Martin Luther King famously had a dream, that his four little children would one day be judged, not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character. Few of us have dreams, in either the conscious or unconscious sense, which can claim to even approach that level. I suppose I could describe my irritational hope that the government commits to building both the Northern Powerhouse Railway and the eastern leg of HS2 as a dream; but the more honest statement would be “I have a dream, that one day I have to retake my A-levels, and nobody bothered to warn me.” (That one’s surprisingly common.)
Suella Braverman’s dream struggles to rise even to that level. “I would love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda,” she told a fringe meeting at this week’s Tory party conference. “That’s my dream, it’s my obsession.” As dreams go, it reminds me of that one in which I’d committed a horrible crime and was awaiting my punishment. Only instead of waking up, shaking with guilt in a pool of her own sweat, the Home Secretary is instead cheerily alluding to it in a public place where everyone can hear her.
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