Back in the early days of the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was reputed to have a rule for resignations: once a scandal had been in the news for ten consecutive days, a minister had to go. It was a stupid rule because it merely encouraged parliamentary lobby journalists to keep a story going until the limit was up in the expectation of claiming another ministerial scalp. Since then Alastair has claimed, possibly truthfully, that he cannot remember imposing this rule and had probably come up with it when the Tories were still in power as a means of further stoking up the atmosphere of crisis around John Major.

This story has hit headlines at the mid-point between two highly sensitive events

Rishi Sunak would therefore be extremely foolish to impose his own version of the Campbell rule: namely that any minister facing an onslaught from the likes of the BBC and activist civil servants gets thrown under the bus if it leads the news for too long. His former deputy and close supporter Dominic Raab has already fallen foul of this lack of the benefit of the doubt. Now it appears that the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is in danger of doing so too.

When initially quizzed about her manoeuvrings in the face of a speeding penalty, Sunak declined to offer full support to Mrs Braverman. She is alleged to have asked civil servants to investigate whether she might be allowed to take a speed awareness course privately rather than pay a fine and take points on her licence.

Those precious flowers asked to look into the matter on her behalf seem to have needed smelling salts to revive them, so scandalised were they by the thought of trying to ascertain what options were open to their boss. And the traumatic event became so etched into their memories that an account of it was trotted out to Sunday newspaper journalists this weekend. In the end, Mrs Braverman paid the fine and took the points.

This story has hit headlines at the mid-point between two highly sensitive events, the first being Mrs Braverman’s rather bold speech to the National Conservatism conference in London last week and the second the impending immigration figures, due out on Thursday. This timing has led to the suspicion that the story is either revenge for her speech, which severely annoyed allies of Sunak, or that her efforts to reduce immigration have seen the Whitehall ‘blob’ take out a contract on her, rather as they did with the unfortunate Raab.

But politically, Sunak simply cannot afford to ditch Braverman unless heinous wrongdoing is found to have occurred. On the face of it, there looks to have been no wrongdoing at all other than the commission of a sin of naivety. For any Brexiteer minister to trust civil servants with embarrassing personal information is clearly asking for trouble. Far better to follow the old saw that just because you are paranoid it doesn’t follow that they aren’t out to get you.

While Braverman may have been naive about the mandarin class, she has shown far more cunning as regards political positioning. In recent weeks she has become the chief keeper of the flame for immigration control in the eyes of the British public. If Sunak forces her out at a moment when official figures confirm an enormous rise in net immigration, then the risks to his own reputation will be severe.

Many Conservative-leaning voters will be inclined to believe that he is a man prepared to ‘lay down his friends for his life’, as Jeremy Thorpe once brilliantly chided Harold Macmillan, while others will see it as proof positive that he is simply not serious about controlling immigration. For a man who so has just overseen the poorest local election results in living memory and who has a very fragile mandate anyway, that would be asking for a whole heap of trouble.

Repeatedly serving up the heads of cabinet ministers at the behest of his party’s ideological opponents would be a very weak look for Sunak. Rather John Major-ish, in fact. Boris Johnson, for all his other failings, understood this when sticking by Priti Patel after she also became the target of a civil service briefing campaign.

If there is far more to the ‘speedgate’ furore than has yet come out then that could of course change the balance of risk for Sunak. But right now he appears in danger of emboldening the progressive establishment while simultaneously antagonising much of the Tory tribe. My advice is to tack right, secure the base and save Suella.