In her maiden speech, she recalled how her father, Christy Fernandes, had fled the tensions in Kenya to seek a new life in the UK. “On a cold February morning in 1968, a young man, not yet 21, stepped off a plane at Heathrow Airport, nervously folding his one-way ticket from Kenya. He had no family, no friends and only kept his most valuable possession, his British passport. His homeland was in political turmoil,” he said. Critics have questioned whether Braverman might be suffering pangs of conscience about sending Afghans and Iranians to Rwanda, given that, like her father, they say they are fleeing political unrest. Her previous comments suggest not. Braverman, who has been placed to the right of her predecessor Priti Patel, is expected to move quickly to set aside the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – which was used to stop the attempted deportation in Rwanda. “Exiting the ECHR is the only solution that solves the problem and is fully consistent with international law,” he wrote in the July issue of House magazine. As well as immigration and an increase in the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats, Braverman will also face a record backlog of asylum cases, falling prosecution rates for sex offenses and burglaries and a crisis of confidence within the police after a series of scandals. Sue-Ellen Cassiana Braverman was born in Harrow, north-west London, to Fernandes, a Kenyan of Goan Christian descent, and Uma Fernandes, a Mauritian of Indian origin. Their only child, she was adored by both parents who were extremely ambitious for her, according to friends. The couple joined the Conservative party in the 1980s when Sir Rhodes Boyson, the disillusioned Thatcherite hardliner, was the local MP for Brent North. Christie worked in the voluntary sector for many years, according to Tory friends, while Uma worked in the NHS for 45 years and successfully stood to become a Conservative councillor. Braverman won a partial scholarship to attend private school Heathfield before studying law at Queens’ College, Cambridge. She later earned a master’s degree in law from the Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris and then earned her New York bar. Tory allies say she showed ambition to become an MP from a young age – and had attended Conservative events in Harrow and gone with her parents. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. He unsuccessfully contested several seats held by Labor and the Lib Dems before being elected in Fareham, Hampshire at the 2015 general election. In February 2018, she married Mercedes director Rael Braverman in the House of Commons. They had their first child in 2019 and a second in 2021. She was given her first cabinet post by Theresa May when she was appointed Brexit minister in 2018. She resigned after then-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab quit in disagreement over May’s proposed divorce deal with the European Union. Boris Johnson brought her back into the fold, promoting her to a position around the cabinet table as attorney general in 2020. She became a QC at the time of that appointment. Braverman has won many supporters among diehards with her aggressive insistence that a culture war is raging in the UK. He has described the British Empire as a force for good and said Twitter was a “kidnapper of left-wing bile”. When four people were acquitted of toppling a statue of slave trader Edward Colston, Braverman was heavily criticized for saying she was considering taking the case to an appeals court. An ally said he was not afraid to take on vested interests. “It will be Preeti on steroids. Watch this space,” he said.
