UK Politics

Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale has become the first Tory to confirm publicly that he has sent a letter of no confidence in Boris Johnson to 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady.Some 55 letters are needed to trigger a confidence vote by the 361 Tory MPs, with a simple majority needed to force a new leadership election.Few in Westminster expect the necessary letters to be sent soon, but Sir Roger said he believes Mr Johnson will not lead the Tories into the next general election and could be unseated well before its expected date in 2024.The veteran MP for North Thanet, a longstanding and vocal critic of the prime minister, said that he had submitted his letter in the wake of former No 10 aide Dominic Cummings’ lockdown-breaching trip to Barnard Castle last year.But he said that he had checked recently with Sir Graham and been told that the expression of no confidence remains valid.The chairman of the “22”, which represents backbench Tory MPs, never reveals the number of letters which he has received until they reach the tipping point of 15 per cent of the parliamentary party – currently 55 MPs.“I put in a letter to Sir Graham Brady after the Barnard Castle incident, because that gave a message to me that this was not the kind of leadership that I believe the Conservative Party needed,” Sir Roger told the BBC.“I have no idea at all how many other people – if any other people – have written that kind of letter and Sir Graham Brady would certainly not reveal how many he’s got until and unless the trigger point is reached.”He said: “We don’t need a leadership election at the moment. We need to concentrate on getting people vaccinated on getting on with the job of government.“But I think that’s coming down the track.“I would personally be surprised if Mr Johnson fought the next general election, but I’m one person – only one person.“If you’re going to change your leader, you don’t do it just before a general election, so I think that may be coming down the track.”Sir Roger said that the alleged parties at Downing Street had been very damaging for the Conservatives and said he hoped they will be subjected to investigation by the police.“I find it rather strange that the Metropolitan Police is saying they haven’t got the evidence to investigate these matters,” he said.“I think they are serious. Thousands of people were denying themselves opportunities to – for heaven’s sake – visit dying relatives apart from anything else, and suffering all manner of restrictions while it looks as though improper, illegal gatherings were being held within Downing Street and elsewhere.“You can’t have one rule for one set of people and one for rule for another. People have paid fines because they’ve been partying and I fear that has to apply to Downing Street as well as to everybody else. And I would hope and expect that the Metropolitan Police will take that on board.” More

Boris Johnson’s government has been accused of hitting hard-pressed families with “brutal” train ticket price hikes after announcing that rail fares will rise by 3.8 per cent from March 2022.The Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed on Friday that rail companies will be allowed to raise prices, despite Britain’s mounting cost of living crisis.The steepest increase since 2013 comes as the cost of fuel, clothing and food continue to soar, with changes to the energy price cap expected to increase gas and electricity bills in April.Rail minister Chris Heaton-Harris said capping rail fares in line with inflation by tying it to the Retail Price Index (RPI) seen in July “strikes a fair balance”.He claimed the increase would mean “we can continue to invest records amounts into a more modern, reliable railway, ease the burden on taxpayers and protect passengers from the highest RPI in years”.But Labour accused the government of allowing “brutal” price hikes many would struggle to afford and leave commuters wondering “what planet ministers are on”.The average commuter now faces paying £3,263 for their season ticket next year – 49 per cent more than in 2010, according to the party’s analysis.Louise Haigh, shadow transport secretary, said: “This brutal Tory fare hike will be a nightmare before Christmas for millions of passengers.”The Labour MP added: “Families already facing soaring taxes and bills will now be clobbered with an eye-watering rise in the cost of the daily commute.”The cost of train travel normally increases on the first working day of every year – but has been pushed back until March. The increase is below the current RPI measure of inflation, which has soared to 7.1 per cent.Mr Heaton-Harris said delaying until March next year would “offer people the chance to save money by renewing their fares at last year’s price”.The minister said: “That includes the 100,000 people who are already making savings with cheaper and more convenient flexible season tickets.”Andy Bagnall, director general of industry body the Rail Delivery Group representing the train companies, welcomed the government’s decision.“We know the railway must not take more than its fair share from the taxpayer – which is why the rail industry is working to create a financially sustainable and more passenger-focused service that will both keep costs down long-term and attract people back to the train,” said Mr Bagnall.The DfT also announced the Book with Confidence scheme will be extended until 31 March. This allows passengers to change their travel plans up until the night before departure, or cancel their tickets and receive a refund in the form of rail vouchers. More

