Boris Johnson is facing mounting anger from within his own party over social care reform, after it emerged poorer pensioners face paying more for the cost of care.
The prime minister is said to be risking a damaging Commons rebellion following the publication of a policy paper revealing means tested support provided to some pensioners by local authorities will not count towards the £86,000 lifetime cap.
It comes as Labour accused Priti Patel of “dangerous failures” over migrant crossings in the English Channel, with shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds suggesting that Boris Johnson “appears to agree” after the prime minister reportedly ordered a cross-Whitehall review into the issue.
As hundreds of people were thought to have made the treacherous journey on Saturday, an anonymous Tory donor issued a warning that government’s handling of the crossings could “destroy” the Conservative Party and pave the way for the emergence of a new “Farage-style party”.
Tory MP describes mixture of ‘anger and codeine’ after swearing at Owen Paterson
A Tory MP has said that a mixture of “anger and codeine” led him to call Owen Paterson a “c***” while voting in Parliament earlier this month during a row over standards.
Asked whether the report of him approaching Mr Paterson – who eventually resigned following a saga where he was initially found to have breached lobbying rules – was correct, Christian Wakeford told Times Radio: “It is. And it’s been a mixture of quite a lot of anger and codeine.
“I clearly have a broken ankle at the moment, it’s not the best mix. But I do think it went to show the, I guess, the quantum of anger in the party and that’s still high now.
“But the fact that after all that kind of marching up the top of the hill, not once was there gratitude from Owen, not once was there, kind of, apologies or repentance. The fact he went out to the press and said ‘I will do exactly the same again’. I think I’m not the only one who would have wanted to use language of that nature to him.”
Mr Wakeford, who was elected to Bury South in 2019 with a majority of just 402, told the broadcaster that even though the language in the row over standards had been toned down, the sentiment was still there.
“We should never have been in a position of that nature”, he said. “And whether it was or it wasn’t, it felt like we were trying to get him off the hook when actually he was bang to rights in the report, so that didn’t sit comfortably with a lot of colleagues.”
Jess Phillips: One broken promise too far – the nation has turned on Boris Johnson
In her latest column for Independent Voices, Labour’s Jess Phillips writes:
It’s not been a cracking few weeks to be a politician. We have all been tarred with the brush of the dodgiest among us. While I am provably, in every regard, not Owen Paterson, essentially we are all considered to be Owen Paterson thanks to the Conservative Party’s ability to take us all down with him. Cheers, lads!
It has always played well for them to make people hate politics; they have for a good few years dined out in the most expensive men only private members clubs on the back of hatred of the establishment. Anti-politics has very much been Boris Johnson’s jam, largely because he has always got away with breaking promises and lying in both his political and personal life. No matter who he hurts, somehow he has come out rosey.
While I am not happy to be considered in the same sentence as Owen Paterson, I am pretty pleased that this completely unremarkable politician may finally be Boris Johnson’s undoing.
Not just because of the dreadful way our prime minister behaved in response to his pal acting corruptly in his own interests, but because it seems to have finally tipped the country over the edge. It was one self-aggrandising lie too far and it has exposed an inept prime minister who breaks promise after promise.
Read her thinking in full here:
Culture of ‘victim blaming and shaming’ must end, Caroline Nokes says
The culture of “victim blaming and shaming” must end, the Conservative MP Caroline Nokes has warned, revealing that journalists have scoured through her past sex life to “find some sort of defence” after she accused Boris Johnson’s father of inappropriately touching her.
Speaking to Times Radio, the chair of the Commons Women and Equalities Committee, Ms Nokes said that after the incident she, “like so many women, had that response of well, how will this impact upon me? How will talking about this have a negative impact on me? And even 18 years later, you can see people trying to turn it back on me, victim-blaming and shaming”.
“Now, look, I don’t regard myself as a victim. I won’t be a victim,” Ms Nokes said. “But to read some of the things that have been said about me and you think well, OK, so clearly some people, some sections of the media, have decided that I’m the sort of woman it’s OK to sexually harass.”
“I’ve seen a number of journalists try to trawl my past sex life as some sort of defence for someone doing that,” she said, adding: “We are literally in a culture that is trying to turn it on the woman, make it her fault, blame her, accusing her of making it a political vendetta”.
Stating that it was for the party to decide whether to launch a formal investigation into Stanley Johnson, Ms Nokes said: “If anyone had said to me in 2003 that I should report it, I think my first question would have been to whom? How? What processes are there for me to make a complaint to the Conservative Party about a fellow candidate?
“And I just didn’t know that there were any and I think I would probably struggle to identify who to complain to now to be brutally honest.”
Channel crossings will cost Tories votes, Conservative MP says
Anger over the government’s handling of crossings in the English Channel will cost the Tories votes, Craig Mackinlay has warned, suggesting that ministers should consider offering troops to patrol the French coastline.
“It is a key issue on the doorstep, I can tell you that, at the moment,” said the Conservative MP in Nigel Farage’s former seat of South Thanet.
