team about the exact wording of her article on pro-Palestine marches.
