It’s time to take a break from homegrown wingnuts. Let’s cross the pond and meet the Tory Home Secretary who once denounced environmental protesters as “the coalition of chaos – it’s the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati.” And that is why Suella Braverman is malaka of the week.

I hate the word woke and the taste of tofu BUT I am a Guardian reader, so I guess she means people like me. It’s hard to tell with Malaka Suella: her jam is flinging baseless accusations in colorful language. The right-wing British media eat it up but her Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, cringes in private. After months of indecision, Sunak finally fired his mouthy ministerial colleague this morning. I applaud him even if it required my performing major surgery on this post. Oy just oy.

This post requires some exposition, so let’s back up. Home Secretary is the fourth highest ranking member of the British cabinet. They’re in charge of law enforcement, immigration, and internal security issues. It’s a job that calls for a steady hand, not flamboyant rhetoric. For good or ill, they often become Prime Minister; the Maybot DBA Theresa May is the latest and most disastrous example.

Back to Braverman. She’s been putting her foot in her mouth for years but as Home Secretary, her most extreme remarks make news; that’s how she likes it.

Here’s a brief survey of Suella Braverman’s malakatude via the Guardian:

She accused some academics of “cultural Marxism,” which is regarded as an antisemitic phrase in the UK.

She favors deporting immigrants to Africa calling it her “Rwanda dream.” Sounds more like a nightmare to me.

She’s been accused of racism for claiming that British Pakistani men were responsible for most “child grooming gangs” because of their ethnicity and cultural attitudes. There’s no evidence to support this.

She’s described pro-Palestinian protests as “hate marches” and has complained that the police are harder on rightist demonstrators than leftists. Say what? Once again, there’s no evidence to support these claims. Her attacks on the police were the final straw leading to her sacking.

She opposed providing tents to the homeless, “We cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.”

A lifestyle choice? Really? The malakatude, it burns.

Suella Braverman has proven that a woman of color can be as bigoted as a white person. It’s a dubious accomplishment but it’s hers.

It’s time to quote my favorite fictional British layabout, Onslow of Keeping Up Appearances fame:

Onslow’s lifestyle choice is to sit in his chair, watch the telly, drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and fire off zingers. I guess that’s okay because he’s white: Braverman seems to consider herself an honorary white lady despite her Indian heritage. She resents the current PM for being the first Asian Pacific Prime Minister, which is why she kept undermining him with her crazy commentary. It caught up with her today.

Ace Observer/Guardian pundit Andrew Rawnsley has a plausible explanation for Braverman’s malakatude in his latest column:

… a popular theory doing the rounds among Conservative MPs. They think that she is much less interested in being home secretary than she is in being Tory leader after the election defeat that looms over their party. Some even reckon she is conducting a deliberate campaign to goad the prime minister into sacking her. The idea being that she could then put distance between herself and her party’s defeat while projecting herself as a “martyr” to Tory activists. With them, she is quite popular. The ConservativeHome website runs a regular survey of how Tory members rate the cabinet. She is in the top five and 18 places higher than the prime minister. In its crudity and its flagrancy, her incendiary pose-striking is certainly consistent with what a politician would do if they wanted to establish themselves as the prime standard bearer of a belligerent, nationalist, anti-constitutional, authoritarian Trump-like right in a post-defeat Conservative party.”

That’s right. She wants to be the Tory leader who picks up the pieces after the deluge of defeat. There’s nothing worse than ambition-driven malakatude. The Prime Minister granted her wish this morning. And that is why former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman is malaka of the week.

The last word goes to Ben Folds:

INSTANT UPDATE: Former Prime Minister David Cameron is returning to the cabinet as Foreign Secretary. Cameron wore the malakatude crown of thorns in 2015.