UK Politics

Conservatives are facing “obliteration” at the general election and a decade in the wilderness unless they dump Boris Johnson as leader, a former major donor to the party has warned.Financier Michael Tory, who has given the party more than £300,000 since 2010, said he would not make further donations unless Mr Johnson is removed.His comments come as speculation mounts that a vote of confidence in the prime minister could be announced as early as Monday, with a ballot of Tory MPs in the following days.The chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, must call a vote if 54 Tory MPs send him a letter requesting one.Some 17 MPs have stated publicly that they have submitted letters, but more than 40 have called for Mr Johnson to go. Some believe that Sir Graham already has the necessary 54 letters but is waiting for the Platinum Jubilee weekend to end before announcing it. The PM must win the support of 180 MPs – more than half the 359-strong parliamentary party – to hold onto his job.Mr Tory told the Sunday Times: “I was a loyal and long-standing donor but can only resume donating if there is an immediate change of leadership.“And it has to be now, before it’s too late to avoid a richly deserved obliteration at the next election, followed probably by a decade in opposition.”But transport secretary Grant Shapps said that he did not expect a vote in the coming week, but said he believed Mr Johnson would win it if it came.Mr Shapps played down the significance of the booing directed at the prime minister by crowds at the Platinum Jubilee thanksgiving service on Friday.Recalling the jeers faced by George Osborne at the Paralympics in 2012, he told BBC1’s Sunday Morning: “I remember booing going on at the Olympic Games in 2012 and it didn’t mean that the election wasn’t won in 2015.”Mr Shapps added: “Politicians by their very nature … will of course divide opinion. That’s what politicians do. That’s because we argue about different sides of issues.“You will always get people who approve and people who disapprove. That’s the point of a free and democratic society. It’s also the point of having a monarchy, where everyone can join together and support the Queen regardless of their politics. Frankly, I think demonstrates one of the beauties of our system.”Elections guru Prof Sir John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, said that recent polling showed that around three-quarters of voters – including half of those who voted Conservative in 2019 – believe Mr Johnson lied about lockdown-busting parties at 10 Downing Street.Prof Curtice was speaking as a poll suggested that Conservatives trail Labour by 20 points in Wakefield ahead of the 23 June by-election which will be seen as a test of Mr Johnson’s popularity in the Red Wall seats in the Midlands and North won by Tories in 2019.He said that six months on from the first Partygate stories, there was no sign of public anger on the issue abating.Prof Curtice said that the Conservatives now have to accept that the PM’s efforts to explain and justify what happened in No 10 have failed.“It is now very, very unlikely that the public are ever going to come to conclusion that what the prime minister did during lockdown with the various gatherings was reasonable, let alone within the law,” he told Times Radio.“Therefore, the question the party has to face is what it should do about it.”It was possible that the public may have moved on from Partygate by the time of the election likely to take place in 2024, said Prof Curtice.But he added: “The alternative, of course, is that actually the brand of the Conservative Party – let alone the popularity of the prime minister – has been so severely damaged by this that we are now talking about whether or not he will have credibility on other issues, given the public don’t believe him on this one. Therefore, they might come to conclusion he should be replaced.”Prof Curtice said: “The interesting thing here is I think it’s the first time that we’ve had a situation where the prime minister’s personal actions and ethics are being questioned. We don’t really have a historical precedent for where it will go.“Around a half of Conservative voters think he wasn’t telling the truth, but it’s not as many as half of Conservative voters think he should resign. It is somewhere between a quarter and two fifths.“Undoubtedly there are voters out there who say he delivered Brexit, he got the calls right on Covid, he’s dealing with the cost-of-living crisis, we shouldn’t get rid of the prime minister during Ukraine – all those considerations are there.“The problem is – at the moment at least – there is at least a minority of people who voted for the Conservative Party who say ‘This is a deal breaker for me, and therefore I am not willing to vote for the Conservatives again, so long as Boris Johnson is leader’.“If you lose a quarter of the people who voted for you last time, then you’re in trouble.“Actually, at the moment if you look at the level of support for the Conservatives amongst Leave voters, it looks as though the party has lost the support of around one in three of those people who voted for Boris Johnson over Brexit back in 2019. That’s an awful lot of territory to regain amongst the people who were essential to delivering Boris Johnson his super-majority in 2019.” More

