And experts say it deliberately misses the point.

“Deterrents don’t work… There is absolutely

no correlation whatsoever between how brutally we respond to migration, and the numbers of
people forced to move,” Gardner said. “We need a functioning asylum system where we
process people’s claims, (and) we need to give people safe routes in order to travel.”

A view of RAF Wethersfield in Essex, as Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick is expected to

announce the use of two RAF sites as he tries to reduce the £6.8 million a day the Government
says it spends on hotel accommodation. Mr Jenrick will announce that people who arrive in the
UK after making Channel crossings on small boats will be housed at RAF Wethersfield and RAF
Scampton. Picture date: Wednesday March 29, 2023. (Photo by Joe Giddens/PA Images via
Getty Images)

UK plan to house migrants in barracks and barges is condemned as 'cruel' and unworkable

Braverman, however, is steadfast in the face of criticism. The Home Office told CNN in a
statement that her bill “will break the business model of the people smuggling gangs and
restore fairness to our asylum system. It will ensure anyone arriving via small boat or other
dangerous and illegal means will be in scope for detention and swiftly removed.”

Braverman’s plans have won praise from Europe’s leading populist figures, including Italy’s
hardline deputy leader Matteo Salvini and French far-right presidential candidate Eric
Zemmour.

But that is company many in the Conservatives feel uncomfortable keeping.

“The UK’s ability to play a role internationally is based on our reputation – not because we’re
British, but because of what we stand for and what we do,” ex-Prime Minister Theresa May said
in a stinging intervention in the House of Commons last month. May added last week that the
bill’s removal of modern slavery protections “will consign victims to remaining in slavery.”

And Sayeeda Warsi, the first Asian chair of the Tory party, has attacked what she described as
Braverman’s “racist rhetoric,” after Braverman prompted controversy by singling out British
Pakistani men when attacking grooming gangs in the country.

“Braverman’s own ethnic origin has shielded her from criticism for too long,” Warsi wrote in
The Guardian. “Black and brown people can be racist too.” The Home Office told CNN that
Braverman “has been clear that all despicable child abusers must be brought to justice. And
she will not shy away from telling hard truths, particularly when it comes to the grooming of
young women and girls in Britain’s towns who have been failed by authorities over decades.”
War on the ‘wokerati’

Braverman fronts a newer, more populist streak in the UK’s ruling party – a move that has
troubled some of its grandees but has found an audience among voters.

“The voters that she’s appealing to is the majority of the British public,” said James Johnson,
who ran polling in May’s Downing Street operation and later founded the JL Partners pollster.
“There is a very significant disconnect between what people on Twitter about immigration, and
what people actually think about immigration.

“Voters do not react to (Braverman’s) language with the same outrage that some people do,”
he told CNN. “(They) want their politicians to at least be trying.”

Polling shows that approval of Braverman’s tough stance on migration significantly outpaces
support for the government in general – as well as approval of Braverman herself – with
research often indicating that a slim majority of the public supports her plans.

And those who support her – particularly those in Euroskeptic circles, where she is almost
revered – say Braverman speaks to the concerns of modern Britain in a way that her more
seasoned critics cannot. “When finally even I wobbled about backing Brexit in name only,
Suella stood firm,” prominent Brexit backer Steve Baker said when he supported her leadership
campaign last year, praising Braverman’s resolve to defeat May’s Brexit deal and push for a
harder-line departure from the EU. “It wouldn’t have happened without her.”

But research has also shown that the importance of immigration to British voters has receded
since the bitter debates of the mid-2010s.

It appears inevitable that the Tories will seek to make migration a wedge issue at the next
election, ensuring Braverman plenty of airtime as the government looks to draw a contrast
between itself and the Labour party. But a series of brutal electoral results in local polls on
Thursday will further fuel questions about whether that is a winning strategy.

Braverman resigned from Liz Truss's cabinet for breaking ministerial rules by using a private
email address, but returned under Sunak just days later.

Braverman resigned from Liz Truss's cabinet for breaking ministerial rules by using a private
email address, but returned under Sunak just days later.

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

Braverman’s political coming-of-age took place just as the 2016 EU referendum shifted the
tectonic plates underneath Westminster, giving younger, Euroskeptic voices like hers an inroad
with the public.

It was Braverman’s role fronting an anti-EU backbench committee that “propelled her to her
(current) position, and she knows it,” former Conservative MP Antoinette Sandbach told CNN.

Today, she takes the populist mantle further than many of her peers on a range of matters far
beyond Brexit. Braverman appears to relish “culture war” confrontations with her political
enemies like few other frontline politicians; “you almost feel sometimes that she gets a kick out
of ‘owning the libs,’” the politics professor Bale told CNN.

She has taken aim at the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” from the despatch box, and
insisted she will “not be hectored by out-of-touch lefties.” In 2019, she said she considers
herself engaged in a “battle against cultural Marxism.”

Braverman’s Home Office recently reportedly backed two pub landlords who refused to
remove their minstrel-style children’s toys that are considered a racist relic of the 1970s. And
she has criticized police officers for “virtue signaling,” saying in a speech last week that “they
shouldn’t be taking the knee.”

But those battles have left some traditional Tories cold. “The Conservative Party has moved
right since I joined, and become much more like the MAGA Republicans” since the dividing line
of 2016, said Sandbach, who was expelled from the party by Boris Johnson after trying to avert
a no-deal Brexit. She subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats.

Leadership ambitions

Those who worked alongside Braverman describe her as friendly and personable, and few
doubt her ambition.

As 23-year-old Suella Fernandes, she nearly ran against her own mother to become the Tory
candidate in a 2003 by-election, until the elder Fernandes – a Conservative councilor and NHS
nurse – persuaded her to pull out.

Braverman succeeded in becoming an MP in 2015. In a series of tweets that bemoaned her

“lamentable hopelessness,” one of her more critical backbenchers, William Wragg, claimed she
asked in her first week in Parliament whether she could expense a fine for speeding.