North Shropshire by-election victor Helen Morgan today declared that Liberal Democrats are literally “bursting Boris’s bubble” by popping a giant blue balloon at the scene of the dramatic Tory defeat.Hours after being confirmed as the first non-Conservative MP for the area for almost 200 years, Ms Morgan was joined by Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper and ex-leader Tim Farron to celebrate the historic result in Oswestry.Wielding a large yellow pin, she burst the balloon marked “Boris bubble” to cheers from local activists.Mr Farron said that “millions of people have woken up this morning feeling a bit of light has broken into the darkness” thanks to the shock result.“It turns out that if you are incompetent, it turns out if you tell lies, it turns out that if you take the people for granted, there is a price to pay,” he said.“Democracy and justice is alive and well in Britain and the people of North Shropshire have spoken for the whole of Britain.”Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey was unable to attend the rally as he is isolating at home after testing positive for coronavirus.Mr Farron said that the communities of rural areas like Shropshire had been “taken for granted by the Conservatives for so long”.“It’s not just the communities in places like North Shropshire, Cornwall, Northumberland, Cumbria, elsewhere around the country that have been taken for granted,” he said.“It’s the people who live there who have been taken for granted. So you’re a farmer, you’ve seen your payments cut, and the Tories think you’re just going to vote for them anyway. Or you’re somebody concerned about your health service being taken away, closed down, moved further already away from you. Or you’re somebody whose expenses are going up, your costs are going up and your income is not rising with it. You are being and have been taken for granted.“And the assumption from the Conservatives is that they can just behave how they have done – especially these last few weeks – and no-one will punish them for it.“The result in North Shropshire shows the people of North Shropshire speaking for the people of Britain and saying ‘Enough is enough. We will not be taken for granted and things can be better than this’.” More

Lib Dem activists have a phrase for the way they attack by-election campaigns where they sense an improbable victory: shock and awe.At 4am on Friday morning in the Shrewsbury Sports Village, it felt entirely appropriate: their Conservative opponents here were utterly dazed.In what will rank as one of the most stunning by-election results ever, the yellow rosette party overturned a 23,000 Tory majority in North Shropshire to steal this supposed safest of rural blue heartlands.After a campaign in which they flooded the area with activists – in which leader Ed Davey visited five times, no less – Helen Morgan was announced as the area’s new MP with some 5,925 more votes than Tory rival Neil Shastri-Hurst.It wasn’t just a victory, as the party’s treasury spokesperson Christine Jardine noted, it was a “comfortable” one. More to the point, it was historic: Friday is the first day this area has not had a blue MP in more than a century.“Tonight, the people of North Shropshire have spoken on behalf of the British people,” said Morgan in her victory speech. “They have said loudly and clearly: ‘Boris Johnson, the party is over’.”This was not, as it turned out, a speech that was five minutes of platitudes. The 46-year-old used her first platform as a parliamentarian to go firmly on the attack. She spoke of an NHS “teetering” on the brink; of local people struggling to make ends meet; and of a prime minister more interested in decorating his flat than the good of the country. It was yet more shock and awe.“Your government, run on lies and bluster, will be held accountable,” she said. “It will be scrutinised, it will be challenged and it can and will be defeated… Mr Johnson you are no leader.”Voters here, she concluded, had been left “dismayed by Boris Johnson’s lack of decency”.In the end – astonishing as it may seem – the yellow victory was never really in doubt from the moment polls closed at 10pm on Thursday.A flurry of rumours around midnight suggested a better-than-expected showing for Labour candidate Ben Wood could deny Morgan a famous result and help the Tories retain the seat.But, as the evening progressed, it became increasingly clear that anger over perceived Downing Street sleaze and misconduct had coalesced around the yellow vote. In particular, it was noted early on, the Lib Dems appeared to have taken large numbers of postal ballots – most of which would have been cast long before last week’s revelations of a lockdown-breaking Downing Street Christmas party caused widespread public fury.“Once you factor in that anger to the remaining votes,” said David Vasmer, leader of the Lib Dems on Shropshire Council around 1am, “the numbers could be really good”.When his prediction ultimately came true – the swing was an astonishing 34 per cent; even bigger than that in Chesham and Amersham in June – he could hardly hide his excitement.“Ecstatic,” he said. “Over the moon. To end 200 years of Tory dominance is the most wonderful thing. Whatever happens now, they will never take the people of North Shropshire for granted again.”How would he celebrate? It was gone 4am, he noted. He was going home to bed.So, too, were those shell-shocked Tories. There had been party briefings all day that they might lose but no-one thought it would be this bad. A devastated-looking Shastri-Hurst headed straight for the door after the results were announced, stopping only when a media scrum made it all but impossible for him to escape without comment.A “disappointing” result, he said, but he was “proud” of the campaign. Was Boris Johnson to blame for the defeat? He declined to offer a yes or a no. So, too, did Edward Timpson, the Tory MP for nearby Eddisbury. “We have to reflect on what we have been told on the doorstep,” he told The Independent. He was slouched and gloomy, and clutching a coffee that, frankly, didn’t look strong enough.Vince Hunt, the Tory chair of Shropshire Council, was less diplomatic. “He [Boris] has to sit down and have a long hard think about his future,” he declared. It was an early call for a possible leadership change – but it seems probable many more will follow in the days to come.Not, Hunt said, that Boris was solely to blame. Who else? “The media!” he declared. “Too much focus on the negatives of what happened a year ago and not enough focus on what has gone right, on how the government has got a lot of things right in this pandemic.”It was, as one might say, a view point.Yet, perhaps, ultimately, it is too simplistic to see this as a simple referendum on the prime minister or the government or even the wide range of local issues – ambulance waiting times; poor transport links – that were continually raised on the doorstep during this campaign.Perhaps this was about wider voting trends, as Green Party candidate Duncan Kerr noted with 3am astuteness. Perhaps what happened here was something similar to the decimation of the old Red Wall in 2019. “North Shropshire has been more or less a one-party state ,so to have that broken is marvellous,” he said, all smiles, despite a relatively poor poll showing himself. “It shows that politics is changing. People here – and across the country – have voted the same way for generations because of tradition or history or fear of the unknown. Now those days are gone. They have broken the habit of voting Conservative here and I think that will stay broken now.” More

