Grant Shapps says Suella Braverman is 'no Enoch Powell' in migrant row

Grant Shapps says Suella Braverman is ‘certainly no Enoch Powell’ for claiming the UK faces a ‘hurricane’ of mass migration in defiant conference speech showing off her leadership ambitions

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Grant Shapps leapt to the defence of Suella Braverman today after she faced criticism for suggesting a ‘hurricane’ of mass migration is blowing towards Britain. 

The Home Secretary used a Tory conference speech yesterday to claim millions of people could head to Britain, including those who would take jobs off locals and criminals who would groom children.

She also laid into ‘woke’ ideology including trans rights and taking the knee in a hardline address, designed to appeal to the right of the party and position Ms Braverman, 43, as the leading contender to succeed Rishi Sunak.

It provoked a furious response from her political opponents inside and outside the Conservative Party. 

But Mr Shapps, the Defence Secretary, used an interview this morning to defend her, pointing out that she herself is a child of immigration, just as he is.

He told Times Radio: ‘She makes the absolutely correct point we’ve already seen a lot of movement… we could see a lot more, a hurricane, as she describes it, of people moving.’

Asked about comparisons which have been made to Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, he said: ‘So many people are from immigrant backgrounds in this country. I think I’m third generation myself… Suella’s first generation, her parents came over in the 60s. So this is certainly no Enoch Powell situation, is it, to make the very obvious point.’

But Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, a potential  rival for the leadership, said that politicians needed to be careful about how immigration policies are discussed. 

The Home Secretary used a Tory conference speech yesterday to claim millions of people could head to Britain, including those who would take jobs off locals and criminals who would groom children.

But Mr Shapps, the Defence Secretary, used an interview this morning to defend her, pointing out that she herself is a child of immigration, just as he is.

Asked about comparisons which have been made to Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, he said: ‘So many people are from immigrant backgrounds in this country. I think I’m third generation myself… Suella’s first generation, her parents came over in the 60s. So this is certainly no Enoch Powell situation, is it, to make the very obvious point.’

Speaking at an event hosted by The Spectator, she said: ‘We live in a multiracial society.

‘We’re very, very comfortable with that because if we weren’t you wouldn’t have a Prime Minister that we have, we wouldn’t have the Home Secretary or the Business Secretary that we have.

‘But we have to be very careful about how we explain and express immigration policies, so that people aren’t getting echoes of things that were less palatable.’

In a red meat address to the party faithful the Home Secretary accused politicians of all shades of being too ‘squeamish about being smeared as racist’ to act on illegal immigration over the past 30 years. 

Who was Enoch Powell and what was his ‘rivers of blood’ speech? 

Enoch Powell became a Tory MP in 1950 and had risen to become Shadow Defence Secretary at the time of his 1968 speech.

It was first delivered to local Conservative party members in Birmingham, ahead of a second reading of the Race Relations Act.

Feeling distressed at what he felt was his party’s weak opposition to the Labour government’s immigration policy, he resolved to speak out, in the strongest possible terms, about what he felt had to be done. 

Powell’s 25-minute speech contained high rhetoric, vivid language and was peppered with racist slurs.

It warned, in the starkest possible terms, that unless immigration was stopped — and immigrants already in the UK were given financial incentives to return home — there would be racial strife of a seriousness never before seen in Britain.

He quoted the poet Virgil when he said: ‘Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood,’ from where the speech takes its ‘rivers of blood’ name.

In his speech, Powell also quoted extensively from two of his own constituents.

One was ‘a middle-aged working man’ who, he claimed, had told him: ‘I have three children; all of them been through grammar school and two of them are married now, with family. I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas.

‘In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.’

The other constituent was an elderly woman who claimed to be the last remaining white British person on her Wolverhampton street.

‘She is becoming afraid to go out,’ said Powell. ‘Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letterbox. When she goes to the shops she is followed by children — charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies.’ 

Other passages contained incitement to hatred, ugly generalisations and ethnic stereotypes. 

And she used the example of her own parents – who were of Indian heritage but who arrived in Britain from east Africa – to paint a dire picture of the threat facing the UK.

Referencing a speech by former Conservative PM Harold Macmillan about the break up of the former British Empire, she said: ‘The wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century was a mere gust compared to the hurricane that is coming.’

