British Home Secretary Suella Braverman has blasted the “pampered” and “out of touch” elites who lecture the public on migration while being protected from its impacts.
In a speech in Washington D.C. earlier this week, Braverman declared that multiculturalism has failed in the UK and elsewhere and argued that asylum laws should be tightened to prevent migrants from gaming the system, such as lying about being persecuted for being gay or a woman.
The speech saw left-wing millionaire celebrities express outrage, including pop singer Sir Elton John, who said that the Home Secretary’s comments ran the risk of “legitimising hate and violence, and the BBC’s highest-paid presenter, Gary Lineker, who commented: “She can’t possibly know that [migrants] are lying.”
Striking back in an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Braverman said: “What we are seeing here is out-of-touch pampered elites, lecturing us on how we should think about very, very serious issues affecting the majority of British people, such as illegal migration.
“These people don’t have to wait in a queue to see a GP, they can just go private. They don’t have to worry about trying to afford a car or buy a house. The vast majority of British people are directly affected by the unprecedented scale of illegal migration. My job is to think of them first ahead of a virtue-signalling, elitist view from Hollywood Central.”
Braverman, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, said that she had no issue with “anyone flying in private jets or having villas around the world” but that they often do not understand the perspective of the public.
“What I have a problem with is these privileged people telling the British people how they should think. I find that rank hypocrisy and condescending, lecturing tone incredibly inappropriate. These pampered elites are trying to look compassionate and sound virtuous,” the Home Secretary said.
The comments from Braverman come amid increasing speculation about her future political ambitions, with the Conservative Party facing a potential landslide loss to the left-wing Labour Party in the upcoming general election next year.
The Home Secretary denied that she is currently planning on seeking to replace Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as the leader of the party, saying: ‘There’s no vacancy. I’m working hand-in-hand with the prime minister to stop the boats and win the next general election.”
Braverman, a staunch supporter of Brexit and a self-styled hardliner on immigration, previously sought the leadership role following former Prime Minister Boris Johnson being ousted from Downing Street last year. She won the support of the Eurosceptic European Research Group of Tory MPs as well as from Brexit leader Nigel Farage, but only managed to come in sixth place in last summer’s Conservative Party leadership race.
While Braverman has consistently argued for reducing both illegal and legal immigration to the UK, during her tenure as Home Secretary, she has been largely unsuccessful in doing either. Although the number of boat migrants landing on British shores has come down slightly over last year, numbers are still outpacing any other year than 2022.
So far this year, an estimated 24,830 illegals have successfully crossed the English Channel in small boats from the French coast, compared to 33,001 at this point last year. However, the crossings under Braverman’s leadership are still higher than in 2021 when 17,085 had made the journey by the end of September, as well as in 2020 when around 7,000 had crossed by this point of the year.
Despite longstanding promises from the Conservative Party to reduce legal immigration, net migration is expected to exceed half a million this year. This would be in addition to last year’s record of 606,000, which was already nearly double the peaks seen under the left-wing Labour administration of Tony Blair.
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