The Lib Dems have won the North Shropshire by-election in what ranks as one of the most astonishing British electoral results ever.Helen Morgan took the seat with 17,957 votes compared to Conservative rival Neil Shastri-Hurst’s 12,032.It comes just two years after the Conservatives won the seat with a 23,000 majority; and means the area will not have a blue MP for the first time in more than a century.The result will now raise immediate questions about Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Tory party – with many local activists blaming a series of Downing Street scandals and missteps for the horror result.Speaking after she was announced as the victor at Shrewsbury Sports Village, Ms Morgan – who lives in the constituency village of Harmer Hill – said the result sent a clear message to Mr Johnson’s government.“Tonight, the people of North Shropshire have spoken on behalf of the British people,” she said. “They have said loudly and clearly: ‘Boris Johnson, the party is over’. “Your government, run on lies and bluster, will be held accountable. It will be scrutinised, it will be challenged and it can and will be defeated.”Ms Morgan added that “thousands of lifelong” Tory voters have been left “dismayed” by the PM’s “lack of decency and [are] fed up with being taken for granted”.“Tonight the people of North Shropshire have said ‘enough is enough’. They have said you are unfit to lead and they want a change,” she said.“Thank you most of all to the people of North Shropshire, not just for support throughout this campaign but for all the hard work and sacrifices you have made throughout this past two years.”Thursday’s defeat compounds a tumultuous period for Mr Johnson after 100 Conservatives defied the leadership to vote against the introduction of mandatory Covid health passes for entry to large venues – the biggest rebellion since he entered No 10.Asked on Wednesday if Mr Johnson would quit if North Shropshire falls, the Prime Minister’s press secretary said: “We are fighting for every vote.”“This result is a watershed moment in our politics and offers hope to people around the country that a brighter future is possible,” Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said.“Millions of people are fed up with Boris Johnson and his failure to provide leadership throughout the pandemic and last night the voters of North Shorpshire spoke for all of them,” he added.“From Buckinghamshire to Shropshire, lifelong Conservatives have turned to the Liberal Democrats in their droves and sent a clear message to the Prime Minister that the party is over.”In 2019, the Tories won 62.7 per cent of the vote and held the seat with a majority of 22,949 over Labour.Ms Morgan came third with just 10 per cent of the vote when facing Mr Paterson in the general election.Ms Morgan, a 46-year-old accountant, will become the country’s newest MP having beaten Mr Shastri-Hurst, a barrister based in Birmingham.The turnout in North Shropshire was 46.3 per cent, or 38,110 voters. More

