Politics explained

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For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails To set aside sensitive moral questions and competing human rights is the best way to analyse the purely political aspects of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. It […] More

Senior Conservative MP David Davis has warned that Boris Johnson’s premiership faces “death by a thousand cuts”. Heavy losses in the local elections have inflicted yet another blow on the wounded prime minister. Are we watching his slow and painful demise?Johnson appears to have survived the bruising results – close to 500 Tory seats lost – without a loud clamour for his resignation from Tory backbenchers. We have not seen a significant number of new MPs turn against him in public.But there are signs of another precarious period ahead for the PM. Tory MPs in the “blue wall” heartlands in the south of England are spooked by results that were worse than expected. They now have clear evidence of how much voters loathe the idea of law-breaking parties in Downing Street.As one senior critic says, mistrust in the prime minister over Partygate now seems “baked in” among traditional Tory voters. Some of the griping about results has come from his usual opponents. But some who have not previously spoken out against Johnson now appear to be wrestling with the leadership question.David Simmonds, the Tory MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, has wondered out loud whether “a change of leader” could be one way of restoring confidence in the party. Marcus Fysh, MP for Yeovil, said colleagues would have to discuss whether Johnson was “the right person” to lead the new approach that is needed on the economy.No 10 is pointing to the fact that the Tories fared better in the Midlands and the north of England, where Labour made precious few gains in red-wall territory, and where Brexit appears to have created a lasting problem for Keir Starmer’s party.Johnson can also take heart from Starmer’s “Beergate” problem. It may only offer a brief breathing space for the prime minister, however, if the Labour leader manages to avoid a fine over the takeaway meal enjoyed with colleagues during a campaign event in Durham last April.Regardless of Starmer’s woes, there are some huge and dangerous hurdles ahead for the PM. With the elections now over, Scotland Yard could announce fresh fines over parties. And the publication of senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report – said to be damning – awaits the conclusion of the police inquiry.There are potentially difficult by-elections in Wakefield, Tiverton and Honiton still to come in the next six weeks or so, with Labour confident of overturning the Tories’ 3,000-plus majority in the West Yorkshire seat.Would a reshuffle help? Johnson is thought to be considering a shake-up of his top team before the summer recess starts in late July. The prospect may keep ministers on their toes for a while. But with an already compliant cabinet, the real threat will continue to come from the back benches.It’s difficult to see how Johnson wins new allies in the parliamentary party in the months ahead. Even if he survives until the autumn without the threshold of 54 no-confidence letters being reached, he has the run-up to conference season to contend with.Many who are sitting on the fence could use the period to ask themselves whether he is the right person to lead them into the next general election.Once a few dozen existing rebels decide to send in their letters to the 1922 Committee chair, it takes a simple majority – around 180 MPs – to force a change of leader. If the contest took place tomorrow, the smart money would be on Johnson’s survival.But if a vote were to take place after the messy period of new fines, fresh apologies, and the full-fat Sue Gray report, more Tory MPs may be more inclined to take the long view and consider whether a new leader might have a better chance of restoring the party’s fortunes. More

