The Conservatives have been criticised by members of their own party and their opponents for their response to Suella Braverman’s defection.<\/p>\n
After the former Tory home secretary announced she was joining Reform UK, a Conservative spokesperson said:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect. The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella\u2019s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy.”<\/p>\n
That reference to Braverman’s mental health has drawn strong criticism from across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n
Tory peer Stewart Jackson said: “What a nasty and unpleasant statement… That’s another few thousand votes they’ve lost.”<\/p>\n
Reform has also responded, with a spokesperson saying it is “gutter politics – a sign of what the Conservative Party has become”.<\/p>\n
‘A full public apology is now required’<\/p>\n
Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor also called it a “very poor show”.<\/p>\n
“That line should never have been written, let alone ‘sent out in error’.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“A fulsome public apology is now required, with the person responsible punished.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Politics should be free from such attacks.”<\/p>\n
The “sent out in error” line refers to reports that the Conservative Party has reissued the response without the line about mental health, and has claimed this was a draft released by mistake.<\/p>\n
‘Below the standards we expect’<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, migration minister Mike Tapp said: “I have no sympathy for Suella Braverman when it comes to politics and what she did to our immigration system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But the Tories attacking her mental health is below the standards we expect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“British values are strong but decent, firm but fair. Neither the Tories nor Reform sign up to that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Conservatives have been criticised by members of their own party and their opponents for their response to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-391494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}