LRN No.9: Suella in a feather boa

warning: contains young Braverman

I was at university with Suella Braverman. She was called Suella Fernandes then. She was one of the least memorable people in my college - a silly person who studied law, took no interest in what anyone else was studying, got drunk and occasionally wore a purple feather boa. She had a very loud laugh. No one paid her much attention, back then.

This was in the days before social media and digital cameras, but I have our yearbook. Her page is too dull to post in full here. (I would, if there was anything interesting in it.)

The last line of her entry is “Most probable future career - Leader of the Opposition.” It was written back in the heyday of New Labour and Blairism, when the Conservatives were an unelectable joke. That last line was also a joke. The idea that one day she could be queen of the jokers was a punchline.

Who’s laughing now? Few people make me properly angry, but Suella did this week, with her appalling comments about the homeless, the protests and the police. Three in a week is a lot, but it’s fairly typical stuff. She wilfully lies about grooming gangs and “invasions” of migrants. She “dreams” of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. She does this on purpose to make me angry, because I am a card-carrying member of the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati.

People say she’s doing this to make Rishi Sunak angry too, so he’ll sack her and she can can launch yet another leadership bid. I doubt that she’s canny enough to plot like this, given that she doesn’t even know which side is which in Northern Ireland. Maybe she just wants to become a GB News presenter.

If I could fly back in a time machine to the college bar 25 years ago and tell people that Suella made it to Home Secretary, everyone would be agape. Perhaps it’s better we didn’t know we’d be graduating into a world where someone so unremarkable, so calculating, so deliberately divisive and unpleasant, can rise to such heights. Such is the banality of evil, I guess.

Speaking of banal - I have joined Instagram. (I did tell you I was a late adopter.) I have no idea what I’m doing there, so if you’re there please find me and keep me company.

Things that have caught my eyes and ears:

• Mercury Prize winners Ezra Collective at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday, which was unabashed joy

• Hugo Rifkind’s brilliant and though-provoking column on how British Jews should be wary of illiberal allies - Suella, take note

• Sam Bankman-Fried being found guilty of one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, which meant I had to make some last minute changes to my book

• The Bikram documentary, a dark and sweaty insight into a secular religion and a repulsive man