Games played by officials

Henry Hill has a CAPX piece on the row over Suella Braverman and the officials gunning for her.

When it comes to the row over Suella Braverman, which has dominated the first week of Rishi Sunak’s premiership, all is not what it seems.

It was originally about leaking, and the Home Secretary’s transmission of restricted documents using her personal email address. Yet the officials gunning for her over that are themselves leaking an awful lot of information to the press which is not obviously any less sensitive – and those papers demanding her resignation are cheerfully printing it.

Instead, many of the attacks now emanating from the Home Office focus less on process than on matters which seem straightforwardly political. We learn that officials don’t like her holding meetings with right-wing Conservative MPs, and that she has been commissioning policies which would see a more hard-line approach taken towards Channel crossings.