‘Suella is right’, says Sir Jacob: Tory civil war spreads as Rees-Mogg BACKS sacked Home Secretary Braverman who accused Rishi Sunak of having ‘no Plan B’ and ‘betraying’ nation on migration in ‘excoriating’ resignation letter

• Braverman railed against PM Sunak’s failure to come up with a back-up plan
• Supreme Court will rule on the legality of the Rwanda migrant policy tomorrow
• Rees-Mogg expands Tory civil war by backing Braverman on his GB News show

The Tory civil war spread this evening as ex-Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg backed sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman after she accused Rishi Sunak of having ‘no Plan B’ if the Supreme Court blocks his Rwanda migrant policy tomorrow.

In an ‘excoriating’ resignation letter, Mrs Braverman accused the ‘unelected’ PM of ‘betrayal’ over a series of broken pledges on migration, the Rwanda asylum deal, Brexit and gender protections.

She railed against Mr Sunak’s ‘magical thinking’ for failing to come up with a back-up plan if justices in the UK’s highest court rule the Rwanda scheme unlawful, adding that he could betray his promise to ‘stop the boats’ even in the event of victory.

On his GB News show Mr Rees-Mogg backed the outgoing Home Secretary, saying: ‘Suella Braverman’s letter is excoriating, I’ve never seen anything like, and it’s part of the sulphurous mood on the Tory backbenches.

‘Suella Braverman is right – the Prime Minister has repeatedly and manifestly not delivered on his promises.

‘Tomorrow is a defining day for the question of the Rwanda policy… even if the Government wins tomorrow, owing to the Prime Minister’s concessions, Rwanda deportations will be subject to months of appeals and legal challenges.

‘Suella was willing to override the ECHR to get Rwanda done. She not only knew the public didn’t want mass migration, but also that it has social and economic consequences.

‘Sadly, this government no longer seems serious about solving illegal or even legal migration. If the government isn’t careful this will be reflected in the next election.’

Suella Braverman, pictured at her London home this morning, was sacked as home secretary by Rishi Sunak on Monday as part of a dramatic Cabinet reshuffle

The Tory civil war spread this evening as ex-Minister Jacob Rees Mogg (pictured) backed Suella Braverman after she accused Rishi Sunak of having ‘no Plan B’ if the Supreme Court blocks his Rwanda migrant policy tomorrow

In a blistering letter, the ex-Cabinet minister has now accused the PM of breaking a series of pledges on migration, the Rwanda asylum deal, Brexit and gender protections

Mrs Braverman, in a letter she shared on social media, swiped that Mr Sunak had been ‘rejected’ by Tory members in summer of 2022 and had ‘no personal mandate’ to be PM 

Mrs Braverman railed against Mr Sunak’s ‘magical thinking’ for failing to come up with a back-up plan if justices in the UK’s highest court rule the Rwanda scheme unlawful, adding that he could betray his promise to ‘stop the boats’ even in the event of victory

In her furious three-page diatribe, Mrs Braverman told the PM: ‘Someone needs to be honest.

‘Your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.’

She claimed that even if the policy gets the go-ahead then his ‘compromises’ will mean the asylum policy could be ‘thwarted yet again’ by the European Court of Human Rights.

Her replacement James Cleverly had outlined the possible outcomes during the first meeting of the Prime Minister’s new-look Cabinet after the dramatic reshuffle that saw Mrs Braverman shown the door.

Senior ministers have wargamed responses to a possible defeat of what Downing Street admits is a ‘crucial’ policy but Mrs Braverman warned of a ‘betrayal’ of Mr Sunak’s promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop unauthorised Channel crossings all the same.

The sacked home secretary wrote in the letter she published online that if they lose he will have ‘wasted a year’ on the Illegal Migration Act ‘only to arrive back at square one’.

‘Worse than this, your magical thinking – believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion – has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’,’ she said.

She said she posed her own ‘credible’ back-up – without which she said there is ‘no hope of flights this side of an election’ in the event of a court defeat – but received no reply.

Even in the event of Supreme Court victory, she said the Government ‘will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects’.

She said the Act is ‘far from secure against legal challenges’ and will ‘leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by’ the European court in Strasbourg.