The Conservatives are in for a crushing defeat in the Wakefield by-election according to new polling, as reports suggest Boris Johnson could face a vote on his future. The prime minister secured his majority of 80 seats at the 2019 general election off the back of scalps in the so-called red wall – traditional Labour-supporting areas in the north of England, the Midlands and Wales.But with Wakefield scheduled to go to the polls on 23 June to elect a new MP after former Tory incumbent Imran Ahmad Khan was found guilty of sexual assault, fresh polling is likely to make for worrying reading in the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ). More

Labour is making a bid to snatch leadership on “levelling up” from Boris Johnson, accusing the beleaguered prime minister of ditching flagship promises to revive disadvantaged “Red Wall” communities which he made in the 2019 election campaign. Shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy told The Independent that a weak and “easily distracted” prime minister had used the slogan to win Tories a foothold in former Labour areas in the Midlands and north, only to backslide on his pledges in power in the face of opposition from his own side.She revealed that Labour will table amendments to the government’s Levelling Up Bill to restore the PM’s abandoned commitments, challenging Tory MPs to vote down their own manifesto pledges when the legislation comes to the Commons on Wednesday.And she said that, rather than denouncing the failure of levelling up at the next election, Labour will tell voters that a change of government is needed to deliver on the ambitions it represented.“We will be a levelling up government,” she said. “The country just can’t go on like this.” She revealed that Labour has been talking to the teams around US president Joe Biden and newly elected Australian PM Anthony Albanese about how to respond to the wave of discontent with political and economic models across the democratic world.“There was a moment a few years ago where there was the possibility that there might be a political consensus built around the fact that places that within living memory powered this country have for too long been disrespected and discounted and barred from making a contribution to the future of the country,” said the Wigan MP.“It’s got to change. It will change in the end. The people always win. If the Tories aren’t going to do this – and it’s increasingly clear that they’re not – then Labour will.”Speaking as Mr Johnson comes under continuing Tory pressure over Partygate and the cost of living crisis following last month’s U-turn on a windfall tax, Ms Nandy said that the PM’s weakness in the face of his own party had fatally undermined his levelling up agenda.Despite the efforts of communities secretary Michael Gove to keep the levelling up concept alive, she said it was “pretty clear it has been comprehensively killed off in government”.“We’ve got a Levelling Up Bill that doesn’t have any levelling up in it, that has 12 ‘levelling up missions’ which the bill allows the government to change if it can’t achieve them,” she said.“Gove has banged up against Treasury orthodoxy that says that London and the southeast is the engine of growth and other regions, at best, are in a state of sort of managed decline.“And he has banged up against the strong strand of thinking in the Thatcherite wing of the Tory party that the way that you boost productivity is to cut jobs out of the workforce and sweat the remaining workers harder. So rights, wages, security, planning, a strategic approach to the economy, become the enemy of productivity.“Gove has lost that argument in government. The moment when No 10 decided that they were backing the Treasury, I think that’s the moment that levelling up was decisively killed off in government .”Johnson had initially been excited by the prospect of major infrastructure projects such as railways and bridges, but lacked the determination to overcome resistance from the Treasury and Tory MPs, she said.“He is easily distracted by big shiny things, but when it comes to the hard graft of investing in people and in places in order to help them build, he’s got no interest whatsoever,” said Ms Nandy.“He used levelling up to win the last election, but his next challenge is to shore his position up with his own backbenchers.“It’s become victim of Johnson’s decision to take the route of trying to win the next election by pursuing a very rigidly traditional conservative agenda with red meat for his back benches, and an unhealthy dollop of culture wars.“The good news is, it hasn’t been killed off in the country. People will not put up with this any more.”Recent research by Bloomberg indicated that 86 per cent of the Red Wall seats won from Labour in the election had fallen further behind London and the southeast economically since 2019.Ms Nandy said that Labour amendments to the bill would attempt to restore the “radical devolution of power” promised by the prime minister when he first floated his levelling up proposals.Councils could be empowered to run bus services and skills training, to levy tourism taxes to fund local regeneration, to back community-led housing projects and take on rogue landlords. Decision-making could be devolved in all parts of the country, rather than just those approved by Mr Gove and chancellor Rishi Sunak, she said.“Every single Tory MP that put ‘I’m going to support the regeneration of our town centre’ on their election leaflet ought to be backing the amendments that we’re proposing,” she said. “These things were absolutely central to the last general election and the promises that Boris Johnson made.