Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Steerpike

Six times defecting MP Christian Wakeford attacked Labour

Defecting Tory MP Christian Wakeford did not mince his words in his letter to Boris Johnson, informing the PM of his decision to switch to the Labour party. 'You and the Conservative party as a whole have shown themselves incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves,' he wrote.  Wakeford is no stranger to criticising his fellow politicians: he famously called Owen Paterson a 'c***' in Parliament. The fledging Labour MP also made a habit of attacking Kier Starmer's party during his brief spell on the Tory backbenches. Here are six times Wakeford took a pop at Labour: Wakeford is no stranger to criticising his fellow politicians 'What we are seeing is a paradigm shift whereby the Labour party no longer represents those working-class communities.

Michael Simmons

Omicron is on its way out

Omicron peaked in England in early January, according to figures just released by the ONS. The estimates from the weekly infection survey show that cases in the UK peaked at around four million before falling. In the week ending 15 January, 1 in 20 had Covid in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and 1 in 25 in Wales. We shouldn't be surprised by this We shouldn't be surprised by this — this is how Omicron seems to go world over. As in Gauteng, as in South Africa, as in Lambeth, as in London and now in the UK: it falls almost as fast as it rises. Quite simply, the variant is so infectious that it quickly reaches levels of prevalence that are unsustainable because so many people have been vaccinated, infected and become immune.

Isabel Hardman

Red Wall Tory MP Christian Wakeford defects to Labour

In the past few minutes Boris Johnson's Red Wall has started to crumble in a more dramatic way than he thought possible. Christian Wakeford, the Conservative MP for Bury South, is defecting to the Labour party, having previously submitted a vote a letter calling for a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. Wakeford has been conspicuously unhappy with the leadership of his party for some time: he famously called Owen Paterson a c*** in the voting lobbies during the attempts to help him evade the standards regime that started the turmoil around Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Ross Clark

Ousting Boris Johnson now would be a mistake

There must come a time when even Beth Rigby starts to ask whether she is too fixated on a small staff party which happened nearly two years ago and not quite enough on the highest inflation rate in 30 years and the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But to be fair to Sky TV’s political editor – who herself was taken off air for three months last year for attending a party which broke Covid rules – she is hardly the only one. As well as every other media outlet pursuing the same story to the point of absurdity the story is being fed by a number of covens of Conservative MPs who are determined to use this opportunity to oust the Prime Minister.

Tom Goodenough

The Red Wall poll which suggests it might be curtains for Boris Johnson

Can Boris recover from the storm of partygate? The Prime Minister has pinned his hopes on being exonerated – or at least not entirely condemned – by Sue Gray in her investigation into Downing Street festivities during the pandemic. And yet, whatever she says, the writing might already be on the Red Wall for Boris.  Support for the Prime Minister has collapsed in those constituencies which handed Boris his 80-seat majority in the 2019 election, according to new polling. Labour now enjoys an 11-point advantage over the Tories in the Red Wall.  Crucially for the PM, the main reason given for many voters in turning their backs on the Conservatives are ongoing revelations about partygate. The poll of 518 people, conducted by J.L.

Steerpike

Tom Tugendhat’s leadership lunching

Roll up, roll up: the leadership game is afoot. Every Tory with a smidgen of ambition is out on manoeuvres, flashing their ankles like a Victorian courtesan. All the aspirant 'big beasts' are getting in on the act: Jeremy Hunt is doing interviews, Liz Truss is hosting drinks at 5 Hertford Street while Penny Mordaunt is getting glowing profiles too. Most privately expect to lose to the heir apparent, saintly Rishi Sunak, but hope in so doing that they grab a decent Cabinet post as a consolation prize. But if the sinking SS Boris takes down all its crew, there is a chance that fearful Tories could turn to someone untainted by the ancien régime. Someone decent, moderate and sensible, who represents the best in British conservatism.

