British-Indian Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been accused of “spouting deeply divisive and irresponsible rhetoric” after she warned against a “hurricane” of migrants landing on the country’s shores in her Conservative conference speech.
Born to a Hindu Tamil mother and Goan-origin father Christie Fernandes, who migrated to the UK from Mauritius and Kenya, Braverman said on Tuesday that “unprecedented” mass migration was “one of the most powerful forces reshaping our world”.
“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 said in her Manchester speech, which comes ahead of the next general election in the UK .
“Because today, the option of moving from a poorer country to a richer one is not just a dream for billions of people,” she said.
Reacting to her speech, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said the cabinet minister “seems more interested in fanning the flames of division than getting to grips with the challenges facing the country”.
“She should focus on tackling the asylum backlog and unsolved crimes epidemic, instead of spouting this deeply divisive and irresponsible rhetoric in a transparent attempt to appeal to the Tory membership,” Carmichael was quoted as saying in the Evening Standard newspaper.
“Utterly repulsive speech by Suella Braverman referring to a ‘hurricane’ of migration, as her dehumanising rhetoric plumbs new depths,” opposition Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said.
“The hurricane I’d like to see is one which sweeps her culture war-stoking, dog-whistling, hard-right party from office.”
According to Home Office figures, more than 25,000 people have been detected crossing the Channel in small boats this year.
Braverman said 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”.
Speaking of “illegal immigration”, she said the UK 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’.”
Labour MP John McDonnell said: “Suella Braverman with her reference to ‘hurricanes’ coming is as divisive and dangerous as Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ rhetoric of the 1960s.”
The 43-year-old’s stance on immigration drew sharp criticism from within her own party ranks with Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch saying that politicians ought to be careful about how immigration policies are discussed.
“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,” Badenoch was cited as saying by The Standard.
“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,” she said.
While giving a speech on migration in the US last month, Braverman asserted that “multiculturalism has failed”, adding that uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.
Braverman has been under constant fire for her comments on immigration ever since she was appointed the country’s Home Secretary by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last year.
Comparing the migrant crisis in the country to an “invasion”, she had said that “let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress”.
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