She took on her critics – both in the Conservative Party and across politics, saying she was a hate figure because she tells the ‘blunt, unvarnished truth’.

But in comments likely to cause controversy she accused her opponents of being elitist, with ‘luxury views’, adding: ‘They like open borders. The migrants coming in won’t be taking their jobs. In fact, they are more likely to have them mowing their lawns or cleaning their homes.

‘They love soft sentences. The criminals who benefit from such ostentatious compassion won’t be terrorising their streets or grooming their children.’

The blunt speech – which was greeted with a lengthy ovation – was signed off by No10 and will fuel claims that she is already positioning herself to be the next Tory leader if Rishi Sunak leads the party to election defeat next year. 

Tory London Assembly chairman Andrew Boff, who was ejected from Ms Braverman’s speech for heckling her language on trans rights,  said he feels sure she will not be chosen as the next Conservative leader because he believes in the ‘ultimate common sense of the party’.

Mr Boff, who has been a Conservative for about 50 years, said he has been overwhelmed with messages of support since being kicked out .

‘I’ve had so many contacts over the past few hours from people who are concerned as I am that we are using this culture war battleground to no good effect at all and we’re actually hurting people,’ he told LBC.

‘And we shouldn’t be doing that as Conservatives. That’s not the Conservative Party I joined and I think we’re better than that.’

Mr Boff said he believed the Tories are still on track for a ‘victory next year’ but urged the party to focus on ‘the important things’ rather than ‘divisive’ topics.

Asked whether he would remain a Conservative member if Ms Braverman becomes the next leader, he replied: ‘Luckily that’s not going to happen… because I believe in the ultimate common sense of the party. Also, I very much hope that Suella Braverman learns about the power of her words and moderates her tone.’

In another crowd-pleasing announcement, Ms Braverman – who was greeted by a standing ovation in the hall in Manchester, vowed that sex offenders will no longer be able to change their name or gender to evade monitoring, while foreign offenders will be ‘booted out’ of Britain at the earliest opportunity.

She vowed to end the expensive use of hotels to house migrants and lashed out at trans rights and ‘woke’, attacking ‘Keir ”take the knee” Starmer’. She also blasted Labour over its links to Just Stop Oil. 

London Assembly member Andrew Boff he hit out at ‘trash’ the Home Secretary was saying about ‘gender ideology’ after being removed.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper branded the speech ‘devoid of practical policies and divorced from the reality of Tory failure’.

‘She had nothing to say about the knife crime killing our children, the epidemic of town centre crime undermining our communities or the collapse in prosecutions under the Tories which means more criminals are getting off. Nor did she mention the 1,000 people who have arrived on small boats since Tory conference started, all because she has totally lost control of border security.

‘Her promise to only ”begin” closing hotels sometime ”soon” is a massive watering down of the Prime Minister’s pledge to end hotel use last year, all while hotel use is still going up not down, and is now costing the taxpayer an astronomical £8 million a day because they have simply failed to get a grip.

‘Suella Braverman and helicopter riding Rishi Sunak may have the luxury of ignoring the blight of town centre crime or the serious problems our country faces but the British people don’t.’

Home Office figures have confirmed that more than 25,000 people have been detected crossing the Channel in small boats this year.

The Prime Minister has made tackling the crossings one of the five priorities of his leadership.

Mr Braverman told the audience she was surprised the Human Rights Act was not called the ‘Criminal Rights Act’.

Addressing the main stage at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester said: ‘(The public) know another thing, that the future could bring millions more migrants to these shores, uncontrolled and unmanageable unless the Government they elect next year acts decisively to stop that happening.’

Talking about ‘illegal immigration’, she said: ‘Our country has become enmeshed in a dense net of international rules that were designed for another era. And it is Labour that turbocharged their impact by passing the misnamed Human Rights Act.

‘I’m surprised they didn’t call it the ‘Criminal Rights Act’.’

She said her party stands with the ‘many’ against the ‘privileged woke minority’.

Addressing the main stage at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, she said: ‘The British people will get to decide if they want to curb woke with Rishi Sunak or let it run riot with Kier take-the-knee Starmer.’

She said the Conservative Party is a ‘kind of trade union’ saying: ‘We are the trade union of the British people.’

