Labour and Lib Dems call for ‘out of control’ Braverman to be sacked – live

Speaking in the Commons, former minister Sir Chris Bryant said: “The fact that only two Conservative MPs have turned up today to defend the Home Secretary I think shows that she has already lost the support of the House.”

He added: “The minister is absolutely right when he says there is no place for hate on our streets, isn’t the truth of the matter though there is no hate in the Home Office either, and the problem with the present Home Secretary is that she’s the person inciting hatred in this country.”

Defending Ms Braverman, policing minister Chris Philp said: “Politicians on both sides are perfectly entitled to hold policing to account, but of course this Government, and as the Prime Minister said, accepts the principle, indeed embraces the principle, of operational independence.”

Labour MP for Nottingham South Lilian Greenwood also criticised Ms Braverman, stating that her comments on policing were “deeply irresponsible”.

She said: “The Home Secretary’s incendiary and inflammatory comments ahead of what is going to be a really sensitive and complex policing operation for the met this weekend, is making their job even harder.”

Dal Babu, the former chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, said Suella Braverman’s remarks “would not be tolerated if they were said by a white woman”.

Mr Babu told Sky News: “Some of the things Suella Braverman is saying, as a brown woman, would not be tolerated if they were said by a white man, a white woman – some of the thing she has said about Pakistani men, some of the things she’s said about hate marches. I’m flabbergasted by some of the comments she’s saying.”

Led By Donkeys explain why the protest march on Saturday won’t be a “hate march” with a video monologue from Palestinian and British writer Ahmed Masoud projected onto the Houses of Parliament.

Speaking from the party’s front bench, Chris Stephens told the Commons: “A lot of discussion has focused on the Palestinian ceasefire march when the police are more concerned with counter protests by the far right … and football hooligans. Will the Government also be looking to cancel the 10 Premier League games scheduled this weekend.

“Will it look to cancel the City of London’s Lord Mayor’s Parade which overlaps the two-minute silence?”

“The ex-Met assistant commissioner said this morning that this is the end of operational independence in policing … saying it’s on the verge of behaving unconstitutionally.

“Does this not mean and represent that the Home Secretary is unfit for office and should be sacked today?”

Home Office minister Chris Philp said: “I don’t agree with the suggestion that operational independence is in any way compromised … politicians of both sides … are entitled to comment on matters of public policy and matters of public order.”

A Labour frontbencher has become the first to explicitly call on Rishi Sunak to sack Suella Braverman over her claim the Met police were bias and “playing favourites” in favour of pro-Palestine protesters.

Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, asked on Sky News whether the PM should fire the home secretary, said: “Yes, of course. Unless he has signed off on his views, unless they are his views as well.”

He added: “If you have a home secretary that is so out of control and so divisive, so inflammatory … that’s not somebody who should be home secretary.”

Asking an urgent question in the House of Commons on Thursday (9 November), the shadow home secretary said: “Does this Government still believe in the operation independence of the police, and how can it do so while this Home Secretary is in post?”

It comes after the Home Secretary wrote in the Times claiming Islamists were using Saturday’s march to express “primacy” and compared it to extremist rallies in Northern Ireland with links to terrorism.

Ms Cooper said: “Well, where is the home secretary?” She also mocked stand-in Chris Philip for “refusing to repeat her words”.

Mr Philip said Ms Braverman was with a close family member having a hospital operation.

Labour’s Yvette Cooper said Suella Braverman’s claim of bias was an attempt to “rip up the operational independence of police” and was “attacking their impartiality in the crudest and most partisan of ways”.

Ms Cooper said the home secretary was “deliberately undermining respect for the police”, was “deliberately seeking to create division” and was “deliberately inflaming community tensions in the most dangerous way”.

She added: “She is encouraging extremists on all sides. It is highly irresponsible and dangerous and no other home secretary would ever have done this.”

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We know what she is doing. Claiming homelessness is a lifestyle choice or picking a fight with police to get headlines.

“The job of the home secretary is to keep the public safe not to run an endless Tory election campaign.”

She asks junior Home Office minister Chris Philip standing in for Braverman if Rishi Sunak agrees with the article.

She said: “Either the PM has endorsed this or he is too weak to sack her.

“If he cannot get a grip on her conduct then it means he’s given up on serious government and he and the home secretary should both let someone else do the job.”

Comparisons with the 1930s are lazy, says John Kampfner. But on the anniversary of the brutal Nazi pogrom Kristallnacht, and in the shadow of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, he travels to Berlin to talk to a Holocaust survivor’s son who is shocked by the rising tide of violent antisemitism in Germany and across Europe.

Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has asked the home secretary Suella Braverman to explain her thoughts on the operational independence of the police in parliament after her shock comments on bias.

But Ms Braverman has failed to show up in the Commons for the urgent question.

Answering for her, the junior Home Office minister Chris Philip said: “It is also right that the police are operationally independent of government.

That is a fundamental principle of British policing.”Ms Cooper said: “Well, where is the home secretary?” She also mocked Mr Philip for “refusing to repeat her words”.