Suella Braverman has been met with jeers and chants during an appearance at the Oxford Union. The disgraced former home secretary was there to be interviewed in front of an audience. However, protests both outside and inside the venue quickly showed the disdain for Braverman.
Campaign group Oxford Action for Palestine released a statement reading:
The former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman is a known racist, Zionist, and xenophobe. We do not tolerate nor welcome any of her genocidal worldviews at the University of Oxford. The protest outside the Oxford Union is to remind the University that we, Oxford’s students and community, are disgusted by the invitations of genocidaires and are committed to holding the University accountable.
Suella Braverman: known racist
Protesters are seen chanting “Suella Braverman, you’re an embarrassment” and “refugees are welcome here”:
Why is the Oxford Union giving a platform to genocide enabler Suella Braverman: pic.twitter.com/4zItb1ay81
— PalMedia (@PalMediaOrg) March 13, 2025
Oxford Student reported on the following interaction:
Responding to a question posed by Union President Israr Khan on whether she believes multiculturalism had failed in the United Kingdom, Braverman began responding but paused her response and said regarding the protestors: “They are very annoying. Is it raining?”
Braverman may well find the protests annoying, but people in Oxford have demonstrated exactly the kind of reception Braverman deserves wherever she goes. One of the questions put to Braverman by the audience was:
Do you really think that you know better the experiences of Palestinians under occupation, to be able to say that Israel is not an apartheid state?
According to the Oxford Blue:
Braverman responded saying that Israel is one of the few democracies in the Middle East where “minorities are treated equally”. She asserted that Israel has a “right to exist” and a “right to defend itself”, and proceeded to label the current Labour government as “disgusting”, given their continued funding for UNRWA, an organisation she alleged is “complicit with Hamas”.
In October 2023, Braverman called Palestine protests “hate marches.” By November 2023, she was sacked. She has said that it’s her “dream” and “obsession” to deport refugees to Rwanda, maintained that Israel hasn’t violated international law, and, broadly speaking, demonstrated a persistent hatred and racism towards immigrants.
Braverman’s fantasy of Israel as some kind of utopia for minoritised people and her rhetoric of self-defence is so tired this far into Israel’s genocide that it’s barely worth explaining how she’s wrong. Instead, we’ll direct you to the fact that lobby group the National Jewish Assembly paid Braverman £28,000 for visiting Israel. And, following in the footsteps of fellow Conservative failure Liz Truss, Braverman has also been seen courting right-wing Americans with her desire to “make Britain great again.”
Freedom of speech
Naturally, after any event where protesters exercise their own freedom of speech, right-wingers are up in arms with claims that they’re worried about the “crisis‘ of freedom of speech. Well, fret not, friends. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that anyone is obliged to listen to anyone else’s opinion. Particularly if that someone has been sacked twice, gone out of their way to fuel hate campaigns against immigrants and refugees, and continuously spouts provable lies about the Israeli genocide.
Nobody is immune from the consequences of their speech. For Suella Braverman, that consequence is proving to be people disagreeing about her hateful rhetoric. Having built her political career on inflammatory statements, she can hardly be surprised when people are inflamed with anger.
Featured image via screengrab
