AS a learner driver who has, on more than one occasion, been described as “dangerously cautious” by a driving instructor, the concept of speeding is alien to me.

With every lesson, my goal is to edge a little bit closer to the speed limit than I managed the previous week. Weirdly, I find this much easier on 60mph roads than 30mph ones – where my comfort zone seems to hover somewhere around snail pace.

But I’ve been told by both my instructor and experienced drivers that it’s easy to accidently go slightly faster than you intended and be caught by a speeding camera. That is something I’ll have to be mindful of if I ever master how roundabouts work and pass my test.

Suella Braverman apparently has no such case of the nervous nellies. The Home Secretary was caught speeding last year. As a penalty, she had to either attend a speed awareness course or accept three points on her licence. So far, so normal.

But then Suella Braverman decided that she was too high-profile and important to attend a group course alongside ordinary people. She tried to organise a special, one-to-one course through civil servants.

READ MORE: Suella Braverman's team denied speeding ticket six weeks ago

According to the Sunday Times, she cited “security concerns” as a reason why she should get special treatment. The civil service, rightly, told her this wasn’t a matter for them and the course provider told her a private course simply wasn’t an option.

It was at that point that Braverman opted to accept the points, rather than face the embarrassing publicity that would have come when it inevitably got out that she’d been forced to attend a session at safe speed school.

Best-laid plans and all that. Braverman now faces a potential investigation over accusations that her shenanigans broke the ministerial code.

Newspapers over the weekend were full of furious condemnation from opposition parties.

Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said Braverman’s actions suggest “she has tried to abuse her position to get round the normal penalties so it is one rule for her and another for everyone else”.

Alistair Carmichael said Braverman “should be urgently investigated by the ethics adviser and add her name to the near-endless list of ministers who have had to undergo the same”.

What a mess.

It’s a very Tory phenomenon, this ability to get yourself in deep trouble while avoiding moderate trouble. If Suella Braverman had been caught speeding and accepted punishment without trying to interfere, few of her opponents would have batted an eyelid.

Politicians from all parties have at various times fallen foul of driving laws. First Minister Humza Yousaf was caught driving without insurance in 2016 while he was transport minister.

At the time, the then Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw said: “We don’t believe this is a resignation matter. Anyone could have found themselves in this situation, due process has been followed, Mr Yousaf himself has apologised, and we should move on.’’ What matters here is not so much the offence itself, but the blatant abuse of power involved in the handling of it.

Rishi Sunak’s response to this whole debacle has thus far been as weak as you would expect. He was asked about the reports during a press conference at the G7 summit in Japan.

In response to the repeated questions, he offered a terse, “Do you have any questions about the summit?’’ before going on to say that he didn’t know the “full details” but he understood that Braverman has “expressed regret for speeding, accepted the penalty and paid the fine”.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Sunak promised that, as prime minister, his government would be one with integrity and accountability at its heart. When making that promise, he was relying on a somewhat optimistic assessment of the strength of his own position.

Moving one of the darlings of the right-wing to the back benches would be a huge risk for Sunak, at a time when the sharks are already circling.

The National:

If he does announce an investigation into whether Braverman broke the ministerial code, or if he sacks her or pressures her for a resignation, it will be because he has decided that deep trouble is better than deeper trouble.

Keeping her is a risk but cutting her loose is too. A strong prime minister would be free to make decisions based on what is right, or what is in line with previous promises about integrity in politics.

Sunak is not a strong prime minister. He is a caretaker whose only focus is on cleaning up the mess of his colleagues and hoping they don’t move to replace him with somebody they think would do a better job.

Braverman felt comfortable trying to game the system to her own advantage because she knows her Prime Minister can’t act against her without also causing damage to himself.