Robert Peston

An omen of oblivion for Boris from a Tory MP

The Prime Minister revealed on Tuesday, during an interview with broadcasters, his testimony to Sue Gray, who he gave the mandate to investigate potentially unlawful parties held during lockdown at 10 Downing Street. 'This is what I said to the inquiry,' he confirmed. So what is his 'this'? His main claim – which his own MPs tell me is plain weird – is that he didn't do anything wrong in going to what in normal English would be called 'a party' on the evening of 20 May 2020 because 'nobody told me and nobody said this was something that was against the rules'. When he talked about the party, he talked about stepping out into 'that garden' – never 'my' garden. It sounded so odd.

Steerpike

Full list: the Tories calling for Boris to go

Boris Johnson is now facing the gravest peril of his premiership. A rising number of Conservative MPs have broken cover to publicly join calls for the PM to go, amid rising concern about what Johnson's survival means for their electoral prospects. So will the threshold of 54 Tory MPs – the number needed to trigger a vote of no confidence in Boris – actually be reached? Mr S is keeping tabs below... MPs who have submitted a letter to the 1922 committee chairman: 1. Sir Roger Gale MP: 'Enough is enough, a red line has been crossed' 2. Will Wragg MP: 'A series of unforced errors are deeply damaging to the perception of the party. The Prime Minister's position is untenable.' 3.

James Kirkup

Are sex offenders exploiting trans rights?

A few years ago, there was some controversy about the facts relating to people in prison who identify as transgender, and the proportion of those people jailed for committing sexual offences. The controversy started in 2018 when Fair Play for Women, a feminist campaign group, analysed English prison service data and estimated that 41 per cent of transwomen in prison were there for sexual offences. This conclusion was debated, often poorly, and disputed, unconvincingly, in several places. Four years on, this remains a heated, disputed topic. To some 'gender-critical' people, prisons are where the sex-gender debate becomes very real and very awkward.

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Will Red Wall MPs turn on Boris?

11 min listen

To keep Partygate alive, Dominic Cummings has released fresh accusations on his blog about Boris Johnson, who he claims knew about the parties taking place. The former chief advisor to the Prime Minister is prepared to swear under oath on this. As divisions in the Tory party are starting to show, a no confidence motion could be expected in days. 'There is a cat and mouse game where those loyal to the leader are trying smoke out potential rebels' - James ForsythAll eyes are on Keir Starmer for PMQs tomorrow.Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth.

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson vs the red wall MPs

Is anger dying down among Conservative MPs over 'partygate'? That was the suggestion overnight. But in the House of Commons today the opposite appears to be happening: MPs from the 2019 intake have been accused of plotting to oust Boris Johnson. One minister told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, a 'pork pie plot' is underway with Alicia Kearns — the MP for Rutland and Melton — among those who met today to discuss submitting letters (while Kearns's seat is not a red wall MP, many of the MPs involved are).  In response, Kearns has denied she is leading a rebellion. 2019 MPs are playing down talk of an official meeting and instead say various informal meetings are occurring organically. Organic or not, they are causing alarm in the Whips' Office.

Steerpike

Boris Johnson fails to Ghana support

It's not just MPs who are abandoning faith in Boris Johnson. The embattled PM appears to have alienated the entire state of Ghana in his latest efforts to save his faltering premiership. Last summer the Tory leader was all smiles with Ghanian President Nana Akufo-Addo, as the two joked around at the global education finance summit in London. But, in an attempt to throw some 'red meat' to restless Conservative backbenchers, Johnson has managed to damage relations with the influential West African nation. For today the Ghanian ministry of foreign affairs has issued a statement rebutting press reports suggesting that the country could process and resettle migrants which have arrived here illegally in the UK.

Alexander Larman

Will Jeremy Hunt be the next prime minister?

Since he was defeated by Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative leadership contest, Jeremy Hunt has had a quieter life as a backbench MP. He has campaigned for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from custody in Iran and has been an effective and interventionist chairman of the Health Select Committee, often calling out his own party over inadequacies in their response to the Covid crisis and NHS funding. But could he now be preparing for another shot at the top job? Now that partygate looks increasingly likely to lead to a change of leader, Hunt has told the House magazine that: ‘I won't say my ambition has completely vanished, but it would take a lot to persuade me to put my hat into the ring.

