by An outgoing government adviser has slammed Suella Braverman for allegedly fueling a rise in racism in Britain and ‘normalising’ Nigel Farage’s politics.
Nimco Ali, who is stepping down as a government adviser to tackle violence against women, added that Rishi Sunak should sack Braverman, warning that keeping her as interior secretary would cause him to lose the next election .
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Ali, who was born in Somalia before moving to Britain as a child refugee, said of Braverman: “She basically feeds on this Nigel Farage stuff… and when you start normalizing these things, it’s really hard to put it back in its box.
“When you have your home secretary talking the way she talks and is acclaimed, that’s problematic, especially when you’re the first colored man to be prime minister.”
Ali, who is a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM), announced that she was effectively stepping down from her role as government adviser during a live radio broadcast, saying she was on a “completely different planet” from that of the Minister of the Interior.
She said seeing the home secretary’s eyes “light up” while discussing the deportation of people from backgrounds not so different from her own, as well as Braverman’s “crazy rhetoric” over the summer, left her no choice but to leave her role as advisor.
Ali, who is close friends with Carrie and Boris Johnson, said she saw clear links between this type of rhetoric and the repeated racist abuse she suffered at the Euro 2020 football tournament.
When asked if she thought Braverman’s language helped fuel such racist incidents, she replied, “100%. It is to legitimize it. When someone like her says it, you think you’re still talking about people of your own heritage to some degree, but you’re also normalizing the Nigel Farages.
She said she could not understand the interior minister’s ‘ambition’ to ‘get people on the run to Rwanda and get rid of human rights’, adding that it worried her that Braverman, “a woman of color,” could be comfortable with such a position. She also accused Braverman of “vindictiveness” and a “lack of compassion.”
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
Ali also alleged that Dame Cressida Dick, then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, complained that the government’s initial response to the murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens had been ‘overblown’.
Dick’s first words at a high-level meeting chaired by Boris Johnson in March last year, shortly after Everard’s murder, were “this has been overdone”, Ali said.
The former Met commissioner denied Ali’s claims. “I did not make those comments and it is not language I would ever use. I fully supported whatever efforts the government was making at the time, giving advice and taking action at the within the Met. Throughout my service, I have sought to reduce violence against women and girls,” she told The Sunday Times.
