Suella Braverman

Biography

Suella Braverman, born Sue-Ellen Fernandes in Harrow in 1980, is the daughter of immigrants of Indian descent from Mauritius and Kenya. She read law at Queens' College, Cambridge, where she chaired the university Conservative Association, and took a master's degree in European and French law at Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Called to the bar in 2005, she practised in public law and joined the Attorney General's panel of government counsel in 2010. After unsuccessful bids in Leicester East in 2005 and for the London Assembly in 2012, she was elected MP for Fareham in 2015. A Leave campaigner, she chaired the European Research Group of Brexit-supporting Conservative MPs and served as a junior Brexit minister in 2018, resigning over Theresa May's draft withdrawal agreement.

Boris Johnson appointed her Attorney General for England and Wales in February 2020; she took maternity leave in 2021 and returned to the post. After a failed bid for the Conservative leadership in 2022 she became Home Secretary under Liz Truss, resigned in October 2022 over a breach of the ministerial code, and was reappointed by Rishi Sunak days later. Her tenure was marked by the Rwanda asylum plan and controversy over her language on migration and protests, and Sunak dismissed her in November 2023.

Re-elected for Fareham and Waterlooville in 2024, she defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK in January 2026 and became the party's education spokesperson.