British home secretary Suella Braverman’s “crazy rhetoric” on the issue of immigration is fuelling racism and “normalising” the politics of Nigel Farage, a senior home office aide, who is on her way out, has alleged.
According to a report by The Independent, Nimco Ali, a campaigner against female genital mutilation who had moved to the UK from the African state of Somalia as a child refuge, became an adviser on dealing with violence against women by former home secretary Priti Patel two years ago.
Ali resigned from her role live on-air last week, saying she is on a “completely different planet” from Braverman, who became the home secretary for the second time after Rishi Sunak became the prime minister in October, succeeding Liz Truss, under whom Braverman had served her first stint.
The departing aide has warned that Sunak is “not going to win [the next general election] with Suella as his home secretary”.
“She’s basically feeding into this Nigel Farage stuff … and when you start to normalise these things it’s really hard to put it back in its box,” Ali was quoted as saying by The Sunday Times.
“When you have your home secretary speaking the way she is speaking and being cheered, that is problematic, especially when you’re the first man of colour to be prime minister.”
“I don’t know why your ambition is to put people on a flight to Rwanda and get rid of human rights,” Ali said of Braverman.
“You are a woman of colour. I can understand when white able-bodied men say it, but you? Even talking about it now makes me anxious.”
Ali said she saw clear links between such “crazy rhetoric” and the sort of racist abuse she personally experienced during a couple of incidents in London, during the Euro 2020 tournament.
After having “never really experienced racism” overtly during her decade-long living in London, Ali faced alleged racist slurs during an argument that took place at a bar while watching an England match. She experienced a similar tirade just weeks later.
“I thought, what is actually going on? Why are people thinking it’s okay to be so openly racist?”
When the paper asked Ali whether she believed Braverman’s language was helping to fuel such incidents, she said, “100 per cent. It’s legitimising it. When somebody like her says it, you think, you’re still talking about people of your own heritage to a certain extent but you’re also normalising the Nigel Farages.”
Meanwhile, a source close to Braverman told the Times, “It’s the home secretary’s duty to be honest with the British people about the scale of the crisis we’re facing on the south coast with the small boats crisis. She makes no apologies for that.”