Steerpike

Boris’s defence: ‘Nobody warned me it was against the rules’

‘Let’s wait for Sue Gray’ have been the five words on every ministers’ lips this past week, at least publicly. But following Dominic Cummings’s explosive claims last night that Boris Johnson lied to parliament, the PM was forced to break his silence. On a visit to a London hospital this morning, the embattled premier was asked by Sky about what exactly happened on 20 May 2020 — the ‘BYOB’ event organised by Martin Reynolds, his principal private secretary. Johnson denied he knew anything about the event in advance and said he was not aware the shindig broke Covid rules: Nobody told me that what we were doing was as you say, against the rules. That the event in question was something that... wasn't a work event.

Steerpike

The Met Office’s bizarre forecasts

Now that the government has stuck its neck out and frozen the BBC licence fee, will its next target be the Met Office? Our national weather forecasting service – which derives most of its income from arrangements with government departments – is certainly not going out of its way to make friends in government with its latest ‘forecast’. The ‘UK Shared Socioeconomic Pathways’ professes to look ahead to the year 2100 and what effect climate change might have had on British society by then. It is produced by academics at the Universities of Exeter and Edinburgh, in association with a forecasting group Cambridge Econometrics but is funded by the Met Office as part of its UK Climate Resilience Programme.

Annabel Denham

How to fix the BBC licence fee

Nadine Dorries came out fighting over the weekend to declare it was time to discuss new ways to fund and sell the 'great British content' produced by the BBC. But it turned out she had little in the way of ammunition once she reached the Commons yesterday. There will be a two-year freeze in the £159 fee — a measure that will represent a real-terms cut in the corporation’s funding, but hardly the 'mortal threat' some alarmists have declared. In 2019–20, the BBC generated total income of £4.94 billion, of which £3.52 billion was public funding from the licence fee. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the BBC is expected to receive about £3.

Matthew Lynn

The real crisis that could finish the Tories

Endless drinking parties at No. 10. Expensive flat refurbishments paid for by someone else. And plenty of ambitious rivals jostling to take the crown. There are plenty of threats to Boris Johnson and to the Conservative party right now. But the real one is buried in the small print of the labour market report today. Real wages are starting to fall sharply. On the surface, today’s data from the Office for National Statistics was very encouraging for the government, especially at a time when very little has been going right for it. Despite the end of the furlough scheme, the partial closure of businesses during the latest wave and chaotic supply global supply chains, the British economy remains a formidable machine for creating new jobs. There are now 29.

Steerpike

Dominic Grieve wins (at last)

It doesn’t say much for this government that Dominic Grieve can run rings around them. An amendment drafted by the ardent Remainiac was just one of 14 defeats inflicted by the Lords last night as peers opted to torpedo Priti Patel’s flagship Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Cue a crowing press release from Grieve’s group Best for Britain, declaring victory.  The rare triumph for the Beaconsfield barrister is all the more sweet in light of another result which, er, doesn’t make for such good reading.

Robert Peston

The bombshell email that could spell disaster for Boris

I know who sent the email to Martin Reynolds on 20 May 2020 telling him the planned 'bring your own booze' party should not go ahead, though the sender tells me he does not want to be seen as agent provocateur against the Prime Minister and has asked me not to name him. Before I go on, I regard the evidence of this 'senior official' – as styled by Dominic Cummings in his blog yesterday – as compelling, because if it turns out he is lying he knows it will come out and he would be seriously damaged. The email was copied to an official in Reynolds’s office and to the PM’s then main aide – now estranged – Dominic Cummings.

Steerpike

Animal Sentience Bill rears its head again

So, here we are then. Despite a monstering in the Lords and near-universal condemnation across the press, the Animal Sentience Bill has reared its ugly head once more, returning to the Commons today for its Second Reading. The flagship legislation, which Mr S has covered extensively, is designed to protect helpless creatures and recognise they can feel pain by creating a new super-committee to judge the effects of government policies. Proposed amendments mean that shellfish are to be included; hapless ministers forced to defend them are not.