Suella Braverman

She is the daughter of Uma (née Mootien-Pillay) and Christie Fernandes, both of Indian origin, who immigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively.

She is named after the character Sue Ellen Ewing from the American television soap opera Dallas, which her mother was a fan of, but Sue-Ellen was abbreviated to Suella by her primary school teachers.

Sue-Ellen Cassiana "Suella" Braverman (née Fernandes; born 3 April 1980) is a British politician and barrister who served as Home Secretary from 6 September 2022 to 19 October 2022, and again from 25 October 2022 to 13 November 2023.

Her mother, of Hindu Tamil Mauritian descent, was a nurse and a councillor in Brent, and the Conservative candidate for Tottenham in the 2001 general election and the 2003 Brent East by-election.

Her father, of Goan Christian ancestry (who formerly was an Indian in Kenya), worked for a housing association.

She is the niece of Mahen Kundasamy, a former Mauritian High commissioner to the United Kingdom.

She attended the Uxendon Manor Primary School in Brent and the fee-paying Heathfield School, Pinner, on a partial scholarship, after which she read law at Queens' College, Cambridge.

During her undergraduate studies, she was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association.

Braverman lived in France for two years, as an Erasmus Programme student and then as an Entente Cordiale Scholar, where she studied for a master's degree in European and French law at Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

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.

Her mother, Uma Fernandes, a Conservative councillor, was selected to fight the seat, and Braverman campaigned for her.

During the campaign, Braverman (as Fernandes) was included in an article in The Guardian newspaper with title "The road to No 10".

Braverman was called to the bar (becoming a barrister) at Middle Temple in 2005.

She completed pupillage at 2–3 Gray's Inn Square (now Cornerstone Barristers) but did not start tenancy there, beginning practice at the London branch of a large Birmingham set, No5 Chambers.

She worked in litigation including the judicial review "basics" for a government practitioner of immigration and planning law.

At the 2005 general election, Braverman contested Leicester East, finishing in second place behind Labour's Keith Vaz, who won with a 15,876-vote (38.4%) majority.

She sought selection as the Conservative candidate in Bexhill and Battle, but was unsuccessful, and was eventually selected to be the Conservative candidate for Fareham in Hampshire.

She passed the New York bar examination in 2006, becoming licensed to practise law in the state until the licence was suspended in 2021 after she did not re-register as an attorney.

She was appointed to the Attorney General's C panel of counsel, the entry level, undertaking basic government cases, in 2010.

Braverman founded the Africa Justice Foundation in 2010 alongside barristers Cherie Booth and Philip Riches.

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.

She has been the MP for Fareham since 2015.

Braverman was elected to the House of Commons as the MP for Fareham at the 2015 general election with 56.1% of the vote and a majority of 22,262.

She gave her maiden speech on 1 June 2015.

She has taken a particular interest in education, home affairs and justice and has written for The Daily Telegraph, Bright Blue, i News, HuffPost, Brexit Central and ConservativeHome.

Articles:

Braverman opened a Westminster Hall debate in the House of Commons on the failings of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and chaired meetings with the Trust's executives and with other MPs on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Hampshire, in which instances of poor care quality and the deaths of patients were investigated.

Braverman campaigned to leave the European Union in the 2016 EU membership referendum; a majority (55%) of votes in her constituency were for Leave.

A member of the Conservative Party, she was chair of the European Research Group from 2017 to 2018 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2020 to March 2021, and again from September 2021 to 2022.

She was chair of the European Research Group, a pro-Leave group of Conservative MPs, from May 2017 until her promotion to ministerial office; she was replaced by Jacob Rees-Mogg.

At the 2017 general election, Braverman was re-elected, increasing her share of the vote to 63.0% but decreasing her majority to 21,555.

In the January 2018 cabinet reshuffle, Braverman was appointed parliamentary under-secretary of state for exiting the European Union by Prime Minister Theresa May.

In November 2018, she resigned in protest against May's draft Brexit withdrawal agreement.

Braverman was appointed attorney general for England and Wales and advocate general for Northern Ireland by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle; she was appointed as Queen's Counsel automatically on her appointment.

Following Johnson announcing his resignation in July 2022, Braverman stood as a candidate to succeed him in the July–September Conservative Party leadership election; she was eliminated from the ballot after the second round of voting.

She subsequently supported Liz Truss's bid to become Conservative leader, and was appointed home secretary on 6 September 2022 when Truss became prime minister.

Braverman resigned as home secretary on 19 October 2022 following public claims that she had broken the Ministerial Code after having sent a Cabinet document using her personal email address.

Six days later, she was reinstated as home secretary by Truss's successor Rishi Sunak.

She was dismissed from her post by Sunak in the November 2023 British cabinet reshuffle.

Braverman was born in Harrow, Greater London, and raised in Wembley.