Yes, it’s nearly all over folks. Tory party members have until 5pm today to return their ballots in the leadership election. And, barring tens of thousands of the rank and file hand-delivering last-minute Jeremy Hunt votes, it looks like Boris Johnson will emerge victorious when the formal announcement is made tomorrow.
Already the focus is on later this week and the first task Johnson faces is an instant stop-gap reshuffle on Wednesday night as key Cabinet posts will need filling. Philip Hammond yesterday confirmed on Marr that “I’m not going to be sacked, because I’m going to resign before we get to that point”. The Chancellor said he would quit minutes after Theresa May’s final Prime Minister’s question time. To steady the markets, a swift replacement would be announced once Johnson is in No.10, I’m told. Other appointments will follow on Thursday and later in the week.
Today is also Johnson’s final £275,000-a-year Daily Telegraph column before he takes a cut in income for the prime ministerial salary of a ‘mere’ £79,990 (on top of his MP salary of £79,468). He is clearly anticipating he’ll be strapped for cash, if the Mail on Sunday splash is correct that he’s asked for taxpayers to fund his new bed and other furniture in Downing Street (he doesn’t have any ‘stuff’ since he left his wife, apparently).
At least the Telegraph has been treated to a classic, final Boris column, in which he declares that if the US can put a man on the moon, the UK can darned well sort Brexit. “If they could use hand-knitted computer code to make a frictionless re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere in 1969, we can solve the problem of frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border,” he writes. Twitter had fun last night pointing out the difference between real moon landings and fake Brexit promises.
But if Brexit is ‘a column that went wrong’, this latest article suggests a Johnson premiership will be the apotheosis (or nadir, according to your taste) of the concept of commentator-as-PM. Focus on the big picture, stay optimistic and it’s all a matter of political willpower. Faced with all those pesky questions as to why he will succeed where May failed, Johnson’s answer is simple: because I’m a Be-Leaver. Priti Patel (tipped for a return to Cabinet) tweeted yesterday that “at long last, will have a Prime Minister who believes in Britain”. Rory Stewart’s ‘believe in the bin’moment already seems a long time ago.
As for the biggest Brexit detail of all, the Northern Irish border, Johnson’s campaign chief Iain Duncan Smith signalled yesterday that he will play hardball. “[May’s] deal as it stands right now is dead and there’s no point in trying to fiddle or twiddle it,” he said. Ramped up no-deal planning, rather than shuttle diplomacy, will be Johnson’s first act, we’re told.
Defence minister Tobias Ellwood told Sky’s Sophy Ridge yesterday that PM Boris could indeed quit with no-deal but then would have to “crawl back literally moments later” to ask the EU27 for emergency arrangements on citizens’ rights, border queues and financial services. The ‘collision with reality’ (copyright, A.Rudd) would swiftly follow.
Johnson’s critics warn that this all proves that Brexit is an act of faith, not of evidence-based policy, and that a government relying on belief is heading for the rocks. Yet there’s a reason that religion has lasted thousands of years: it endures. And while many think Johnson underestimates the problems ahead, some of his oldest political foes think many people underestimate the man himself.
Ken Livingstone’s former chief of staff Simon Fletcher (who twice tasted defeat in London at Johnson’s hands) wrote this weekend: “Underestimate him at your peril. What we may think of as his weaknesses can be strengths.” From not answering the question, to changing his mind like an amnesiac newspaper columnist, to focusing on the sunlit uplands, that verdict may not be wrong.
In the very week that we get a new Tory PM, Labour is desperately trying to sort out its own internal warfare over anti-Semitism. This afternoon the shadow cabinet meets, then Jeremy Corbyn addresses the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) before the summer recess, then tomorrow the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) convenes to sign off any new proposals to deal with anti-Jewish conduct.
Deputy leader Tom Watson and other members of the NEC last week drafted their own solutions, including automatic expulsion and an independent complaints process. But as I report HERE, Corbyn will table his own menu of options today. Among them could be a plan that I’m told Jon Lansman strongly backs: fast-tracked expulsion in the most severe and clear-cut cases. This would entail giving NEC panels unprecedented power to expel, rather than hand to the NCC disciplinary body that can take years to resolve individual cases.
Labour peers are still furious at the sacking of Dianne Hayter last week. And many MPs and Lords are hopping mad at former chief whip Hilary Armstrong’s local party voting for a motion to kick her out of the party in retaliation for her criticism of Corbyn. The great irony is that Armstrong once urged Blair to pull the whip from Corbyn (and possibly deselect him) years ago for his serial disloyalty, but Blair said the party had to remain a broad church. The departure of popular frontbencher Gloria de Piero has depressed many in the PLP too. Peers will almost certainly today trigger a no confidence vote in Corbyn (with a result on Wednesday). Let’s see if Gordon Brown this morning interrupts his Brexit thoughts (he has a Q&A) to speak out on all this.
Add to all this the latest Times YouGov poll of party members showing only 56% think Corbyn should lead the party into the next election. In March last year, that figures stood at 74%. The Labour leader finally got on the front foot yesterday, unveiling new measures to combat anti-Semitism, but even some of his supporters think that was years overdue. And as with Brexit policy, any new rules on anti-Jewish abuse will probably only get approved by party conference - which is more than two months away. If, as expected, Boris Johnson survives a no confidence vote this week, it could be Corbyn who once again has his own summer of discontent.
Theresa May is still in power, people, believe it or not. This morning at 10.30am she chairs a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee to discuss the latest stage of the Iran oil tanker crisis. Jeremy Hunt has a statement in the Commons later and it will be interesting to see how Labour handles it. If Emily Thornberry is fit enough (as we reported on Friday, she was hospitalised by a bike accident in Parliament Square), expect her to accuse Hunt of walking straight into the trap laid by Iranian hardliners.
In fact that’s more or less what Hammond PPS Huw Merriman said on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last night. “We have dropped the ball here,” he said. “We did not put in place a chain where we asked all of our vessels to leave at a certain time under convoy, or work with the U.S. to make sure that we had a wider coalition of convoy. So it was hardly a surprise when one of ours got taken.” Hunt’s been telling us for weeks that unlike Boris Johnson he’s a details man, so he’s got a job on his hands. (The Sun reports his attacks on Johnson may be rewarded with a sacking, by the way, if the leadership victory margin is overwhelming tomorrow).
Labour may also try to accuse the Tories of just cutting too much during the austerity years too. Corbyn scored hits at the last election on police cuts, but making political capital out of defence cuts is harder. Nevertheless, Labour’s Carolyn Harris said last night: “We can’t escort our ships because we haven’t got the resources to escort them….I’d like to think that we would be building up, not just the Royal Navy, but the Air Force and the Army, because they are depleted and we do need to be building up our armed forces.”
Watch this cat get sent into another dimension thanks to some spooky lightwork.
Shocking scenes overnight in Hong Kong, where gangs of masked men have beaten up pro-democracy protestors. Although they’re said to have links to organised crime groups, the lack of police intervention is sure to spark suspicions that this is Beijing biting back with shadowy thugs loyal to the Communist regime.
Normally at this time of year, we’d all be easing ourselves into recess not with new prime ministers but with summer madness stories about animals. So bravo to the BBC’s Today prog for keeping it real with a report from Cornwall on the plague of seagulls, and how one Yorkshire woman now wears a colander on her head to keep the birds away.
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