Suella Braverman

At the 2005 general election, Fernandes contested Leicester East, finishing in second place behind Labour's Keith Vaz.[19] She sought selection as the Conservative candidate in Bexhill and Battle, but was unsuccessful, and was eventually selected to be the Conservative candidate in Fareham.[20] Fernandes also sought election to the London Assembly at the 2012 Assembly elections, being placed fourth on the Conservative London-wide list.[21] She missed out, however, as only the first three Conservative candidates were elected.[22]

Fernandes was elected to the House of Commons as the MP for Fareham in 2015 with 56.1% of the vote and a majority of 22,262.[23] She gave her maiden speech on 1 June 2015.[24] 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.[25]

From 2015 to 2017, Fernandes was a member of the Education Select Committee and the Education, Skills and the Economy Sub-Committee.[26] Between November 2015 and February 2016, she was a member of the Joint Committee on the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill.[27] Fernandes chaired the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Financial Education for Young People from September 2016 to May 2017. Working with the charity Young Enterprise and the money-saving expert Martin Lewis, she led the APPG's inquiry into the provision of financial education in schools and launched its report, Financial Education in Schools: Two Years On – Job Done?,[28] which called for better financial education in schools. Fernandes was also a Commissioner on the Social Market Foundation commission on inequality in education,[29] a cross-party initiative which is examining the causes and effects of inequality in education at primary and secondary levels in England and Wales.

Fernandes joined the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme in 2016, graduating from the scheme in 2017.[30] Fernandes opened a Westminster Hall debate[31] in the House of Commons[32] on the failings of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and has chaired meetings with the Trust's executives along 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.[33]

Fernandes was a member of the panel of an inquiry, led by think-tank British Future, to examine how the government can protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK.[34] Fernandes campaigned to leave the European Union in the 2016 EU membership referendum;[35] a majority (55%) of votes in her constituency were for leaving.[36] She was Chair of the European Research Group, a pro-Leave group of Conservative MPs, until her promotion to ministerial office; she was replaced by Jacob Rees-Mogg.[37] Following the 2017 general election, Fernandes was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the ministers of the Treasury.[38]

During the January 2018 reshuffle, Fernandes was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union.[39] On 15 November 2018, Fernandes (now known as Braverman) resigned on the same day that Davis' successor, Dominic Raab, resigned as Brexit Secretary in protest at Theresa May and Olly Robbins's draft Brexit deal, which was released the day before.[40]

In March 2019, Braverman stated in a speech for the Bruges Group that "[a]s Conservatives, we are engaged in a battle against cultural Marxism." Her usage of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, an antisemitic conspiracy theory often employed by neo-Nazis and alt-right activists as a means of attacking Jewish people involved in politics, was condemned as hate speech by other MPs, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the anti-racist organization Hope Not Hate, among other anti-racist charities. Braverman dismissed that the term Cultural Marxism is an antisemitic trope, stating: "We have culture evolving from the far left which has allowed the snuffing out of freedom of speech, freedom of thought. [...] I'm very aware of that ongoing creep of cultural Marxism, which has come from Jeremy Corbyn."[41][42][43][44] After meeting with her later, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a subsequent statement that she is "not in any way antisemitic", declaring to believe she did not "intentionally use antisemitic language", while finding that she "is clearly a good friend of the Jewish community" and that they were "sorry to see that the whole matter has caused distress."[45]

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. She is the second female Attorney General, and the first Conservative female Attorney General.[46]

Braverman is chair of governors at the Michaela Community School,[47] and supports plans to create a free school in Fareham.[48] She sits on the advisory board of the New Schools Network, a charity which aims to support groups setting up free schools within the English state education sector.[49]

In a December 2015 op-ed, Braverman wrote that "In essence, rights have come to fill the space once occupied by generosity." She quotes Eric Posner's theories on what the Brazilian state sees as its right to use torture by "the police in the name of crime prevention. They justify this by putting a general right to live free from crime and intimidation above their rights of those who are tortured." She closes with:[50]

To correct the imbalance, perhaps we should adopt a Universal Declaration of Responsibilities and Duties, to be read in tandem with that on Human Rights? A fair, decent and reasonable society should question the dilution of our sense of duty, the demotion of our grasp of responsibility and our virtual abandonment of the spirit of civic obligation. What we do for others should matter more than the selfish assertion of personal rights and the lonely individualism to which it gives rise.