Conservatives

On New Year’s Eve at 11 p.m., the United Kingdom departed both the single market and the customs union, making the end to the country’s former membership of the EU complete. It was a moment to celebrate for Brexiteers; the commemoration of sadness for some Remainers. Or should I say 'Rejoiners' — there is no remaining now, Great Britain having departed the European Union. Many Rejoiners have set out their stalls already. ‘When they tell you to "move on" DO move on — to the long, strong, campaign to rejoin,’ tweeted Simon Schama, the historian and noted fan of the UK’s membership of the EU, ‘However hard the road, however long it takes; it starts now.

Keir Starmer has announced he is whipping his Labour MPs to vote for Boris’s Brexit deal in the House of Commons today. There are two likely reasons behind this decision: firstly, to make himself seem like a Labour leader who is a grown up, after Corbyn’s teenaged politics; secondly, to demonstrate that Labour accepts Brexit in order that it may win back Leave voters in red wall seats at the next general election. But there is a big problem with this calculation. While all of Starmer’s Brexit options are difficult ones, he may be about to enact the worst of the lot. A no-deal situation would have allowed Keir Starmer to claim that as prime minister he would be able to get the Brexit deal from the EU that Boris evidently could not.

Tomorrow will see the next flashpoint in the row between Conservative MPs and the government over the tiered system, with the publication of new allocations today, following a review of the restrictions. Backbenchers have been led to believe by ministers that there will be a more localised approach to the tiers, which is something they called for in the recent rebellion on the vote reintroducing the system. In conversations with individual MPs, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has accepted that the decision this week to split parts of Essex and Hertfordshire in order to put the areas with high infection rates into Tier 3 set a precedent for the rest of the country.

The terms of the Covid debate have changed markedly since Nigel Farage decided to re-enter the political arena after Boris Johnson's second English lockdown. Even with multiple vaccines coming on stream, we can still not rule out a third lockdown — but we can be pretty darned sure there won’t be a fourth. It’s not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end. So Farage and his chief lieutenant Richard Tice can no longer depend on anti-lockdown fervour alone to give them a flying start, despite the rebellious mood of Tory MPs. Could they, therefore, decide that discretion is the better part of valour and call the whole thing off, especially if there is no Brexit deal and Britain ends up going for WTO rules as they have called for?

Is Boris Johnson's government jumping from one crisis to the next or is No. 10's agenda progressing roughly as planned? It depends who you ask. After a difficult few weeks, there are plenty of Tory MPs who believe it's the former. Many of whom don't even feel the need to keep their grievances anonymous.  Charles Walker MP recently used an interview to complain that it was becoming 'increasingly difficult' for Tory MPs to defend government policy: 'too often it looks like this government licks its finger and sticks it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing'.

The government always knew it would have to expend political capital to get its planning reforms through. Making it easier to build houses was never going to be popular with Tories in leafy areas. The benefit of an 80-seat majority was meant to be the ability to push through difficult but important changes. The problem is, as I say in the magazine this week, that the government has been expending political capital on rather a lot of other things recently. Tory MPs are in a fractious mood, irritated by the number of U-turns, and opposition to planning reform is beginning to build up. One normally mild-mannered former cabinet minister tells me: ‘If you think A-levels were bad, wait until people get their heads round these reforms.

The last week has shown that Boris Johnson’s majority of 80 isn’t as big as it first appeared, I say in the Times on Saturday. Despite Boris Johnson throwing his full political weight behind Dominic Cummings, forty plus Tories still called for the PM’s senior adviser to go. The problem for No. 10 is that a majority of 80 ain’t what it used to be. It is, roughly, equivalent to a majority of 20-odd a generation ago, which is what John Major had in 1992. That the Tory majority is smaller than it first appeared has profound implications for how Boris Johnson governs. Every policy will now need to be tested against whether it can get through the House or not.

The idea of a flotilla of little ships crossing the English Channel from France to deposit their beleaguered human cargo safely on our shores was born in this country’s darkest hour during the second world war. To say that the method behind the success of the Dunkirk evacuation 80 years ago has been repurposed for the modern age is something of an understatement. These days the little ships are usually inflatable dinghies packed with desperate young men from Asia and Africa who seek to evade this country’s immigration laws. They land at various points between Dover and Hastings and – if undetected – many head for rendezvous points pre-arranged with people traffickers for onward transit to London and other major cities.

Here’s something Brexiteers might want to keep an eye on. While the country’s attention is welded to the Tesco delivery website, there are moves afoot to delay the Brexit negotiations. Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Centre, has called an extension of the transition period ‘an absolute must’ given the Covid-19 outbreak. He contends: ‘There will simply not be any bandwidth to focus on the negotiations, which require a delicate balance of give and take. In a situation with major healthcare challenges in the short- and long-term and economic challenges already requiring urgent action, there will not be enough political time and attention to successfully conclude this EU-UK agreement.

A slanging match has broken out between Nadine Dorries and the wife of a Tory MP. Dorries, who was diagnosed with coronavirus earlier this week, was criticised by Nevena Bridgen, the opera singer wife of Andrew Bridgen, who is currently in self isolation. Nevena Bridgen accused the health minister of putting her family at risk: ‘He can’t get the test now! I have the baby and a 75 years old mother jeopardised. You were treated but no one is coming to help us!’ https://twitter.com/NevenaBridgen/status/1238394617369956352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Dorries then hit back, saying that while the pair were in the same room, they were not close or even on the same table: https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1238421678411128832?

Since Sir Philip Rutnam resigned as the Home Office permanent secretary, alleging that Priti Patel had created a climate of fear in the department, the Home Secretary has kept a low profile and made no public comment. Today the government were forced to formally respond to the claims thanks to an urgent question from Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader asked why the Prime Minister defended Patel over the claims and called her 'fantastic', when if true the allegations would 'constitute a breach of the ministerial code'. Speaking for the government, Michael Gove put in a passionate defence of his colleague. He praised Patel as someone he had always found to be civil and co-operative. He said that the government would 'make no apology of having strong ministers in place'.