Under fire British Prime Minister, Liz Truss is currently fighting to hold on to her job after her interior minister announced his resignation and Conservative legislators openly quarrelled in parliament over a vote on a fracking for shale gas.
Africa Today News, New York reports that yesterday’s departure of Suella Braverman over what has been described as a ‘technical’ breach of government rules indicates Truss has now lost two of her most senior ministers in less than a wee even as both individuals have now been replaced by politicians who had not backed her for the leadership.
Braverman said she resigned after breaching rules by sending an official document from her personal email account. She used her resignation letter to lambast Truss, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government”.
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” she said. “Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics.”
Braverman is a popular figure on the Conservative Party’s right wing and a champion of more restrictive immigration policies who ran unsuccessfully for party leader, a contest won by Truss in early September.
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Braverman was replaced as home secretary, the minister responsible for immigration and law and order, by former Cabinet minister Grant Shapps.
He is a high-profile supporter of Rishi Sunak, the former Treasury chief defeated by Truss in the final round of the Conservative leadership race.
Hours after Braverman’s resignation, legislators openly rowed and jostled amid confusion over whether the vote on fracking was a confidence vote in her administration.
With a large Conservative majority in Parliament, an opposition call for a fracking ban was easily defeated by 326 votes to 230, but some legislators were furious that Conservative Party whips said the vote would be treated as a confidence motion, meaning the government would fall if the motion passed.
There were angry scenes in the House of Commons during and after the vote, with party whips accused of using heavy-handed tactics to gain votes. Labour legislator Chris Bryant said he “saw members being physically manhandled … and being bullied”.
Conservative officials denied there had been manhandling, but in the chaos Truss herself failed to vote, according to the official record. Many Conservative legislators were left despondent by the state of their party.