Suella Braverman doesn't know how holes work in local elections article

Former home secretary Suella Braverman has offered her take on the Conservatives’ disastrous performance in this year’s local elections, with a piece for The Telegraph in which she shares a rather flawed analogy.

The Tories lost more than 470 councillors this week, and suffered a shock defeat to Labour in the West Midlands where incumbent mayor Andy Street lost to Richard Parker.

Conservative Party sources briefed the media that they expected the London mayoral election would be close between their candidate Susan Hall and Labour’s Sadiq Khan, only for the latter to secure a historic third term with an increased majority.

Now, Braverman - who has been a consistent critic of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since he sacked her in November, not least on the topic of immigration policy - has shared her analysis of her party’s losses in an article published on Saturday.

She writes: “Let me cut to the chase so no one wastes time overanalysing this: we must not change our leader. Changing leader now won’t work: the time to do so came and went.

“The hole to dig us out is the PM’s, and it’s time for him to start shovelling.”

Braverman also warns against Sunak’s government maintaining the status quo, saying this will hand “the keys of power to Labour without much of a fight - either because we have failed in the scramble for the centre ground or because we are destroyed from the Right by Reform”.

“As I warned in November, the Prime Minister’s plan is not working and he needs to change course. Otherwise, we are heading for a Keir Starmer government with his band of hard-Left fanatics set to undo Brexit, open our borders and meddle pointlessly with everything from employment laws to the number of bins you put out each week,” she adds.

Well, then.

Though unfortunately for Braverman, many social media users have paid more attention to her opening paragraph, pointing out that when you’re stuck in a hole which you need to get out of, the last thing you should do is continue digging.

Braverman’s constituency of Fareham re-elected its Conservative police and crime commissioner and maintained control of the borough council.

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