Three things about Helen Morgan perhaps had national cut-through during the North Shropshire by-election.Unfortunately for the seat’s Liberal Democrat candidate, all of those were historic social media posts. Three times in the last couple of years, the 46-year-old has compared the Conservatives to Nazis: Priti Patel to Goebbels, Boris Johnson to Hitler and Tory party policy to that which led to Auschwitz.“It’s not been helpful,” one Lib Dem activist told The Independent shortly after the missives surfaced. “We’re trying to flip 23,000 Conservative voters and you don’t do that by effectively telling them they’re Nazi supporters.”Morgan apologised, moved on and refused to be derailed.And, in doing so, perhaps showed the steely focus – as well as the willingness to admit a mistake – that led to one of the most astonishing moments in British political history on Friday morning: her victory over the Tories here.She was ultimately, that same activist said, the local asset that – following a campaign that oft-focused on the government’s incompetence – got “the party over the winning line”.Morgan – an accountant by profession – is personable, energetic and self-evidently loves the area. Because she lives here – with her husband and teenage son – she has an acute grasp of the rural issues that, say, a barrister from Birmingham does not.For her, indeed, many of those issues are personal. When voters complained about appalling ambulance waiting times, she knew exactly what they were talking about: five years ago, while suffering with severe norovirus, she was left waiting 90 minutes with ambulance paramedics because an overly-stretched A&E department had no-one to treat her. “That meant,” she said, “that ambulance couldn’t be getting to other people.”Likewise, when voters on the doorstep spoke about limited public transport, she could entirely sympathise: her home village of Harmer Hill has just two buses in a morning and two in an afternoon.Along similar lines, she is known for campaigning on rural road safety.The new MP has her weaknesses too, of course. Apart from some disquiet over the Nazi comments, many voters appeared to feel she was too inexperienced.Although she is a parish councillor, she has never sat on the larger Shropshire Council.While she and her team quickly identified a strong attack line against the Tories – that they had taken this safe seat for granted for too long – Morgan then appeared to offer only vague soundbites and fence-sitting about how she might change things.Asked by The Independent if she would like to see the A5 arterial road dualled – a divisive topic in the constituency – she said the matter wouldn’t affect her personally (“I hardly drive on it”) so she would recommend another consultancy. There have been such consultancies going on, in one form or another, since 1997.Similarly on farming issues. A series of post-Brexit trade deals had, she said, sold the region’s farmers short, yet offered no practical suggestion on what might be done better.Nonetheless, while many commentators are already putting this victory down to a flailing government, Morgan’s own role should not be forgotten.Midway through the campaign, she said she wanted to “scare” the Tory government into paying greater attention to the area. Mission accomplished. More

The Liberal Democrats have won the North Shropshire by-election, the party’s treasury spokesperson has claimed.Christine Jardine told reporters she was “confident” the yellows had “won comfortably”.A party spokesman added: “This is an amazing night for the Liberal Democrats and a disaster for Boris Johnson.”Ms Jardine hinted that the scale of candidate Helen Morgan’s win over Conservative Neil Shastri-Hurst would be in the thousands.If confirmed, it would be one of the most astonishing electoral result ever: the Conservatives had a 23,000 majority going into this contest and had held the area for more than a century.The Edinburgh West MP added: “I don’t want to put a figure on it just now but we are just delighted that we’ve listened to the voters in North Shropshire and those voters are putting their confidence in us.“People who are fed up, people who are tired and who are angry at the way this Government has behaved know now that they have an alternative. Conservative MPs right across those ‘Blue Wall’ seats will be looking over their shoulders.“The Conservatives had a majority… Owen Paterson had a majority of more than 20,000. We’ve turned that round tonight – turned it round comfortably. That’s astonishing. We think we’ve won and won comfortably.”The turnout was 46.3 per cent, or 38,110 voters. That’s considerably up on the 33.5 per cent that turned up for the Old Bexley and Sidcup by-election earlier this month. However, it is significantly lower than the 2019 general election turnout in the constituency of 62.9 per cent. The candidates – and senior Tories – will not learn the definitive result until it is announced in the early hours of Friday.Not only was the vote triggered by a Tory sleaze scandal, it comes after the prime minister was battered by allegations of lockdown-breaching parties in Downing Street last Christmas. In a message to Mr Johnson this morning, Ms Jardine said: “The party is over.”And the prime minister’s efforts to defend the seat followed the massive rebellion Conservative backbenchers dealt him on Tuesday over his new coronavirus restrictions as the Omicron variant surged.Mr Paterson represented the constituency for 24 years until his resignation after Mr Johnson’s botched attempt to shield him from a 30-day suspension. The prime minister attempted to force a Tory-led review of the rules for MPs after Mr Paterson was found to have breached lobbying rules for two companies paying him £100,000 a year.Multiple fresh allegations of sleaze were levelled at the Tories during the row and ultimately the MP was forced to resign, saying he wanted to escape the “cruel world of politics”.North Shropshire has returned a Tory MP in every vote since 1983, which was the constituency’s first election in its current form. But the area has been true blue, only twice voting for another colour, since the Conservative Party’s inception in 1830.So a loss for Conservative candidate Neil Shastri-Hurst to Lib Dem Helen Morgan would be a major upset for the Tories.Bookmakers have put the Lib Dems as favourite for victory, while campaigners on the ground suggested the result was too close to call and leader Sir Ed Davey described it as a “coin toss”.Defeat would compound a torrid period for Mr Johnson after 100 Conservatives defied the leadership to vote against the introduction of mandatory Covid health passes for entry to large venues – the biggest rebellion since he entered No 10.Asked on Wednesday if Mr Johnson would quit if North Shropshire falls, the Prime Minister’s press secretary said: “We are fighting for every vote.” More