Not for Suella Braverman the old wisdom that revenge is a dish best served cold. It’s hard to think of a more explosive response from a sacked minister than her letter posted on X (which got 37 million views). That was understandable after Sunak fired her by telephone and failed to issue the customary statement thanking her for her service – especially given he won the leadership last year only because Braverman delivered him the Tory right’s votes. Her letter reinforces a view that Sunak is untrustworthy, weak and concerned with ‘polite opinion’ more than the things that worry voters – immigration, Islamist extremism, woke policing and rampant transgender ideology. She couldn’t resist putting the boot in, reminding us that in the leadership contest Tory members preferred right-wing tax-cutting, reformist Liz Truss to cautious spreadsheet Sunak.

While those around PM Sunak dismiss Braverman’s letter as a predictable rant, it’s striking that no one has defended him against its accusations. And Sunak has since come out on only one of the issues Braverman criticises him for, stopping the boats – unavoidably, as British judges for the third time have ruled illegal the government’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda. This is because they don’t trust Rwanda not to send asylum-seekers back to countries where they claim to have been persecuted. Sunak says a few legislative adjustments will prevent yet another legal challenge. Braverman argues this is yet another case of his ‘magical thinking’, and that nothing short of new legislation excluding Britain’s human rights laws and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights would survive further legal challenges. But each of these approaches would struggle to get through the House of Lords.

The Tories have made astonishingly heavy weather of their efforts to stop the boats. Two prime ministers ago, in April 2022, Boris Johnson launched the Rwanda plan. There’s now a good chance it won’t materialise before the next election, making a mockery of Sunak’s promise to stop the boats, one of his five core pledges. In the meantime, the boats would keep coming. Braverman must share the blame for these failures, which have occurred on her watch as Home Secretary and earlier Attorney-General. The Home Office famously becomes hard of hearing when asked to do anything involving stronger borders. Still, many are disappointed Braverman didn’t achieve more.

Sunak has had nothing to say about the other issues Braverman raised of concern to the Tory base. One of the party’s most spectacular broken promises is to get net legal immigration down to the tens of thousands. In 2022, the figure was 606,000, a level which, if maintained for the next two decades, would increase the population from the current 67 million to at least 80 million, in a space roughly the size of Victoria. Braverman’s efforts to get the numbers down have been blocked by the Treasury, which likes high immigration numbers because they make the economic growth numbers look better. Sunak doesn’t seem to care about the issue. Depressingly, there’s a good chance soft-left Britain will capitulate indefinitely to open borders and continued mass immigration, meaning Britain within our lifetimes will become a very different place.

Braverman was sacked for defying Number 10’s instructions that she ‘tone down’ an article in the Times referring to ‘a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters’, exemplified by the tough treatment of Covid lockdown objectors compared to Black Lives Matter protestors. Most Tory voters would agree with her and the idea that a Conservative prime minister would dismiss a minister for stating the obvious is bizarre. Sunak backing Braverman would have put the pressure on the police to mend their woke ways and would have been popular.

Instead, he’s succeeded in losing his only minister who, with her straight-talking style, connected strongly with the Tory base. She talked of the illegal immigration ‘invasion’, ‘failed’ multiculturalism, ‘hate marches’ and the ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’ behind climate protests. According to one source, ‘dozens’ of Conservative MPs have submitted letters of no confidence in Sunak. There’s no clear sign yet of whether this might mean the party heading for yet another leadership change or even a split. The view of Nigel Farage, when he emerges from dodging venomous reptiles in the Outback, will be worth listening to.

David Cameron’s return to government as Foreign Secretary succeeded in distracting from the Braverman saga. Startlingly for Australians used to the idea that ministers are elected members of parliament, Cameron was plucked out of retirement, given a life peerage and appointed foreign secretary – all in the course of one day.

The appointment of the soft-left Cameron is hardly likely to improve the Tories’ standing. Calling himself ‘the heir to Blair’, Cameron led the ‘Remain’ campaign, initiated the Tories’ drift towards Green extremism and presided over the ‘tens of thousands’ immigration promise. He wants to hand out billions more in overseas aid, played a key role in turning Libya into a failed state – a disaster for Europe – and has been closely involved with state-run Chinese companies. Sunak’s cunning plan apparently is that Cameron’s appointment will somehow give his government more ‘heft’ and will shore up Tory support in the southern ‘Blue Wall’ seats feared at risk from the even softer-left Lib Dems. And the strategy for the newly Tory ‘Red Wall’ seats further north – where Braverman’s views are popular? Who knows?

The past two weeks should have been good ones for Sunak. He’s succeeded in one of his core tasks, halving inflation from close to 11 per cent in January to 4.6 per cent, potentially allowing for tax cuts including of deeply unpopular death duties. Meanwhile, Labour, over Gaza, parades the still scary strength of its hard left.

The Braverman-Cameron farce suggests a sinking Tory ship. The polls show a further fall in support, in some to below 20 per cent. And yet, despite everything, it might still be too early to write the Tories off. If they can plausibly offer tax cuts and even marginally less wokery and extremism on immigration and climate issues than Labour, they might still be able to run the message ‘we might be hopeless but Labour would be much worse’ – if enough voters are still listening.