Returning to the theme of human rights later in her speech, the Home Secretary confirmed she would bring forward a new law, aimed at preventing registered sex offenders from ‘changing their identities’.

She said: ‘Let me tell you something. I don’t care if anyone thinks this is interfering with their human rights. It’s time to worry less about the rights of sexual predators and more about the rights of victims.’

Ms Braverman said the Tories stand with the ‘many’ against the ‘privileged woke minority’.

‘We stand with the many, the law-abiding, hard-working common-sense majority, against the few, the privileged woke minority with their luxury beliefs who wield influence out of proportion to their numbers,’ she said.

Warning about how under Labour ‘Britain would go properly woke’, she said: ‘Things are bad enough already, we see it in parts of Whitehall, in museums, in galleries, in the police and even in leading companies in the City, under the banner of diversity, equity and inclusion, official policies have been embedded that distort the whole purpose of these institutions.

‘Highly controversial ideas are presented to the workforce and to the public as if they’re motherhood and apple pie: gender ideology, white privilege, anti-British history. And the evidence demonstrates that if you don’t challenge this poison, things just get worse.’

Looking ahead to the next general election, she said: ‘The British people will get to decide if they want to curb woke with Rishi Sunak or let it run riot with Keir take-the-knee Starmer.’

Elsewhere in her speech, Ms Braverman took aim at what she called ‘highly controversial ideas’ which she said were being ‘presented to workforces and the public as if they are motherhood and apple pie’.

She added: ‘Gender ideology. White privilege. Anti-British history. The evidence demonstrates that if you don’t challenge this poison, things just get worse.’

Daughter of immigrants who wants to rewrite refugee rules

Suella Braverman is the  daughter of immigrants who came to Britain in search of a better life and thrived.

The mother of two, 43, is of Indian ancestry – her parents, of Goan and Mauritian origins, emigrated to Britain in the 1960s from East Africa before setting up base in Harrow, north-west London.

Her mother, a nurse by profession, ensured politics was a part of family life. A Tory councillor for 16 years, she also stood for Parliament in 2001 and 2003.

Mrs Braverman herself was an early adopter of Tory values, serving as president of the Cambridge University Conservative Association while studying law.

After two failed parliamentary runs, she was elected as MP for Fareham in Hampshire in 2015 and rose through the party ranks quickly.

Outside politics, Mrs Braverman has two children with her husband Rael, whom she married at the House of Commons in 2018.

She has faced questions over her involvement with the controversial Buddhist Triratna sect.

The Triratna order, formerly one of Buddhism’s largest sects in the UK, has been the subject of historic sexual abuse allegations.

Mrs Braverman is believed to have attended meetings and retreats organised by the group, and was known as a ‘mitra’ – or friend – within the order.

Ms Braverman is most rightwing Home Secretary of the modern era, a polarising figure in politics in general and even with the Conservative Party.

She rose to prominence a year ago when she ran to be party leader and was rewarded for a strong showing with one of the great offices of state by Liz Truss. 

She was forced to resign over leaks of government documents to an ally which were sent to a civil servant by mistake, but was later brought back into the same role by Rishi Sunak as a gesture to the right of the party which had opposed him.

Since then she had has repeatedly hit the headlines, mainly for her hardline stance against immigration, but also for rallying against trans rights and ‘woke’.

To her detractors she is the most extreme conservative in the government. To her supporters she is a plain-talking patriot unwilling to varnish the truth, even if it upsets people.

Like Ms Patel, she is of Indian ancestry – her parents, of Goan and Mauritian origins, emigrated to Britain in the 1960s from East Africa before setting up base in Harrow, north-west London.

She is now seen as the leading rightwing candidate to replace Mr Sunak if the Tories are beaten by Labour at the next election. 

The staunch Brexiteer served loyally in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet as Attorney General, even winning a change in the law to allow her to take maternity leave and return – something no holder of a Cabinet role had previously done.

She was later appointed to replace Priti Patel as home secretary.

Her hardline approach to immigration had courted controversy – and complaints from other Tory MPs in recent days. Last week she used a speech to a US thinktank to say the ‘misguided dogma of multiculturalism’ was posing an ‘existential threat’ to the West, and refugee rules drawn up after the Second World War needed reform. 

She also suggested that someone who faced persecuted for being gay should not necessarily qualify for refugee status.  

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