‘We can’t ignore the polls’: Suella Braverman on Reform and immigration
The Telegraph, 4th September 2025
In this week’s Planet Normal podcast, Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan discuss the ECHR with the former home secretary
On the latest Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above, columnists Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson are joined by Suella Braverman, a former home secretary, who discusses the rise of Reform UK and renews her call for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
“We can’t ignore the polls. Reform is doing very well at the moment,” she said.
Highlighting frustration over both legal and illegal migration, she added: “Despite Brexit, despite promise after promise to cut the numbers, we actually exponentially increased the number of work and study visas to a record high.”
She argued that the UK’s membership of the ECHR has prevented stronger border controls.
“The turning point for me was the flights to Rwanda that were grounded effectively by judges who were sitting in the Strasbourg court,” she said. “That was really the death knell for the Rwanda scheme… the rights of illegal migrants, the rights of foreign paedophiles, the rights of foreign terrorists become more important under the European Convention of Human Rights than the rights of the law-abiding British majority.
“There have been good-faith attempts to reform from within [the ECHR]. They’ve all failed.”
Calling for withdrawal, she added: “Over time … the very expansive nature of the court’s jurisprudence has wholly undermined state sovereignty.”
Listen to Planet Normal, a weekly Telegraph podcast featuring news and views from beyond the bubble, using the audio player above or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app.
