Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been dumped by one of her closest political allies for claiming child sex grooming gangs are ‘predominantly’ made up of British-Pakistani men.
Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland Minister who ran Ms Braverman’s Tory leadership campaign last year, is understood to have withdrawn his personal support for her in the wake of her much-criticised remarks in April.
Allies of Mr Baker, a senior eurosceptic, said he was unhappy with the attack on a specific minority ethnic group when official figures say white Brits are responsible in the majority of cases of child abuse.
Ms Braverman, seen as a leading right-wing candidate to become the next Tory leader, was speaking in the wake of cases in towns like Rotherham and Rochdale that were downplayed by local officials afraid of being branded racist.
She was widely criticised by Labour and Tory moderates including Baroness Warsi at the time. But Mr Baker would be first figure from right of the party to indicate disquiet over the outburst, which the Home Secretary has since defended.
One ally of the Northern Ireland Minister told MailOnline: ‘If she had said this is a problem predominantly carried out by white men in their own homes but that in some areas it was carried out by Pakistani men and covered up for political reasons that would have been fine.
‘But she has heaped shame upon innocent men. It is not that she is stupid but that she is unwise.’
