Suella Braverman, the Attorney General for England and Wales, is the first person to make a bid to become the country's next prime minister. She announced her intention to be a candidate in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election even before Boris Johnson quit formally.
Braverman has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Fareham since 2015. As a member of the Conservative Party, she chaired the European Research Group from 19 June 2017 to 9 January 2018. She also was appointed Queen's Counsel as Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland in February 2020.
Braverman was born on 3 April 1980 to Christie and Uma Fernandes née Moutien-Pillay, both of Indian origin, who emigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius, respectively. Her mother was a nurse and a councilor in Brent, and her father, of Goan ancestry, worked for a housing association. Her mother was the Conservative candidate in Tottenham in the 2001 general election and in the 2003 Brent East by-election.
She was born in Harrow, London, and grew up in Wembley. She attended the Uxendon Manor Primary School in Brent and the fee-paying Heathfield School, Pinner, on a partial scholarship, after which she studied law at Queens' College, Cambridge.
Braverman lived in France for two years as an Erasmus Program student and then as an Entente Cordiale Scholar, where she completed a master's degree in European and French law at Panthéon-Sorbonne University.
She married Rael Braverman in February 2018 at the House of Commons. Their first child was born in 2019, and their second in 2021.
Braverman is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Community (formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order) and attends the London Buddhist Centre monthly.
Braverman's name was already on the list of Conservative parliamentary candidates at the time of the 2003 Brent East by-election, and she had to be persuaded not to seek the nomination.
At the 2005 general election, Braverman contested Leicester East, finishing in second place behind Labour's Keith Vaz. She sought selection as the Conservative candidate in Bexhill and Battle but was unsuccessful and was eventually selected as the Conservative candidate in Fareham. She was appointed to the Attorney General's C Panel of Counsel in 2010.
Braverman also sought election to the London Assembly at the 2012 Assembly elections and was placed fourth on the Conservative London-wide list; only the first three Conservative candidates were elected.
In the 13 February 2020 reshuffle, Braverman was appointed as Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland, succeeding Geoffrey Cox, who had been dismissed from government. Braverman was made QC at the time of this appointment. She was later criticized by members of the Bar Council for her poor choices in the role.
During the 2022 United Kingdom government crisis, Braverman remained a minister, though on 6 July 2022, she called Boris Johnson to resign and said she would stand in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.
If appointed prime minister, Braverman says, her priorities will be to deliver tax cuts, cut government spending, tackle the cost-of-living challenges, solve the problem of boats crossing the channel, deliver Brexit opportunities, and get rid of all of this woke rubbish.
Braverman stands on the right-wing of the Conservative Party, is a committed supporter of Brexit, and supports sending cross-Channel migrants to Rwanda. She said, "If I get trolled and provoke a bad response on Twitter, I know I'm doing the right thing. Twitter is a sewer of left-wing bile. The extreme left pile is often a consequence of good conservative values."
She has described herself as a "child of the British Empire." Her parents, from Mauritius and Kenya, came to the UK "with an admiration and gratitude for what Britain did for Mauritius, Kenya, and India." She believes that, on the whole, "the British Empire was a force for good."
