What next for Suella Braverman?

Is political life over for Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary, now her long-rumoured defection to Reform has been torpedoed by controversial party grandee Zia Yusuf?

Braverman’s husband Rael joined Nigel Farage’s party last December in a move that many believed would pave the way for his wife to follow suit. But Rael, who was advising Farage on campaigning against the so-called ‘farm tax’, has quit after Yusuf blamed his wife for the decision to secretly grant asylum to Afghans put at risk by a Ministry of Defence data leak. On July 18, Mr Braverman posted on X: “I left Reform because I cannot be in a party ‘led’ by Zia Yusuf.”

Yusuf, who himself left and then rejoined the party in June after causing ructions by criticising MP Sarah Pochin, is also blamed by some party supporters for a Daily Mail story earlier in July that claimed Reform would block Suella Braverman from defecting to them.

A “well-placed insider” told the paper that Mrs Braverman was “not a team player… her record shows she is just too disruptive”. Conspiracy theorists in Reform circles note that the story appeared a day before a ghost-written article under Yusuf’s byline appeared in the Mail.

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Yusuf, who still has Farage’s ear, seems to be deeply unpopular among members of Reform groups on social media, where he is often derisively referred to as “Mohammed” (his full name is Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf). He is blamed for persuading Farage that the party should not obsess over mass migration and that therefore Suella Braverman – who bangs on about little else – should be blocked from defecting. He and Farage are instead keen on persuading Jacob Rees-Mogg to abandon the Tories instead.

And on July 18, to the delight of his detractors, Yusuf had to apologise after his X account ‘liked’ a post calling former Tory immigration minister Robert Jenrick a “traitorous zogbot with a Jewish wife and family” and suggesting that Jewish people were responsible for “importing infinite brown savages”. Yusuf blamed a member of his staff.

Unless Farage now bends and sidelines Yusuf, Braverman only has two options left. Ben Habib, the former deputy leader who quit in November 2024 after clashing with Farage, wants her to defect to his new anti-migration party Advance UK, but that is seen as too much of a risk.

Suella also knows there is no chance of her winning a shadow cabinet recall under Kemi Badenoch, who does not rate her. But she has been holding out hope that Jenrick – a friend since they met at fresher’s week at Cambridge University – would give her a top job if he replaced Badenoch as leader.

Yet with Jenrick also wrapped up in the Afghan data leak scandal, even that possibility seems further away than before.