After the Channel 4 Tory leadership debate, Boris Johnson’s critics have been brought down to earth with a reminder that frontrunners can hoover up support even from sceptics, simply because they have an inevitability about them. Matt Hancock recently made a passionate case that a no-deal Brexit was ‘not an option’. Now he’s backing the man who kickstarted the whole race by vowing to take the UK out of the EU ‘with or without a deal’. Hancock was among Johnson’s harshest critics in this contest, swearing (in both senses of the word) the party needed a defender of Tory values (fuck ‘fuck business’) and a deliverer in government (‘I get shit done’). Now he’s ‘backing Boris’.
Yet in many ways Hancock is simply representative of all those modernising Tory MPs who are crossing their fingers that somehow the ex-foreign secretary is bluffing about his no-deal threats. They took heart from Johnson’s launch, where he said it was not his ‘aim’ and it was a mere ‘tool’ in negotiation. By contrast Dom Raab last night pitched more firmly towards no-deal saying he’d take us out ‘come what may’. About half of Hanock’s backers will now drift to Johnson, but a decent chunk will go to Stewart, a couple to Gove and not many to Javid, I’m told.
In his Times piece, Hancock talked of Johnson’s ‘unique personality’ and potential to unite his party and the country with a return to his modernising Mayoral ways, post-Brexit. Again, that sums up the views of the moderates who are currently holding their nose and opting for the favourite. They buy the theory that Johnson can de-fang the hardline Brexiteers and DUP with some kind of tweaked political declaration in May’s deal that gets through the Commons. If the number of European Research Group ultras can be kept to single figures, Labour Leave MPs can deliver the votes. So the theory goes.
That all may sound naive (especially the assumption the DUP will cave easily), but when you add in the raw ambition of your average MP who wants to keep on climbing the ladder of government, backing Johnson looks like the easiest (cynics say most cowardly) option. And even if it all fails and he has to somehow opt for a snap election, Johnson has persuaded sceptical colleagues he has the X-factor popularity vital to seeing off Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn.
Speaking of elections, Johnson told the weekend hustings of the National Conservative Convention that he would “take away the oxygen of Farage and the Lib Dems and then defeat Corbyn and his antiquated Labour party”. That sequencing suggested only by delivering Brexit could he call an election. Yet he also set hares running over a snap election when caught on camera saying he wanted to “get Brexit done and prepare for an election”. His team insist he means 2022. But that hasn’t stopped some MPs from speculating about the date of October 24 for a possible snap poll, the week before that October 31 EU deadline.
Last night’s debate saw no clear winner and in many ways it exposed the flaws of each of the participants. Gove looked frankly strange when he stared down the camera, Hunt often sounded uninspiring, Javid lacked eloquence, Raab seemed like a bystander and Stewart lacked any definitive plan. Still, each had strong moments and Hunt will be pleased he got the main soundbite that if Boris is too scared to face five Tory rivals how could he face 27 EU leaders.
The downside for the challengers is that even when he’s not present, Johnson dominates. With polls showing he can boost Tory fortunes, his allies will think that the image of ‘Snow White and the five dwarfs’ will be his most powerful weapon in this entire race. And when Johnson finally emerges for the BBC hustings tomorrow, his allies think it has been so overhyped that when he delivers a solid performance he will kill off the remaining negative (too chicken to debate) against him.
Running scared of scrutiny was something that dogged Theresa May in the 2017 election disaster. When there finally was a chance to scrutinise a major policy (the ‘dementia tax’), her campaign blew up spectacularly. And that’s the same pattern that some critics have detected for Boris. On The Week in Westminster on Saturday, Tory polling expert Robert Hayward warned there was a “striking parallel”. “I’m not sure that an idea of adjusting tax rates for £55,000 plus will not seem like social care in 2017,” he told me. “In [marginal seats] Plymouth, in Pendle, in Swindon, in Southport, there aren’t large numbers of people who earn above those figures. And it will sound like a policy for the rich.”
On Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last night, Liz Truss struggled to defend the costings of the Boris tax plan, failing to say how using cash earmarked for no-deal fitted with a willingness to push no-deal. Truss was also rinsed by Labour’s Lisa Nandy for her line that no-deal wouldn’t mean major pain for the 300,000 British EU exporters. Truss attacked ‘scare stories’, and seemed to blame companies for not getting ready for turbulence. “Clearly all of those businesses need to be signed up to the systems that make sure trade continues…government is prepared, the challenge now is for businesses to be prepared”. Nandy said she was talking ‘absolute nonsense’.
Johnson needs to be properly scrutinised on his tax plans and his no-deal plans. If he fails to turn up to our Lobby hustings arranged for today, maybe the 1922 Committee will try again to pin him down this afternoon. Here’s What Happens Next in the leadership process. Meanwhile, half a million people have signed an Age UK petition opposing the BBC’s scrapping of free TV licences for all over-75s - and demanding government takes responsibility for it again. If that were turned into a Commons petition it will add to pressure on ministers. Millions are facing an effective ‘TV tax hike’, while Johnson is proposing a tax cut for the better off. Bit of a gift for Labour, you’d say.
In Labour ranks, Brexit continues to stir passions and in-fighting. And Tom Watson clearly thinks now is the moment to press even harder for his party to campaign for ‘Remain’ in any referendum. This is a story that began with that visceral cheer that moved like a wave through the party’s conference after Keir Starmer uttered the R-word last September.
“The only way to break the political deadlock is to bring the public back into this decision and we must argue strongly to remain,” Watson will say in a big speech. “The majority of Labour people are supportive of Europe - and that support is not dictated by social class.” That last line sounded like a direct swipe at party chair Ian Lavery, who said recently that Remainers in the party were “left wing intellectuals” who were “sneering at ordinary people” in traditional Labour heartlands who voted for Leave.
The deputy leader thinks the only route out of this Brexit roadblock is a second referendum and Labour should set its satnav to Remain. Some Corbyn supporters still think the party could put a ‘jobs-first Brexit’ on the ballot paper too (if opposition to a no-deal exit is the one thing that unites Labour it’s hard to imagine the party agreeing a vote on one), though it’s hard to see how members would back that as the preferred option.
Kevin Schofield points out that a big Shadow Cabinet on Brexit due for today has been re-arranged to the usual weekly day of Tuesday. That will please Emily Thornberry, who had been due in Sweden today and couldn’t attend.
Watch Rory Stewart call for a different model of leadership in last night’s debate. Attacking ‘this great leader macho posture’ of his colleagues, he said “we’ve got to change our politics away from the ‘great me’ towards the ‘we’”. Whisper it quietly, but that sounded exactly like Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to being prime minister.
One thing that united all the Tory candidates last night was the attack on Corbyn over his remarks about Iran. Corbyn supporters say that being sceptical about US claims about intelligence (and demanding concrete proof) is healthy and sensible to avoid a needless fresh war in the Middle East. His enemies (within and without Labour) say it’s more evidence that his sympathies lie more with states like Iran and Russia than with long standing allies like the US.
Donald Trump seized on a Katie Hopkins tweet to attack Sadiq Khan over London’s knife murder rate. But another death overnight (near the Stratford venue of the Tory leadership debate), the fourth killing in three days, is a reminder that this problem is not going away. The BBC Beyond Today podcast has meanwhile found teenagers are being offered up to £1,000 by gang leaders in Liverpool to stab other youngsters.
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