The same qualities that contributed to Dorries and Braverman’s rise are responsible for their fall

Suella Braverman and Nadine Dorries have dominated the discussion of the Conservative government since the summer break: not the conference season, not the prime minister’s reset speech, not the first King’s speech for seventy years. 

Both women, self-styled standard bearers of the anti-woke Tory right wing, are out of power as of today. Dorries, hand-matron of Boris Johnson, more-or-less fell on her own sword beside him in fond expectation of a peerage. This morning Rishi Sunak asked Braverman to leave the government, following her provocative criticism of migrants, rough sleepers and the Metropolitan Police.

More than party politics lies behind the two women’s downward trajectories. The Conservative party is not yet gender blind in the appointments made to high office. Attempts to address the balance between the sexes have had unanticipated consequences. Nadine Dorries for one complains of sexism and misogyny in the party. 

The Conservatives boast with justification of their record promoting women in the great offices of state. The Tories have had three female party leaders and Prime Ministers to Labour’s none (although Margaret Beckett was an interim Labour leader for a couple of months). Three of the seven Conservatives who have been home secretary since 2010 are women. Labour managed just one female home secretary – Jacqui Smith, the first ever – during the preceding thirteen years of government.

The two parties have had just one female foreign secretary each: Liz Truss and Margaret Beckett, who was also the first woman boss in King Charles Street. Labour may put the first crack in the glass ceiling but until now Boris Johnson and Sunak have done the most promoting women into the Cabinet, though not always into the top ranks. 

There has yet to be a female chancellor of the exchequer. Sunak is said to be itching to replace Jeremy Hunt with Claire Coutinho after next Spring’s budget, not least to pip Labour’s Rachel Reeves to that “first female” post. 

Promotion for Sunak’s female alter ego looks less certain now that he’s been forced into a premature government reshuffle by Braverman’s insubordination. There may not be time for another planned government relaunch. Today’s departure from the middle ranks by a number of competent ministers – some at their own request – has renewed speculation that the next general election may come sooner in May, rather than later. If so, those who will be available immediately to take up outside appointments, having served the six months quarantine stipulated by ACOBA, include Will Quince, Jesse Norman, Nick Gibb, Jeremy Quin, George Freeman and Neil O’Brien. 

At the Manchester Party Conference last month Sunak presented himself as the change candidate after “thirty years of vested interests”. Now he has brought back one of the Prime Ministers who presided over that era as a righthand man – and he is a remainer to boot.  

David Cameron’s return to politics as foreign secretary, with a seat in the House of Lords, means that the top four jobs in the British government are all occupied by men once again for the first time since the dying days of the Gordon Brown government in the late noughties. Sunak, Cameron, Cleverly and Hunt all attended private schools.

With his chancellor George Osborne, David Cameron was one of the original pair of “posh boys who don’t know the price of milk”, attacked from the back benches by Nadine Dorries. Overlooking the elite education of her hero Johnson, class politics has always been a feature of her world view. Page one of her new book, The Plot, contains the first of many references to her background: “I was born in one of the poorest areas of Liverpool…”

As the daughter of immigrants, Suella Braverman represents a different, lesser represented minority that the Conservative party has also been anxious to put forward. Her parents were part of the Indian diaspora, although as she points out both held British passports and were legal immigrants. Her mother, later a Tory councillor and PPC, came via Mauritius, her father from post-independence Kenya. Though she insists her parents arrived with nothing, Braverman attended private school and then studied law at the University of Cambridge. 

The Home Office is one of the toughest jobs in government, often requiring the home secretary to take tough decisions likely to upset what Braverman is happy to call “the tofu-eating wokerati”. Successive governments have found it convenient to have one of the “gentle sex” presenting hard-line policies. For the Conservatives putting two women of colour into the job – Braverman and Priti Patel – gave them additional licence to say the unsayable (at least for bien pensant liberal circles) about immigration. It is unlikely that a pale male home secretary would have got away for so long with Braverman’s comments about an “invasion” or “hurricane” of immigrants.

There is no doubt that the elections of Theresa May and Liz Truss as party leader were helped by the Conservative membership’s yearning to find another Thatcher. A broader question is whether either Sunak or Braverman – or Liz Truss or Therese Coffey for that matter – would have risen so high, had there not been an essential imperative to try to balance men and women in government. (Labour has a commitment to a 50/50 cabinet.)

Through five regimes, often feuding with each other, the Conservative party at Westminster has burnt through a lot of talent. The pool of women available for office is shallower, because they only make up 39% of Tory MPs. To the distress of the party leadership, female candidates have failed to be appointed in significant numbers in winnable seats at the next election.

As an MP, Dorries was best known as a successful popular novelist and an outspoken media personality. Boris Johnson’s decision to recruit her to ministerial ranks was a surprise, and a reward for her loyalty. His promotion of her to the cabinet as culture secretary was a two-fingered salute by him to his critics in the media. 

In that post she is proud of her record “delivering high-speed broadband to 70% of the country” and installing Michael Grade as chairman of Ofcom, in spite of attempted sabotage by the shadowy “Movement” at the heart of Tory power. But she also struggled to stay on top of other aspects of her brief, especially in her failed attempt to privatize Channel 4 which she erroneously believed with in receipt of public money.

Braverman rose rapidly without making a significant mark in her political career. According to the former Labour lord chancellor Charlie Falconer, “she is a clever lawyer” but “a terrible attorney general” because she put politics before her legal judgement. 

There are plenty of talented female Tory MPs to choose from. Their outspoken support for Brexit and willingness to engage in culture wars seem to be the main reasons why Dorries and Braverman rose so far so fast. The same qualities have now contributed to their fall from office. 

The ballad of Nadine and Suella does not bode well for hopes of calm in the Sunak government, which looks increasingly like it is moving into receivership in anticipation of a Labour takeover, as foreshadowed by the opinion polls. 

Though many reviewers have questioned the veracity of her new book, Dorries told me that she had found it a nightmare doing all the research, interviews and checking necessary for a a non-fiction work. She is looking forward to getting back to novel writing. The allegations she makes of a cabal within Tory party conspiring to bring down successive leaders, will only exacerbate its current divisions. She is not retiring quietly. She told me last week on Talk TV that James Cleverly, an increasingly popular possible candidate for next leader, “needs to watch his back” . On Monday she X/tweeted ominously “if you want to know how today came about and what will likely happen to @JamesCleverly now that he’s in the Home Office – you need to read The Plot.” She added, “also this opens the door to a rerun of Osborne.”  

Stripped of collective responsibility, Braverman is now free to criticise the government and openly pursue her ambition to be the next leader of the party. Her supporters met in Westminster within hours of her sacking. 

Along with Liz Truss, Braverman and Dorries were the Conservative women politicians of their times. As the Conservatives continue to fight it out – in and perhaps soon out of office – are these three women all over now?