Braverman's migrant rhetoric stoking racism, says outgoing adviser

Nimco Ali, a campaigner and survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM), announced her resignation this week because she did not feel comfortable serving under Suella Braverman.

Ali told Times Radio she was on a “completely different planet” from the Home Secretary when it came “to the rights of women and girls”.

At the weekend, she followed up these comments by saying Braverman’s “crazy rhetoric” about migrants was “basically feeding into this Nigel Farage stuff”.

She told The Sunday Times: “When you start to normalise these things it’s really hard to put it back in its box.”

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Asked if she believed the Home Secretary’s language was helping fuel racism in the UK, Ali said: “100%. It’s legitimising it. When somebody like her says it, you think, you’re still talking about people of your own heritage to a certain extent but you’re also normalising the Nigel Farages.”

After coming to Britain from Somalia at the age of four as a refugee, Ali was just seven when she was subjected to FGM.

Speaking with The Times, Ali said the final straw for her had been the sight of Ms Braverman’s eyes “lighting up” while discussing the controversial migrant policy at the Conservative Party conference.

The Home Secretary had said publicly it was her “dream” and “obsession” to deport people to Rwanda.

“I don’t know why your ambition is to put people on a flight to Rwanda and get rid of human rights,” Ali said.

“You are a woman of colour. I can understand when white able-bodied men say it, but you? Even talking about it now makes me anxious.

“I think that’s the difference between her and (former home secretary) Priti (Patel). Priti talked about policy but there wasn’t this vindictiveness. It was a lack of compassion. It really doesn’t cost anything to be kind.”

Ali went on to suggest the Prime Minister needed to sack Braverman if he wanted to win the next election.

“When you have your home secretary speaking the way she is speaking and being cheered, that is problematic, especially when you’re the first man of colour to be prime minister.”

The outgoing adviser and chief executive of The Five Foundation which works both internationally to eliminate FGM and in the UK to amend the Children’s Act to ensure the practice is outlawed, earlier said she did not want to continue in her government role because Braverman and herself were “on completely different planets when it comes to the rights of women and girls”.

She added they were also in stark opposition to each other in “the way that we talk about ethnic minorities, and specifically people like me who are from a refugee background”.

A source close to Braverman earlier said: “The Home Secretary is determined to make our streets and homes safer for women and girls. That’s why she has made violence against women and girls one of her key priorities at the Home Office and today backed a new law on public sexual harassment.

“She will continue to focus on this policy and the rights of women and girls to live safely in our country.”

Ali has backed the Conservatives in the past and was a supporter of former prime minister Boris Johnson.

“I’m very much a Blairite, and I’m very much a centrist,” she told Times Radio on Friday, when quizzed about the circumstances behind Braverman’s controversial return to the Home Office after she was forced to resign in the final days of Liz Truss’s Government.

“The reality is that I’m more in the same camp as Rishi Sunak than I am with Suella Braverman in terms of our politics.

“I think the reality is that, and I’ve seen in the last few years, that you consistently have to juggle things as prime minister and the people you appoint are not necessarily the people that you might think are fit for the role.”

It is understood that Ali’s contract was coming to an end before Christmas, and that she had not met Braverman since her appointment as Home Secretary.