Asked whether the issue will cost the Tories votes, he told the BBC’s The World This Weekend show: “I feel it will. People are asking why our support has softened over the last few weeks across many polls. I knock on a lot of doors, I speak to a lot of people, I have a very full inbox, and I have to tell you that this issue is the one that is of most concern to people across my constituency certainly and in door-knocking I’ve done elsewhere as well across some of the by-elections that are in progress.
“This is very much on people’s lips, because it just looks like state failure. There has to be a solution. We haven’t found it yet, and we’re trying to find the Holy Grail that’s going to stop this.”
Arguing that “Poland has been very receptive to getting international help for strengthening up its Belarus border”, he suggested making “a very generous and open offer to the French authorities and say, ‘you’re struggling, how many of our police, Border Force and troops do you need to patrol this hundred mile of beach and stop this from happening?’”
Social care proposals mean ‘everyone will be better off’, health secretary says
With Boris Johnson facing a potential rebellion over his watered down social care plans, here’s what Sajid Javid had to say on the matter earlier this morning.
The health secretary told the BBC that Sir Andrew Dilnot – who led a review into the future of funding social care a decade ago, and said those with fewer assets “will not see any benefit” from the proposed new funding structure – was only comparing his own proposals with the government’s plan.
“No-one will have to pay more than £86,000, doesn’t matter who they are, where they live in the country,” Mr Javid said.
But pushed that not everyone has assets of more than £86,000, Mr Javid replied: “That’s where we’ve set the cap, so to protect you from catastrophic costs, because most people’s care journey is not that long, most people’s care journey is a couple of years.
“But one in, I think it’s around one in seven people, have costs higher than £86,000. What we have also done, which is very different to what Andrew had set out in his original plans, is we’ve got a much more generous means test.
“So what our plans mean, taken together, is that everyone, everyone – doesn’t matter where they live in the country – will be better off under the new proposals that we set out, versus the current system. Everyone will be better off.”
Johnson faces Commons social care rebellion
The prime minister is facing the prospect of a damaging Commons rebellion over social care reform, after it emerged poorer pensioners face paying more for the cost of care.
Andrew Percy, the Conservative MP for Brigg and Goole, is among those said to be concerned about the policy.
He questioned the impact of the change on poorer communities, particularly in the north, telling The Independent: “I’m very concerned of what I’ve seen of the changes so far.”
Here is the story:
Opinion | Keir Starmer needs to plan for a hung parliament
We have had two hung parliaments recently, in 2010 and 2017, but on each occasion the Tories found a partner with whom to govern in a reasonably secure way, writes John Rentoul.
If there is another hung parliament, it is likely to be very different, and to produce the kind of politics we haven’t had since the Seventies. We had better relearn our recent history.
Read his full piece here:
Government should ‘look again’ at social care plans, Tory MP says
The government “should look again” at its watered down proposals for the social care cap, the former justice secretary Robert Buckland has suggested.
Asked whether he was minded to vote for the changes currently put forward, which experts warn would mean that the poorest households in the country will not actually benefit from the cap, Mr Buckland told LBC: “Well I think the government should look again at this. I think that we’re in danger of putting the cart before the horse.
“I think it’s far better to actually publish the social care white paper first, so that we can see what the new proposals are. What is the new system that we’re going to be funding? Let’s have a look at that first.”
Labour accuses Priti Patel of ‘dangerous failures’ over Channel crossings
Our political correspondent Ashley Cowburn has more on Labour’s criticism of Priti Patel’s handling of migration across the English Channel.
Nick Thomas-Symonds told Sky News earlier: “We have thousands of people risking their lives in these most dangerous sea lanes, the most dangerous sea crossing in the world.
“And if the rate continues as it is at the moment, if the rate of increase from last year to this year is repeated again next year, we’ll have as many people risking their lives in the Channel as there are people in Priti Patel’s constituency. Her incompetence on this issue is dangerous.”
Government’s rail announcements ‘have disappointed virtually everybody’
Ministers have managed to disappoint “virtually everybody” with their rail announcements this week, the vice-chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership has said – warning that Boris Johnson’s government will have to show evidence of their promises if they wish to stay in power.
Lord Jim O’Neill, a former Treasury minister, told Sky News that the government had promised “60 or 70 times” to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) in full, saying: “In isolation if it would have just appeared from nowhere, it might not have been so bad, but given everything that’s followed since Boris Johnson became prime minister, as we can see with the reaction across the board, is pretty disappointing.”
He added: “The downside of very strong expectations creation is that it does create belief and also a spirit and a desire and a passion. And so that’s partly what created the victory for them in the election, but if they want to stay in power they’ve obviously got to show some evidence of following through.”
Asked whether the promised halving of some journey times was not a win, he said: “I’m yet to find a single technical expert that believes it’s deliverable.”
Our policy correspondent Jon Stone has more details on the backlash here:
