The 313th and final MP to vote in yesterday’s third round ballot of the Tory leadership race was a certain Gavin Williamson. It was a telling moment of closure, as Boris Johnson’s de facto chief whip had spent the afternoon like a sheepdog (part-wolf, part-pet) guiding his flock into the pen of Committee Room 14. Only once the last straggler was secured did he enter the voting booth himself.
Yet again, the Johnson whipping operation was ruthlessly efficient. Once again, his numbers man Grant Shapps had presented the former foreign secretary with a sealed envelope containing the predicted number of supporters. After the vote, it was opened to reveal the exact number that had turned out to back him: 143. This wasn’t the scattergun blunderbuss approach of 2016, this was precision bombing.
Rory Stewart claimed he had suffered from ‘the dark arts’, with his own numbers going backwards after being lent votes in the previous round to kill off Johnson’s main Brexiteer threat, Dominic Raab. Stewart - or should we call him Spidey? (see below) - could get his revenge by telling his troops to vote for Michael Gove today. The international development secretary revealed on ITV’s Peston last night “I’ve been getting texts like you wouldn’t believe” from Gove supporters pointing out their common cause - and common enemy.
In the fourth round of voting, few expect Sajid Javid to pick up any Stewart backers and both the Spectator and the Times suggest he may secure his dream job of Chancellor. That’s not a bad consolation prize for a guy who squeaked through the second round. It means the only interesting game in town is whether Jeremy Hunt can fend off the challenge from Gove in the fifth and final ballot. The prospect of Gove, the man who jointly led Vote Leave with Johnson only to backstab him weeks later, sharpening his knife once more could revive flagging interest in the entire race.
Though he won’t want to come backwards, Johnson has such a big lead that he may think he can spare the numbers to again try to ‘game’ who comes second. Many Stewart supporters are both arch Remainers and government loyalists and should be natural Hunt allies, yet Gove’s greater popularity among the grassroots could be the deciding factor in working out who’s the best anti-Boris candidate. To head off the Gove threat, will TeamBoris really ‘lend’ votes to Hunt, the man some of them call ‘TIT’ (‘Theresa in trousers’)?
Hunt backer Amber Rudd told the Today programme she was not ‘resigned’ to Johnson winning: “We haven’t seen very much of Boris…there is a lot of opportunity here”. This was about the best PM “not just the best campaigner” she said. That felt like an admission that the foreign secretary was not as good a vote winner as Johnson. Rudd seemed to be telling the 160,000 Tory party members ‘Wake up sheeple!’ It’s not clear they’re listening.
Philip Hammond really isn’t going down without a fight. Tonight, he will use his Mansion House speech to effectively warn Boris Johnson that he will have to call a general election or a second Brexit referendum if MPs block no-deal. “If the new prime minister cannot end the deadlock in parliament, then he will have to explore other democratic mechanisms to break the impasse,” he will say. “Because if he fails, his job will be on the line – and so, too, will the jobs and prosperity of millions of our fellow citizens.”
Meanwhile, there was a pretty intense shadow cabinet meeting yesterday aimed at ‘evolving’ Labour’s position on a second referendum. What was most notable to some present was John McDonnell really pushing hard for a ‘referendum-and-remain’ stance already outlined by Keir Starmer. Other Corbyn loyalists like Richard Burgon and Barry Gardiner now think a fresh vote is the only way to stop a Tory no-deal. Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett are still unhappy but seem resigned to their leader preparing the ground for a new statement next week.
Everyone in the room was fascinated by Corbyn himself revealing that he recently been reading a biography of Harold Wilson, the former Labour PM who healed the party with a ‘unity referendum’ in 1975. Wilson allowed different wings of the party to express different views, with his hero left-winger Tony Benn on the anti-Europe side, and then managed to unite his government afterwards.
Corbyn is expected to consult trade union leaders formally early next week and then make a speech announcing his ‘clearer’ stance. Will he go as far as to say he’d campaign for Remain, or will he just restate the public-vote-on-any-deal line? Some believe he will do the former. The tactic of going to the shadow cabinet then unions and then making a speech was used previously when Corbyn shifted to support a customs union earlier this year.
Theresa May will head to her final EU summit this afternoon, so will hand her proxy vote for the Tory leadership to 1922 committee acting co-chairman Charles Walker (No.10 told us even May’s husband won’t know how she votes, but Walker will now carry that secret to his grave). In Brussels, May will get tea and sympathy as well as a reminder that the EU really has other things to worry about than Brexit.
We are expecting a mere five-minute update on Brexit during the summit tomorrow morning, though the BBC reports that French President Emmanuel Macron may use the moment to grandstand about no-deal being better than dragging on the uncertainty beyond November. Dutch PM Mark Rutte, who told Today ”I’m a certified Anglophile”, said “Britain will be diminished by Brexit”. Expect all the EU leaders arriving today to warn Boris Johnson that they will never reopen the withdrawal agreement.
Speaking of which, don’t forget that it’s not just Tory Brexiteer MPs who have the fate of the new PM in their hands. The DUP’s confidence and supply deal will be the first thing in the in-tray of the next Conservative leader and they are insistent that the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’ has to be changed. One source told HuffPost yesterday what their message to Johnson would be: “All we want is the backstop done away with, or make it time-limited in a legally binding way. If you do that then we are honourable people, we will honour you.” They haven’t gone away, you know.
The everyday racism black people suffer at the hands of the police in the US is truly depressing. Watch this latest example: a pregnant mother’s treatment after her 4-year-old allegedly took a doll from a store.
Rory Stewart’s legend has grown once more after a Tory researcher revealed he had climbed into his fifth-floor Commons office through an outside window, Spider-man stylee. Charlotte Leach said: “He had somehow managed to scale the side of the building and break into his office through the window…I have honestly never been more shocked in my life. Looking out of the window there was essentially nothing to hold onto so to this day I have no idea how he managed to do it but I was suitably impressed.” Not so much RoryWalks as RoryClimbs.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson’s new short haircut is not down to his new girlfriend but to barber in his constituency who got a bit nervous while doing an impromptu shearing. The Sun reveals that Nick Mazer snipped the famous blond locks when Johnson popped into his salon as part of a campaigning tour in Uxbridge. “He said ‘Don’t change me’ or he would kill me and to not take too much off but I was a little nervous and cut it shorter than I should.” But there’s more: Boris originally thought he would get the haircut for free, and when told he had to cough up an aide supplied the £15 fee, adding a fiver tip.
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