Suella Braverman has been accused of being "out of control" after she published an inflammatory article without Rishi Sunak's permission accusing the Metropolitan Police of applying a "double standard" over its policing of protests.
Writing in The Times, the home secretary once again branded pro-Palestinian demonstrators as "hate marchers". Their protests, she said, are "an assertion of primacy by certain groups – particularly Islamists – of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland".
Asked on Thursday morning if Downing Street had approved the text in advance, the prime minister's spokesperson said: "It was not cleared by No.10. We are looking into what happened in this instance around the op-ed."
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That admission is in itself "unusual", said The Guardian's Andrew Sparrow, as "Downing Street routinely dodges questions like this by saying that it does not comment on process". Sparrow suggested "that Braverman's position is increasingly tenuous".
In the article on the row over the upcoming Armistice Day protests, Braverman claimed there was "a perception" that senior officers in the Metropolitan Police "play favourites when it comes to protesters", with right-wing groups "rightly met with a stern response", while "pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored".
Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper described Braverman as "out of control" in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Cooper described the article as a "highly irresponsible, dangerous attempt to undermine respect for police at a sensitive time". She added: "No other home secretary of any party would ever do this."
"For any public figure to question the integrity of the police would be incendiary," said the BBC's political editor Chris Mason. "For the home secretary to do it is astonishing."
"Is Suella Braverman trying to get herself sacked?" asked Jason Groves, the Daily Mail's political editor. While it might sound like an "absurd" question, it is one that is now "being asked increasingly at Westminster" in the wake of several provocative statements.
Some No.10 figures are wondering whether Braverman is "goading" Sunak into sacking her "in the hope that martyrdom would cement her position as the darling of the Right in a leadership contest that could come as soon as next year", said Groves. Her friends, however, insist she is "simply reflecting the views of a 'silent majority' who are too often ignored at Westminster".
And it is an approach that has "certainly worked to boost her profile" among the grassroots Tory activists who will pick the next Conservative leader. Polling by Conservative Home suggests her net approval rating among activists has jumped from 21.6% to 43.5% this month, "bringing her closer to leadership rival Kemi Badenoch", said Groves.
Others on the right wing of her party take the opposite view, claiming that Braverman's "headline-grabbing interventions were designed to make her unsackable". Conservative MP Esther McVey told the Mail: "It's not a great platform to go forward to be leader having been sacked, because you get sacked because you're not doing your job properly.
"If you really did want to be leader, what you'd be doing is resigning on a principle."
What next?
While Braverman's motivations have left her colleagues and the media scratching their heads, so have some of the finer points of her article in The Times.
Her reference to marches in Northern Ireland has been called "offensive and ignorant" by one government official, said Politico, and there are "growing calls for her to clarify what she means".
David Blevins, Sky News' senior Ireland correspondent, wrote on X: "Whether this is aimed at Protestant Loyal Orders or the Catholic Civil Rights Movement, it demonstrates breathtaking ignorance re. Northern Ireland's history."
"This morning the question of Suella Braverman's future was primarily one of language," wrote Henry Zeffman, the BBC's chief political correspondent, on X. But if it emerges that the Times article was published without the say-so of No.10, it is "a more straightforward question of how Rishi Sunak wants to respond to insubordination", continued Zeffman.
But any attempt from Sunak to remove Braverman in a future reshuffle is a huge risk for the prime minister, said Rachel Wearmouth in The New Statesman. In that scenario, Sunak would soon find himself at odds with "a powerful enemy on the backbenches, and one who has made no secret of her ambition to take his job".