‘I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.’

Quit rights treaty, urge MPs

By DAVID BARRETT and JASON GROVES

The Right of the Tory party has insisted Britain must leave the European human rights treaty regardless of today’s final legal ruling on the Rwanda asylum deal.

UK human rights laws need a major overhaul ‘whatever the outcome’ of the Government’s last-ditch legal appeal, the New Conservative group of backbenchers said.

The Supreme Court will hand down its decision this morning on the legality of the Rwanda scheme, which has twice been blocked on human rights grounds.

Co-chairmen of the New Conservatives Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger said in a statement they remained committed to seeing Britain leave the European Convention on Human Rights. ‘We will continue to campaign for a new framework for asylum policy that fulfils our moral obligations to genuine refugees while restoring control of our borders,’ they said. ‘Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s judgment on the Rwanda policy, we remain of the view that the UK should reform our domestic human rights and equalities laws and leave the ECHR.’

Ministers are said to be pessimistic about Supreme Court justices giving a green light to the removal of illegal migrants to Rwanda.

However, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle on Monday made it less likely the Government will push ahead with abandoning the ECHR. Sacked home secretary Suella Braverman wanted major changes to human rights law but her successor James Cleverly has publicly opposed leaving the Convention.

She accused Mr Sunak of having opted for ‘wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices’ as he refused to consider leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, or even overruling elements in his legislation.

Mrs Braverman, in a letter she shared on social media, swiped that Mr Sunak had been ‘rejected’ by Tory members in summer of 2022 and had ‘no personal mandate’ to be PM.

She accused Mr Sunak of putting off ‘tough decisions’ and suggested he was content to be ‘occupying’ No10 ‘as an end in itself’.

Her scathing assessment of the PM’s year-long spell in Downing Street also included the charge that Mr Sunak is opting for ‘wishful thinking as a comfort blanket’.

This allowed him to dodge ‘hard choices’ on issues such as the Channel migrant crisis, Mrs Braverman claimed, as she questioned his ‘appetite’ to ‘stop the boats’.

The former home secretary divulged the terms of a deal she struck with Mr Sunak in order to support him when he eventually became premier to take over from Liz Truss last October.

One Sunak ally said: ‘She is angry and bitter because she’s been sacked, and discovered she has got very little support.

‘She is making all kinds of ridiculous claims but we are not going to roll around in the mud with her.’

She claimed a ‘document’ drawn up between them offered ‘firm assurances’ on reducing legal migration and bypassing international human rights laws to combat the Channel migrant crisis.

Sources on the Tory Right indicated that Mrs Braverman and her supporters plan to step up their attacks as she tries to build support for a leadership bid.

One said her allies had drawn up a ‘grid’ of interventions for the coming week, a play on the Government’s method of planning for big announcements.

Mrs Braverman was last night weighing up whether to publish the details of the secret deal she says was struck with Mr Sunak in October last year, when he was fighting to get the nominations needed to deliver a knockout blow to Boris Johnson in the battle to succeed Liz Truss.

‘You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies,’ Mrs Braverman wrote.

‘Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.’

In a withering evaluation of Mr Sunak’s efforts to ‘stop the boats’ since coming to power, she accused the PM of having ‘no appetite for doing what is necessary’ and ‘no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people’.

Mrs Braverman accused Mr Sunak, pictured in Downing Street ahead of today’s Cabinet meeting, of putting off ‘tough decisions’ and suggested he was content to be ‘occupying’ his office in No10 ‘as an end in itself’

Mr Sunak’s dramatic reshuffle on Monday saw the return of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary following the ex-PM’s seven-year absence from Westminster

Mr Sunak gathered his new top team in Downing Street this morning

Mrs Braverman was fired by Mr Sunak yesterday following a series of high-profile rows over her comments on migration, homelessness and pro-Palestinian protests.

She was succeeded in the Home Office by James Cleverly, who in turn was replaced as Foreign Secretary by ex-PM David Cameron.

In her letter to the PM, Mrs Braverman acknowledged she ‘may not have always found the right words’ when commenting on divisive issues.

But she stressed she had ‘always striven to give a voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019’.

