The official release of letters by Downing Street between a prime minister and a resigning member of the cabinet usually offer only the sparsest glimpses of real emotion.
They use heavily coded language to hint at anguish, to avoid the departure sparking a bitter divide between two senior members of the same party. Not so with the outgoing home secretary, Suella Braverman.
Here’s what she said, which left little to the imagination about what she meant …
What she said
What she meantBraverman devoted the top two paragraphs of her letter – less than half – to addressing the issue she said she was resigning over, making clear she realised she had broken the ministerial code by storing government documents on a personal device and sending those to a “trusted parliamentary colleague”. She left herself little wriggle-room and wholly accepted the mistake. It means in the future she will be able to say she stepped down swiftly and try to brush away suggestions about her being unfit to rejoin the government.
What she said
What she meantNot hard to work out what she is referring to here. The parallel between Braverman taking responsibility for her mistake and Truss being accused of refusing to acknowledge the pain caused by her mini-budget is plain to see. Truss has recently said she takes responsibility for the chaos caused. If she were to follow the logic set out by the former home secretary in this paragraph, she would need to resign.
What she said
What she meantBraverman moves swiftly from the issue of the security breach and wastes no time in expressing serious concerns about government policies of which she has been part for the past 43 days.
Having been a thorn in the side of Truss for dropping the promised abolition of the top rate of income tax – which Braverman said was a “coup” – she goes even further to target Downing Street on a lightning-rod issue among Tory members: irregular immigration.
She will now get to criticise government from the outside, a clear intention given she directly accuses Truss of abandoning “key pledges”.
What she said
What she meantThis is a throwaway sentence towards the end of the letter – but the closest that resembles a nod to wanting to run in any future leadership contest. Saying there is “much to do” suggests she thinks Truss’s government has run out of road and is incapable of delivering on its promised priorities.
Given she was knocked out of the last leadership contest and went on to endorse Truss, Braverman is signalling her potential willingness to run again – keeping her supporters yapping at the prime minister’s heels.
Liz Truss’s reply
What she meantSignificantly shorter in length and far from gushing about Braverman’s performance as home secretary, Truss ensures that it is known the home secretary is stepping down squarely because of her breach of the ministerial code. Given she still has no ethics adviser, this is a quick decision the prime minister must have come to but she is keen to make sure there is no ambiguity.
Readers will be left with the impression there is no love lost between the two women.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish