Why can’t a single Tory minister seem to use a car properly? If it’s not Sunak or Johnson filming themselves not wearing a seatbelt in a moving car, and it’s not Dominic Cummings driving half a country to test his eyesight (blind people can’t drive, Dom!) then it’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman speeding in a 50mph zone last summer. An average day at Eton can’t have been so jam-packed they couldn’t squeeze in a driving lesson between Trussonomics and lunch.
The controversy involves whether or not the woman in charge of law enforcement can follow ministerial code, as it wasn’t the speeding that was problematic (we all dabble, right?) but rather the fact that she allegedly asked civil servants to help her arrange a private speeding course. It turns out that separating oneself from the common rabble is a private interest, which therefore cannot be delegated to civil servants.
More than any of the ministerial stuff, though, it just strikes me as odd that so many Tories are getting caught in car-based controversy recently, and actually fined for it too. Cummings was able to escape the long arm of a hundred quid slap on the wrist, but in January Sunak became the second Prime Minister in UK history to be fined while in office – the first was Boris Johnson – and that was for posting a video of himself breaking the law to INSTAGRAM. At least Suella wasn’t wearing a GoPro helmet when she was caught speeding, that would have been more incriminating.
Other MPs have been troubled by speeding too. In 2012, Chris Huhne of the Lib Dems and his wife Vicky Pryce went to jail for an arrangement in which Pryce took speeding points on behalf of Huhne, and in 2018 Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was found guilty of perverting the course of justice for lying to avoid a speeding fine. No jokes here, just a bunch of pillocks.
I wonder why Braverman was speeding. Perhaps she decided that the RNLI needed sorting out once and for all, or maybe she was late for hosting the 76th annual Hunger Games. Either way, on her watch, some kids were definitely dying.
Last time Braverman was caught with her pants down (metaphorically, she’s not one of those corrupt MPs yet) – when she sent an official document from her personal email to another MP – she resigned. Where is this version of Braverman, the rules stickler? Will she resign again, or was that just a vie for the (then) oncoming Sunak government? Bring back shameful resignation over minor breaches of ministerial code, I say. Hell, bring back the guillotine while you’re at it, although it’s less likely it’ll get used on Braverman, rather by her.