‘I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions,’ she added.

Mrs Braverman’s exit from Government followed a furious row over a newspaper article she wrote about pro-Palestinian marches on Armistice Day.

She used a piece in The Times last week to claim the police ‘play favourites’ towards pro-Palestinian supporters when compared to those protesting other causes.

But her combative words were not fully signed-off by Downing Street and presented a challenge to Mr Sunak’s authority.

When Remembrance Weekend was marred by scenes of far-right violence towards police officers near the Cenotaph, Mrs Braverman was accused of having inflamed tensions.

In her letter to the PM, she doubled down on her description of pro-Palestinian demonstrations as ‘hate marches’.

Mrs Braverman claimed Mr Sunak had failed to ‘rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7 October’. 

‘I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion,’ she added.

‘Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years.

‘I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs.’

Mrs Braverman’s departure as home secretary has come in the same week as the Supreme Court is due to rule on the Government’s Rwanda migration plan.

Judges at the Supreme Court are tomorrow set to decide on whether the UK’s asylum deal with the African country is lawful.

Mrs Braverman claimed in her letter that Mr Sunak has failed to prepare a ‘credible Plan B’ should the Government lose the legal case.

She accused the PM of ignoring her ‘multiple’ pleas to draft alternative measures.

The ex-Cabinet minister suggested this would mean, if the Supreme Court rules against the PM, there is ‘no hope’ of migrants being flown to Rwanda before the general election.

‘At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win, she added.

‘I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat.

‘You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices.

‘This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.’

Mrs Braverman’s letter threatened to stir up fresh tensions between the Government and the DUP, after she claimed the PM had last year agreed to deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

The legislation, introduced by ex-PM Boris Johnson amid a bitter trade dispute with the EU, was drafted as a means of unilaterally tearing up post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland.

It was ditched by Mr Sunak in February when he struck his Windsor Framework deal – which is opposed by the DUP – with Brussels.

Former DUP MP Nigel Dodds posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, this evening: ‘Braverman reveals PM gave her ‘firm assurances’ that he would ‘deliver the NI Protocol Bill in [its] existing form & timetable’.

‘Instead he accepted an Irish Sea Border and wants unionists to do so also. No chance.’

In response to Mrs Braverman’s letter, a No10 spokeswoman said: ‘The PM was proud to appoint a strong, united team yesterday focused on delivering for the British people.

‘The PM believes in actions not words. He is proud that this Government has brought forward the toughest legislation to tackle illegal migration this country has seen and has subsequently reduced the number of boat crossings by a third this year.

‘And whatever the outcome of the Supreme Court tomorrow, he will continue that work. The PM thanks the former Home Secretary for her service.’

A senior Tory source denied Mr Sunak had agreed a formal deal with Mrs Braverman, saying only that he had agreed to ‘work with her’ on issues she had prioritised.

Last night the row threatened to overshadow Mr Sunak’s efforts to reset his team on Monday, sacking Mrs Braverman after tiring of her grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons. It also threw a grenade into today’s Supreme Court ruling on Rwanda.

Government sources last night acknowledged that ministers were not expecting an ‘unqualified approval’ from the highest court in the land, raising the prospect that ministers may have to legislate again – and potentially pushing back the date of the first flights until after the next election.

Government sources pointed out that Mr Sunak had taken personal charge of the efforts to stop the boats – leading two key committees a week – because he was unconvinced by Mrs Braverman’s efforts.

One source said she had proposed an ‘unworkable’ scheme to send Channel migrants to the Falkland Islands despite advice from Home Office lawyers that it would take years to come to fruition.

Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy said the Tory civil war was letting down the country. ‘This is just the latest instalment in a Tory psychodrama that has been playing out for 13 years and which has held the rest of the country to ransom,’ she added.

Downing Street yesterday said a plan to ban charities from handing tents to rough sleepers has been abandoned following a backlash against Mrs Braverman’s claim that homelessness was a ‘lifestyle choice’ for many. The plan had been cleared by the Cabinet and was intended for inclusion in a crime Bill.

Downing Street earlier said Mr Cleverly had briefed the Cabinet over ‘some of the possible scenarios’ to Wednesday’s ruling.

Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights was not discussed at the meeting, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.

Contingency plans have been ‘discussed among Cabinet ministers’, the spokesman said, and ‘options for possible scenarios’ have been prepared.

Last month, the Home Office challenged a Court of Appeal ruling from June that overturned the High Court’s finding that Rwanda could be considered a ‘safe third country’ for migrants.

Lawyers representing people facing deportation to the east African nation argue Rwanda is an ‘authoritarian, one-party state’ with a ‘woefully deficient’ asylum system.

But the Home Office has said the policy to remove asylum seekers to a ‘country less attractive’ than the UK, ‘but nevertheless safe’, is lawful.

Five justices at the Supreme Court will give their verdict on Wednesday morning, before Mr Sunak faces Prime Minister’s Questions.

The Illegal Migration Act brought into law the Government’s policy of sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda.

However, the plans announced in April 2022 have been held up in the courts, with no deportation flights having taken place despite £140 million already being handed to Kigali.

Whereas Mrs Braverman repeatedly signalled she wanted out of the ‘politicised court’, Mr Cleverly said while foreign secretary in April he was ‘not convinced’ the move is necessary.

He said that the European countries that are not signatories – Russia and Belarus – are a ‘small club’, adding: ‘I am not convinced it is a club we want to be part of.’

In full: Suella Braverman’s scathing letter to the PM

Dear Prime Minister,

Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave Government. While disappointing, this is for the best.

It has been my privilege to serve as Home Secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do. I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary.

I am proud of what we achieved together: delivering on our manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers and enacting new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National Security Act 2023. I also led a programme on reform: on anti-social behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of enquiry, grooming gangs, knife crime, non-crime hate incidents and rape and serious sexual offences. And I am proud of the strategic changes that I was delivering to Prevent, Contest, serious organised crime and fraud. I am sure that this work will continue with the new ministerial team.

As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as Home Secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. Those were, among other things:

1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto through, inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary thresholds on work visas;

2. Include specific ‘notwithstanding clauses’ into new legislation to stop the boats, i.e. exclude the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Act and other international law that had thus far obstructed progress on this issue;

3. Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and Retained EU Law Bills in their then existing form and timetable;

4. Issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protects biological sex, safeguards single sex spaces, and empowers parents to know what is being taught to their children.

This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become Prime Minister.

For a year, as Home Secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest.

You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.

These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.

Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.

I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced ‘notwithstanding clauses’ to that effect.

Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop the boats.

At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.

If we lose in the Supreme Court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one. Worse than this, your magical thinking – believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion – has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’. I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you.

I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.

If, on the other hand, we win in the Supreme Court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the Government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects. The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that Rule 39 indications are binding in international law – against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg Court.

Another cause for disappointment – and the context for my recent article in The Times – has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7th October.

I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion. Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years. I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.

As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else.

In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself.

Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.

I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions.

I will, of course, continue to support the Government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda.

Sincerely,

Suella Braverman

Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP

Member of Parliament for Fareham

Tory right-wingers have furiously accused Mr Sunak of abandoning ‘Red Wall’ voters who delivered Boris Johnson’s 80-seat majority at the 2019 general election

The New Conservatives group claimed the PM’s reshuffle – which included the sacking of Mrs Braverman and the return of Lord Cameron – marked a ‘major change’ in direction

Mr Johnson is pictured with his now wife Carrie in Downing Street while celebrating the Tories’ stunning victory in December 2019

The New Conservatives – a pressure group on the Tory Right – are led by Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger

Mr Sunak has set stopping small boats of asylum seekers from arriving in Britain as one of his five pledges to the electorate.

But more than 27,300 migrants have been detected making unauthorised crossings of the English Channel so far this year, according to official figures.

The Supreme Court ruling by Lords Reed, Hodge, Lloyd-Jones, Briggs and Sales will be handed down on Wednesday after 10am.

The Liberal Democrats said Mrs Braverman’s letter to the PM was ‘yet more Conservative chaos’.

‘Suella Braverman failed at every task at hand as home secretary and now she seems determined to drag everyone else down with her,’ said Alistair Carmichael, the party’s home affairs spokesperson.

