LONDON. Another blow to the British Prime Minister Liz Truss suggests Home Secretary Swella Braverman’s departure from the government scheme yesterday afternoon. A day earlier, Parliament had passed a highly controversial Braverman bill criminalizing certain demonstrations.

Her departure is not related to this law, but to the discovery that she was disposing of a secret document from her personal mobile phone, violating security protocols. In her resignation letter, Braverman admitted that she had made a mistake and should resign, implying that Prime Minister Truss did not do the same despite her own mistakes. “Pretending that we didn’t make a mistake and hoping that everything will magically fix itself is not serious politics. Wrong, I take responsibility, I resign,” he wrote, criticizing Liz Truss on the right. “I’m worried about the direction of this government, I’m worried about whether it will fulfill its program,” he stressed. Braverman criticized Truss not because the prime minister had announced economic measures that nearly bankrupted Britain’s pension funds, but because, under pressure, she returned them and fired Treasury Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.

She was replaced by 54-year-old Grant Shapps. With this selection, Liz Truss sends a signal of unity after Grand Sapps backed former Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader. Shapps served as Minister of Transportation in the government of Boris Johnson.

After 43 days in office, Braverman became the shortest-serving Home Secretary since the Duke of Wellington in 1834. The Public Order Act she passed to complete the work of her predecessor, Priti Patel, is also out of date. The law is meant to stop protests like the Extinction Rebellion protests that are trying to draw public attention to climate destruction by blocking roads and other critical infrastructure.

The blow for the British prime minister was the removal of Swella Braverman after it was revealed that she operated on a confidential document from her mobile phone.

“From now on, Britain ceases to be a democracy,” comments George Monbiot, a journalist for the Guardian newspaper, describing the most extreme provisions of the law. British police are being given the right to require those who have taken part in such protests over the past five years to report regularly to police stations and even wear an electronic tracking bracelet.

A broad alliance of civil liberties, human rights, the environment, children, and more. pointed out that the law “obstructs our efforts to hold the government accountable”. Some Conservative MPs did not vote for him, arguing that he was moving away from the liberal British tradition, and Amnesty International noted that the restrictions he imposes on people, even without a criminal record, do not even exist in Putin’s Russia.

Mining

Meanwhile, last night three Conservative MPs were due to vote on a Labor proposal to ban hydraulic fracturing. The method is highly unpopular because of the earthquakes it causes in the only region of the country where it is used, and also because of the risk of groundwater contamination. Thras made it clear that a “yes” vote on the Labor proposal was tantamount to being expelled from the caucus.