“These Red Wall MPs may only have a few years to make a difference. And if they really want to make a difference to their communities, here’s a chance to do it.”Ms Nandy said that, rather than relocate a relatively small number of Whitehall jobs out of London, as Johnson has done, Labour’s approach to levelling up would involve more power for local communities to take their own decisions on regeneration.She pointed to Birmingham, where a Labour-run council gave land to a community association to build and renovate homes, and Grimsby, where the Regional Development Agency – abolished by David Cameron – drove early investment in offshore wind.“You can go to Grimsby and from the East Marsh estate – the most deprived estate in the country – you can see the offshore wind turbines of an industry that is powering the world, but you can’t actually get from the estate to the docks for lack of a functioning bus network,” she said.“We need to tilt the system back in favour of those who have a long-term stake in the outcome of those communities because that’s how you get better decisions.”And she added: “The anger that we’ve seen expressed through the ballot box in various ways in recent years hasn’t been born out of despair or hatred, it’s been born out of ambition. People are far more ambitious for themselves, their families, their communities and their country than the politicians that they’ve had.“They need to see that the same level of ambition from the Labour Party.“Come the next election, we won’t be trailing around in the north of England and saying the Tories haven’t kept their promises.“We will be parking our tanks firmly on the Tories’ lawn, walking back into Burnley and Grimsby and Wigan and Barnsley and Great Yarmouth and saying to people: ‘This is how it could be different. If you vote Labour, our commitment to you is that we’ll realise the level of ambition that you have for your own community.’” More

Keir Starmer has said he was “not surprised” that Boris Johnson was booed by crowds who gathered outside St Paul’s Cathedral to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on Friday.The Labour leader said that the crowd’s reaction to the prime minister’s appearance was a reflection of how “fed up” voters are with the Conservative government.But he said that it was the failure to respond adequately to the cost of living crisis that was driving public dissatisfaction with Mr Johnson, rather than the scandal over lockdown-breaching parties in 10 Downing Street. More

A leading wine wholesaler has calculated that Brexit is adding an average of more than £1.50 to the cost of every bottle of European wine he sells to consumers.The warning comes as the UK faces a cost of living crisis, with inflation running at 9 per cent and expected to top 10 per cent by the end of the year.Daniel Lambert, whose south Wales company was named International Wine Challenge small agent of the year in 2019, said that Brexit had caused “huge disruption” to his business since the UK transitioned out of the EU at the start of 2021.Some 18 months after the switch to post-Brexit arrangements under Boris Johnson’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), Mr Lambert said it was now possible to establish a true financial picture of the impact of the change.A long-standing critic of EU withdrawal, he said it was clear that the additional paperwork and delays created by Brexit had imposed a permanent increase to the cost of doing business, while delivering no benefit to his company.Writing on Twitter, Mr Lambert said that the average cost for importing wine from major European producers such as France, Italy, Spain and Germany was between £170 and £190 for a pallet of wine.Order, collection and delivery of a pallet, containing an average 672 bottles, typically took seven to 10 days from any part of the EU, which makes up two-thirds of wine consumed in the UK.Following Brexit, he said that lead times from order to delivery of shipments have stretched to as much as 21 days from Spain, 26 days from France, 35 from Germany or Austria and 45 to 70 from Italy.The best rates his company has been able to find for imports are £270 for a single pallet from Spain, £280 from France, £310 from Germany, and £340 from Austria or Italy.Charges from brokers for new paperwork on either side of the Channel can add anything between £25 and £150 to every import and export document, said Mr Lambert, though he said he was able to save an average of £65 on each consignment by doing some of the forms himself.The overall additional cost for logistics and paperwork has made importing a single pallet of wine from Spain £155 more expensive than before Brexit, £165 more from France, £180 from Italy and £150 from Germany or Austria, he calculated – the equivalent of 25p on every bottle.On top of this is the cost of an extra member of staff hired purely to deal with Brexit-related paperwork, which adds another 13p onto the cost of each bottle, he said.The new unreliability of delivery times has forced Mr Lambert to increase the stock he holds in order to be sure not to run out of particular products, adding an estimated 20p more to the average cost of a bottle.