Politics Archives

Wednesday

2 February 2022

Boris Johnson’s position is still uncertain

Since the publication of Sue Gray's update on partygate a trickle of letters of no confidence have been sent to the 1922 chairman Graham Brady. Two of the senders have gone public – Tobias Elwood and Peter Aldous – while Charles Walker has said he would ‘applaud’ Boris Johnson if he resigned of his own accord. It’s worth noting that Aldous said one of the reasons he had submitted a letter of no confidence is that it became clear Boris Johnson has no intention of resigning. One MP who has submitted a letter tells Coffee House they are frustrated that many colleagues who want Johnson gone still appear to be expecting it to happen of its own accord: ‘There is never a good time to get rid of a leader’.

Katja Hoyer

Levelling up: don’t copy the Germans

‘Germany has succeeded in levelling up where we have not,’ Boris Johnson claimed back in July last year, when talk of pork pie putsches lay far off in the future. But as the government unveils its levelling up plans today, the promise of a German-style investment package is unlikely to materialise. And that’s probably a good thing. Germany’s economic and social reunification is not the miracle it is claimed to be. In many ways, East Germany and the left-behind regions of Britain have similar economic problems, if for different reasons. When the Berlin wall fell in 1989, East Germany’s largely nationalised economy was sold-out to private investors at breakneck speed. Industrial production fell by two thirds within the first two years.

Steerpike

Tory party away day is back on

The letters are mounting up and colleagues are on manoeuvres. So what better way for Boris Johnson to heal the tensions within his divided parliamentary party than by hosting a jolly-old away day? For this morning all Tory MPs have been invited by their Chief Whip Mark Spencer to attend such a gathering in Blackpool next month. It will be held the day before, and the morning of, spring conference in the seaside town and comes after a planned away day in the West Midland last month was cancelled due to the Omicron variant. Details of the Blackpool bash are yet to emerge but according to Spencer, it will be: 'An opportunity for us to exchange views and discuss party and political matters together.' Well, that's one way of putting it...

Steerpike

Pork pie plotters reunite at the Carlton

They always return to the scene of the crime. Less than a fortnight after the alleged ‘pork pie’ plotters met to discuss Boris Johnson’s future at the Carlton Club, several of their number gathered there again last night. But this time it was revelry, not regicide, on the agenda as a smorgasbord of backbench talent toasted the launch of the Global Britain Centre. Among the stars out in show was Australian High Commissioner (and Liz Truss bestie), George Brandis, loudly banging the drum for the recent Australia/UK/US defence partnership Aukus, as part of the self-described 'raucous sqwarkas Aukus caucus.

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s fightback has been cut short

Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the defence select committee, has this morning announced that he is sending a letter to the 1922 chairman calling for a no confidence vote in Boris Johnson. In a way this is not a surprise: Johnson cut Ellwood from the government when he became Prime Minister and the two are temperamentally very different. But the worry for No. 10 is that there are rather a lot of former ministers on the backbenches these days, and if a lot of them start writing letters then a no confidence vote will become a near certainty. Another concern for No. 10 this morning is whether they can live up to the expectations set in terms of the government’s change of direction and personnel.

Nick Cohen

Boris is dragging the Tories down with him

Tories occasionally like to pretend that they are not wasting their talents and lives defending a bottom-feeding demagogue. They lecture critics who damn Boris Johnson as a British Trump and tell us we have him all wrong. Fraser Nelson, my own editor here, once argued that, far from being a sponger and fraud, the Prime Minister was a liberal conservative, a centrist, indeed, who had absorbed and defeated populism. I wonder what Fraser thinks now. I wonder whether Conservative MPs and Conservative voters realise what Johnson is doing to them. All power corrupts, but Johnson’s power corrupts all who defend him. To maintain it, Johnson is screaming desperate lies at those who hold him to account.

Tuesday

1 February 2022

Steerpike

Five ways Boris might save his premiership

Boris Johnson doesn’t even like parties, by all accounts. He prefers to be left alone with women. Yet parties are killing him. His premiership seems horribly stuck in the news huis clos that is partygate: every time he thinks he’s out, those rule-breaking sessions in Downing Street pull him back in. His various stratagems aren’t working. The kicking-the-can ‘wait for Sue Gray’ approach only drags the crisis on. The sabre-waving at Putin over Ukraine isn’t doing much either. It’s all a bit complicated. The media and (let’s admit it) quite a lot of the public would rather gawp at party photographs and talk about how much we, the people who didn’t make the rules, sacrificed while they, the people who did, lived it large.