‘While people struggle to see their GP or pay their mortgages, this Government is too busy dealing with their own infighting.

‘When will this Conservative Party soap opera end?’

Mrs Braverman publicly shared her letter to Mr Sunak after another grouping of Tory right-wingers also hit out at the PM in the wake of his reshuffle.

The New Conservatives furiously accused Mr Sunak of abandoning ‘Red Wall’ voters who delivered Boris Johnson’s 80-seat majority at the 2019 general election.

The PM’s reshuffle has been viewed by the Tory Right as an attempt by Mr Sunak to shift to the political centre ahead of the next general election. 

Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, the co-chairs of the New Conservatives, warned the PM he was ‘walking away’ from those voters who brought the Tories their victory in 2019.

‘It appears the leadership has decided to abandon the voters who switched to us last time, sacrificing the seats we won from Labour in 2019 in the hope of shoring up support elsewhere,’ they said in a statement.

But, despite their anger, the New Conservatives shied away from a direct challenge to Mr Sunak’s leadership.

The intervention by Ms Cates and Mr Kruger followed a meeting of the New Conservatives in Westminster last night, as they considered their response to Mr Sunak’s reshuffle.

The two most notable moves by Mr Sunak were his sacking of Mrs Braverman and his appointment of Lord Cameron, who had spent seven years in the political wilderness after quitting as PM.

But there were also promotions for loyalists of Mr Sunak such as Victoria Atkins – appointed Health Secretary – who comes from the Tories’ ‘One Nation’ wing.

Laura Trott and Richard Holden, who worked for Lord Cameron while he was in No10, were also bumped up the ranks to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Conservative Party chairman, respectively.

The blowback from the Tory Right to the reshuffle has been fierce, with one Tory MP — former education minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns – last night submitting a no confidence letter in Mr Sunak’s leadership.

In their own response, Ms Cates and Mr Kruger said: ‘We are concerned that yesterday’s reshuffle indicates a major change in the policy direction of the Government.

‘The Conservative Party now looks like it is deliberately walking away from the coalition of voters who brought us into power with a large majority in 2019.

‘That election, building on the victory of the Leave vote in the Brexit referendum of 2016, represented the realignment of our politics.’

The New Conservatives co-chairs added: ‘Until yesterday, we held onto the hope that the Government still believed in the realignment – that they would work to rebalance our economy, reorient our foreign policy, radically reduce migration, and restore common sense in our schools and universities.

‘That hope – the project of the realignment – has now dwindled. In political terms, it appears the leadership has decided to abandon the voters who switched to us last time, sacrificing the seats we won from Labour in 2019 in the hope of shoring up support elsewhere.’

The New Conservatives vowed to raise funds and recruit supporters to help the group’s members – whether sitting MPs or prospective parliamentary candidates – to fight their campaigns at the next general election.

But they assuaged No10 fears of a full-scale rebellion from the Tory Right by reaffirming their support for Mr Sunak.

‘Like all Conservatives, we want Rishi Sunak to succeed,’ Ms Cates and Mr Kruger said.

Mr Kruger followed up with a direct attack on Lord Cameron’s appointment during an appearance on GB News.

‘He led the Remain campaign and here he’s now in charge of our relations with Europe,’ he told the TV channel.

‘But as long as he follows the PM’s lead, as long as he genuinely honours the mandate that we have as a Government… I’m not concerned about his appointment.

‘Personally, I do think it sends a very confusing signal to our voters. And overall the shape of the Government now is not where we think it should be.’

Mr Kruger also claimed the Government was ‘going back into the politics of decline’ following the reshuffle. 

The New Conservatives are made up of MPs mainly elected after the Brexit vote in 2016.

The group’s website states they ‘stand for the realignment of British politics: a new era in which Westminster respects the views, values and interests of the British people’.

Their policy goals include the establishment of a new British framework for rights and equalities laws to replace European-inspired legislation.

They also want tax cuts, a reduction in immigration, and the banning of ‘gender ideology in schools’.

As well as Ms Cates and Mr Kruger, they are also led by Sir John Hayes – who is a close ally of Mrs Braverman.

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