“So our costs have increased, with zero benefits to anyone, by 58p a bottle,” said Mr Lambert. “Once margins are applied at the usual wholesaler and retailer percentages this 58p becomes over £1.50 a bottle for no benefits to anyone, and it’s you the consumer that’s paying this.”Disruption to supply chains in the wake of the Covid pandemic has dramatically increased lead times and shipping costs for wines from producers such as Australia, giving EU bottles an even firmer grip on the UK market, he said.“My conclusion is very simple,” Mr Lambert. “No matter how many free trade agreements the UK gets, the one with our nearest neighbours is the most important.“You can’t argue against geography, and the global Covid reboot clearly shows this. We live in a just-in-time world – Brexit is the exact opposite.“Moreover, in a world where we need to use less energy and reduce CO2, buying locally matters like never before. So the obvious answer is stronger relationships with your nearest neighbours. It really is as simple as that in my opinion.” More

Plans being drawn up by Boris Johnson’s government to set an expiry date for great swathes of EU law currently in use in the UK could cause “chaos” for businesses, experts have warned.Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg is said to have told the cabinet that he plans to introduce a five-year expiry date for around 1,500 pieces of EU regulatory legislation.But lawyers and business groups have warned that “blanket” changes risk creating extra complexity and uncertainty for companies that are already struggling with a multitude of new rules after Brexit.Eleonor Duhs – a lawyer who worked on the 2018 EU withdrawal act – told The Independent that a “self-imposed cliff-edge for retained EU law is a recipe for potential chaos”.Warning of the “danger” in changing so many rules affecting the economy without scrutiny, the partner at Bates Wells law firm added: “This proposal has the potential to drive investment away from the UK at a time when we really need it.”The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) – also warned against “deregulation for its own sake”, though the influential business group said it would carefully consider how any changes may affect British firms.“We should not complicate our trading relationship by diverging so far it makes UK goods and services unsellable into Europe,” William Bain, the BCC’s head of trade policy, told The Independent.The government is keen to use the forthcoming “Brexit freedoms” bill to get rid of EU rules by bringing in “sunset clauses” that will force ministers to stick to them, amend them, or ditch them by the end of a five-year period, according to The Times.Mr Rees-Mogg is said to have told the cabinet earlier this month about the plan to set the expiry date on 1,500 pieces of EU regulation in a bid to “force radical thinking” from government departments.Jonathan Jones QC – the government’s former legal chief who quit over its Brexit policy – said the latest plan was “potentially very dangerous” since it would make it almost impossible for parliament and relevant industries to scrutinise each change.“Having sunset clauses in a blanket way for huge amounts of legislation is a very bad idea,” he told The Independent. “To change swathes of the law automatically is a recipe for uncertainty for businesses and consumers and everyone else.”Mr Jones continued: “If you scrap some rules on food safety automatically, for instance, then that is potentially very dangerous. Either there will be no rules, or do you revert to some existing laws in Britain from 1973? It’s bizarre.”Ms Duhs added: “To keep, change or scrap 1,500 pieces of legislation is a huge job at a time when ministers want to cut civil service resources. Who is going to undertake this exercise, and what is it that won’t get done because of it?”The TUC has demanded that the government makes clear that workers’ rights will be protected during the so-called “bonfire” of Brussels regulations. The leading union fears that Mr Rees-Mogg’s plan could see some protections “removed or watered down” without proper scrutiny by parliament.Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, said: “Important workers’ rights and legal principles are being put at real risk by the government’s reckless plans.”Mr Rees-Mogg’s officials at the Cabinet Office have said that more than 2,000 ideas about making the most of Brexit have been received from the public.Among the “best ideas” revealed by the department are a suggestion to abolish an EU regulation that restricts vacuum-cleaner power to 1400 watts.A government spokesperson said: “Following our departure from the EU, we can now review, update and change our rules to best suit the needs of the public and UK businesses, just like governments do around the world.”The spokesperson said the Brexit freedoms bill “will empower parliament to think boldly about whether we want to maintain certain aspects of retained EU law, and instead whether we wish to repeal, amend or replace them for the benefit of the British people”. More