Steerpike

The SNP’s partygate deceit

For weeks now, much of Westminster has been in full hue and cry of Boris Johnson over partygate. While some of the PM's critics have legitimate grievances; others frankly, do not. Mr S has rarely seen a scandal spawn so much cant, humbug and windbaggery, as life-long opponents of the PM queue up to issue yet another demand for him to go. And what better embodiment of such self-righteous moralising than ardent Boris-basher, Ian Blackford? The SNP leader popped up at yesterday's Commons debate to play another game of Blackford bingo. All the usual buzzwords were there: 'public trust', 'shame', 'dignity'. Honour in public life – drink! Tory sleaze and corruption – have another!

Stephen Daisley

Sending a mean tweet about Captain Tom shouldn’t be a crime

Captain Tom Moore captured the nation’s hearts during the pandemic. The World War II officer completed 100 lengths of his garden at the age of 99 to raise money for NHS-related charities, attracting more than £30 million in donations and being knighted by the Queen. When he died last February, aged 100, the fond tributes and outpouring of sadness were universal. Well, almost. Glaswegian Joseph Kelly marked Captain Tom’s passing by tweeting a photograph of the veteran and the words: ‘The only good brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn’. Criminal patter should not land you a criminal record Undoubtedly these words were offensive: to British soldiers, the memory of Captain Tom, and the English language.

Katy Balls

Have Tory MPs forgiven Boris?

13 min listen

While Boris Johnson's performance in the Common's yesterday was seen broadly as tone deaf – thanks to comments about Jimmy Savile and drug-taking on the Labour front bench – he was given a chance to redeem himself at a private meeting with his party yesterday evening. 'One of my favourite questions was when one 2019 MP asked if they could reschedule the Parliamentary away day. This received a number of groans from politicians.' – Katy Balls. Today, the Prime Minister leaves the Westminster drama behind him as he embarks on a diplomatic trip to Ukraine. Isabel Hardman speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth about the mood in the Tory party.

Alex Massie

Boris must go!

Conservative sympathisers, Conservative voters and Conservative parliamentarians have a simple choice to make this week. Do they stand by a Prime Minister who besmirches his office and whose moral credibility diminishes a little more each day he remains, squatting, in Downing Street? Or do they, instead, accept the obvious reality that Johnson is not fit for the office he holds, draw the obvious conclusions from that recognition, and do the decent thing? For every Tory MP and cabinet minister who fails to act this week deserves to be judged themselves. These MPs might be weak or venal or cowardly or blind or simply stupid but they cannot claim to be ignorant. Those who fail to support this Prime Minister’s removal soil whatever remains of their own reputations.

Jake Wallis Simons

Whoopi Goldberg and the problem with progressive America

The Holocaust wasn’t about race because Jews are white. This is the through-the-looking-glass position in which progressive America now finds itself, via Whoopi Goldberg. This week, the Sister Act star used her weekly programme The View – which is watched by millions of Americans – to educate the public about the Nazi extermination of Jews. ‘Let’s be truthful about it,’ she said. ‘The Holocaust isn’t about race… It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about.’ When another panellist suggested that it was ‘about white supremacy’, Ms Goldberg – who is not Jewish, and whose birthname is Johnson – forcefully responded: The Holocaust was about race.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Pakistan’s Christians are living in terror

A Christian priest was shot dead by gunmen in Pakistan’s Peshawar town on Sunday. Pastor William Siraj was gunned down as he headed home from mass with two fellow priests, one of whom, Naeem Patrick, was also wounded. While no one has officially claimed responsibility for the attack, the killing – carried out by two men on motorbikes – comes amidst a rise in jihadist attacks in Pakistan. Most of the recent spate in jihadist violence is claimed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which last month orchestrated a gun raid at a check-post in Islamabad, the country’s capital. The Pakistani Taliban, and their affiliates, have been encouraged by the triumph of their Afghan counterparts in Kabul.

Steerpike

Did Keir Starmer fail to prosecute Jimmy Savile?