Culture secretary Nadine Dorries has been accused of “taking voters for fools” after claiming that there were more people cheering than booing at Boris Johnson at Friday’s Platinum Jubilee thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral.In a tweet on Friday evening, Ms Dorries suggested that the media had exaggerated the scale of jeers faced by the prime minister for the sake of sensational headlines.But her claim was swiftly contradicted by ITV News royal editor Chris Ship, who was present for the PM’s arrival and said the booing was “very loud indeed”.And her comments were widely mocked on social media, where many of the 19,000-plus Twitter users who responded to her message included clips of TV footage on which the boos were clearly audible.Some pointed out that, even if Ms Dorries were correct about cheers outnumbering jeers, it would still be unprecedented for a serving prime minister to be barracked at a church service to celebrate the Queen.In her tweet shortly before 7pm on Friday, Ms Dorries – whose role includes responsibility for media regulation – wrote: “There were far, far more cheers, but that doesn’t make a good headline does it?”Mr Ship replied: “The facts are, and I was there, the boos were very loud indeed. No escaping that. Reporters are there to report. Not make stuff up.”The barracking of the PM was remarked on by TV reporters covering the event as it happened, with BBC presenter Jane Hill noting that there was a “substantial amount” of booing as Mr Johnson and wife Carrie entered the cathedral.Responding to Ms Dorries’ tweet, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard said: “Simply not true. Lies like this are the reason that people choose to boo Boris. Everybody can hear the live commentary for themselves. The boos when Boris left were even louder.”And Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “Your regular reminder that Nadine Dorries is Boris Johnson’s Minister for Disinformation. They’re taking you for fools.” Labour MP Christian Wakeford, who defected from Tories in protest at Mr Johnson’s leadership, said: “That’s because it’s not true, Nadine.”And rugby star Brian Moore told Ms Dorries: “Your sycophancy has robbed you of the little judgement you had. Have some dignity.”Several Twitter users posted a famous quote from George Orwell’s novel 1984, describing an authoritarian government’s use of propaganda to distort the truth: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”Other respondents were quick to make fun of the culture secretary’s comment.In a reference to the lockdown-busting parties at 10 Downing Street, Scarfolk author Richard Littler tweeted: “Tories 2021: ‘There was no booze’. Tories 2022: ‘There were no boos’.”Author James Felton asked the culture secretary: “Genuine question; are you aware of the fact that other people can hear sounds?”In response to Ms Dorries’ criticism of press coverage, The Times ran an unscientific Twitter poll, which found significantly more than 90 per cent of those responding felt there was more booing than cheering audible.Times Radio broadcaster Matt Chorley asked: “Can you recall an occasion when a prime minister has received *any* boos in the middle of a big royal event?”Broadcaster Danny Baker said: “There are supposed to be far more cheers. That’s what people who attend royal events do.“That there was a huge groundswell of negativity for Johnson is unprecedented. You saying that there were ‘more cheers’ admits he was also roundly booed. By a royal crowd.” More

Proposed changes to national security laws would give ministers and spies immunity from allegations of assisting crimes such as murder or torture abroad, a Conservative former minister has warned.A clause in the National Security Bill, being debated by MPs on Monday, would create an exemption from the offence of encouraging or assisting a crime overseas in cases where it is “necessary for the proper exercise of any function” of MI5, MI6, GCHQ or the armed forces.Former cabinet member David Davis said that the measure was “far too slack” in the discretion it grants to ministers, and urged MPs to amend it so it applied only to acts compatible with the UK’s “civilised standards”.Human rights charity Reprieve warned that said it would effectively grant immunity to ministers or officials who provide information to governments overseas which leads to someone being tortured or unlawfully killed in a drone strike.The charity’s joint executive director Maya Foa said it would destroy the UK’s “moral legitimacy” to condemn abuses by foreign governments, such as the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, believed by US intelligence to have been ordered by the country’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.Mr Davis told The Guardian: “This bill is drafted so loosely that it could let ministers off the hook if they authorised crimes like murder and torture from the safety of their desks in Whitehall.“I urge colleagues to constrain it to actions appropriate to our aims and civilised standards.”The bill, announced in last month’s Queen’s Speech, amends provisions in the Serious Crime Act 2007, which made it an offence to do anything in the UK to encourage or assist a crime overseas, including by aiding an unlawful assassination or sending information to be used in a torture interrogation.Ms Foa said the new bill would risk putting ministers “above the ordinary criminal law” and could even embolden them to “commit serious crimes thinking they can do so with effective impunity”.A Home Office spokesperson said: “The amendment to the Serious Crime Act will only remove the risk of individuals facing criminal liability where they are carrying out authorised lawful activities deemed necessary, in good faith and following proper procedure.“Put simply, the government believes it is not fair to expect the liability for this action to sit with an individual UK intelligence officer or member of the armed forces who is acting with wholly legitimate intentions.” More