One of the stranger moments of yesterday’s drama in the House of Commons, following the release of the Sue Gray ‘update’, was Boris Johnson’s decision to summon the ghost of Jimmy Savile to defend himself against the partygate allegations. After being lectured by the Labour leader about his alleged lockdown dos, the PM hit back by suggesting that Keir Starmer as a former director of public prosecutions (DPP) had spent the majority of his time ‘prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can make out.’ Boris may have had a point about Keir Starmer locking up journalists (he was DPP when dozens were first arrested as part of operation Elveden).

Annabel Denham

Is Boris really serious about Brexit?

As the partygate furore rages on, Boris Johnson is retreating towards familiar territory: Brexit. A policy blitz is underway this week and the issue that guided him to power in 2019 has come first, with the announcement of a new Brexit Freedoms Bill. It will be brought forward to mark the two-year anniversary since we parted ways with the European Union. There are two flaws with Boris’s plan, however. First, recent polling found 46 per cent of Leave voters who backed the Tories in 2019 say he should resign, suggesting that Brexit doesn’t resonate in quite the same way as it did before the pandemic.

James Forsyth

Tory rebels are split over Boris

Those Tory MPs who want to oust Boris Johnson are not a single group. They come from all wings of the party and all intakes and would not agree on who should succeed him. This means there is no single view among them about the best way to proceed. But one of the most influential of their number tells me they have now come to the view it would be best to act after either the police investigation has concluded or the May elections, whichever comes first. Their argument is that, at this point, there would be the greatest consensus in both the party (and among Tory MPs) about the need for change. This would minimise the amount of poison the deed would inject into the Tory bloodstream.

Steerpike

Rosie Duffield’s Labour woes

Monday nights are rarely the booziest in Parliament but yesterday proved to be an exception. For Boris Johnson was up before the 1922 committee in the Attlee Suite — an ‘oddly appropriate setting,’ as one right-winger muttered to Mr S darkly. Highlights included veteran Telegraph columnist Chris Hope nearly being diverted into the room last night after security thought he was a Conservative backbencher, while actual MP and alleged 'pork pie plotter' Chris Loder was initially blocked. Despite looking ashen-faced with fear, and protesting that 'they won't let me in,' he was eventually escorted through. Inside the room itself, there was much excited chatter about the return of the Antipodean election extraordinaire Lynton Crosby.

Steerpike

Has Westminster cleaned up its act since the Owen Paterson scandal?

The enforced resignation of Owen Paterson in November certainly had its consequences. Boris Johnson's efforts to help the North Shropshire MP triggered a sleaze scandal, a Labour lead that the party is still yet to relinquish and the loss of a constituency which had been Tory for more than a century. But, two months on, how hard are the winds of change blowing through the corridors of Whitehall? Paterson's departure was triggered by declarations surrounding paid work consulting for Randox Chemicals. In the aftermath, a number of Tory backbenchers quit their second jobs, but not all those in this world appear to be following suit. For the release last week of updated transparency records show paid consultants are still working at the heart of government.

Monday

31 January 2022

Katy Balls

Inside Boris Johnson’s showdown with Tory MPs

After Tory MPs spent the afternoon laying into Boris Johnson over Sue Gray's summary of her report, the Prime Minister finds himself in a much more fragile position than when he started the day. Tonight he addressed Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 committee. Given Johnson's Commons appearance rattled MPs rather than improving relations, Johnson went into the meeting on the backfoot. The demand to hear the PM speak was so great that MPs arriving late were turned away. The demand to hear the PM speak was so great that MPs arriving late were turned away Johnson began the meeting by telling MPs he had a really torrid time in the Commons chamber and needed to do a better job of explaining how seriously he took Covid, given it did 'nearly kill me'.

Katy Balls

What does the Gray report mean for Boris?

14 min listen

The long anticipated Sue Gray report was finally published today albeit lacking significant chucks of detail. Following the report, Boris Johnson made a statement in the Commons. Though he apologised at the beginning, his tone did not seem particularly apologetic, which clearly riled a number of MPs across party lines. 'The discomfort among the Tory benches today was striking'- James Forsyth.But what will be the aftermath of the debate? And can Boris Johnson still come back from this?Listen to the full discussion on Sue Gray's report as Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.