Like a few other high-profile roles in public life – Prince of Wales, Olympic gold medal winner, stand-up comedian – there isn’t much of a job description for the role of prime-ministerial spouse.Hence, misunderstandings and controversies have enveloped Carrie Johnson since she took up with the prime minister a couple of years ago. It’s fair to say that few other partners have faced the same sort of intense scrutiny and criticism, with its strains of misogyny – but it is not unprecedented.Interestingly, the last spouse to be bullied and abused to anything like the same extent as Ms Johnson was Cherie Blair.Cherie Booth QC, to give her her professional title, was another career woman, whose work, broadly speaking, touched on political matters. She was, like her husband, a lawyer. They met as pupils under Tony Blair’s future lord chancellor, Derry Irvine, and her career led her to undertake human rights work. Some of her enemies in the press cooked up a theory that the New Labour pledge to introduce the Human Rights Act was a thinly disguised scam to generate more fat fees for Booth’s chambers. The truth, of course, was that the act only brought over to the British courts the work that was being done by British lawyers in the European Court of Human Rights, but they didn’t let that spoil the fun.Ms Blair was also supposedly less deferential to royalty than was her husband – hardly a crime – and possibly a bit more of a socialist. She was supposedly manipulating him towards left-wing extremism, or what is nowadays called “wokery”. It was almost as though she was using hypnotism or sorcery. This was enough for her to be labelled “the wicked witch”. For some reason, perhaps her well-known working-class roots (her father was the actor Tony Booth), her very existence seemed to enrage the Daily Mail in particular. She was also supposed to be too keen on freebies, which is a bit rich coming from a load of journalists, and she invested in property – partly for the benefit of her children, and again, hardly the sort of thing to which Tories are averse. Cherie Blair is an interesting precedent because, like Carrie Johnson, and very unusually among spouses, she was “political”. Indeed, Cherie would probably have gone on to become at least a Labour MP, had Tony not made it first and had she not been such a successful lawyer. It’s the very idea of a woman having independent political opinions and ideas, and discussing them with her husband – an inevitable consequence of their sharing such a lifestyle – that seems to horrify some. By contrast, men with political opinions of their own have been treated very differently. Philip May, who met the young Theresa Brasier through a shared interest in Conservative politics, was almost deferentially referred to as her “most trusted adviser”, and nobody seems to have minded her discussing, say, the merits of the Irish backstop with him over an evening drink. Indeed, it was thought useful for her to get another point of view – that of a typical Conservative activist, and someone with no axe to grind or favours to seek. No one nicknamed him “Prince Philip” or seriously accused him of interference or undue influence. It would also be surprising if the pair of them didn’t occasionally mention, let’s say, her wayward foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, in conversation. After Philip had put the bins out, obviously.The same goes for Denis and Margaret Thatcher, though in that case the pair were both such instinctive Tory reactionaries that they agreed on most things anyway. To the extent that Mr Thatcher did have influence, it was a matter of mild curiosity and gentle satire rather than scandal. Denis was sympathetic to apartheid-era South Africa, where he had business interests and friends, and he perhaps influenced his wife in that direction when it came to sanctions in the 1980s. He thought the BBC, the trade unions and the teaching profession were all infested with communists, and so did she. He backed her in her tussles with powerful figures such as Nigel Lawson and Michael Heseltine. He was partisan. At the end, though, when she was facing a final leadership crisis, he was instrumental in persuading her to resign. Imagine if it got out that Carrie had told Boris the game was up and he ought to quit!Most prime ministers meet their wives or husbands long before they get to No 10. Many know exactly what they are getting involved in, although Mary Wilson thought she was destined for a quiet life as the wife of an Oxford don when she married Harold. In any case, most pairs are well used to each other by the time they get to Downing Street; but Carrie and Boris have had much less time to develop that same sympathy. Carrie has contacts, causes and interests of her own, and unfortunately for her they are viewed with suspicion by some in her party and in government.Far better, in that sense, for Carrie to stick to charity work or a non-political business activity, as Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron did – but why should she? She’s not a lobbyist. She’s not on staff. Nor is any husband or wife of a prime minister, but they are central to the life of their spouse, and they will make a difference to it.The only prime minister not to have had to worry about their other half’s opinions, or what the press thought about his or her behaviour, was Ted Heath, the lifelong batchelor. Once when Heath was prime minister, or so the story goes, his arch-rival Wilson was walking past No 10 of an evening and looked up at the light on in the flat. Wilson reflected on how lonely poor old Ted must be up there, playing his piano, with no one to share the burdens of a long, wearisome day. By the same token, Carrie doesn’t seem to be given much credit for the sacrifices she makes and the support she gives to her husband. You may recall the coverage of the infamous row the Johnsons had in her flat in June 2019, before Boris became PM, when the police had to be called. Apparently, he told her to “get off my f**king laptop”, and she told him: “You just don’t care for anything because you’re spoilt. You have no care for money or anything.” Living with Mr Johnson is a type of high-pressure public service, if you think about it. It can’t be easy. More

Understanding the politics of Northern Ireland is not easy. The Democratic Unionist Party’s weird manoeuvres and internal machinations can make Tory party plots look as tame as a Sunday-school picnic.The DUP staged a strange piece of political theatre this week by announcing that the party’s agriculture minister, Edwin Poots, would halt checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Simultaneously, DUP first minister Paul Givan quit in protest at the UK government’s failure to bring the legal checks agreed with the EU to an end.What is the DUP playing at? How badly has it messed up the Northern Ireland protocol arrangements forged in the Brexit deal? Could the latest developments even spark a trade war between the UK and the EU?It’s hard to say exactly how London and Brussels will respond in the days ahead, given that we still don’t know how the DUP’s radical move will play out.But we do know that the party’s actions have raised the stakes, as UK foreign secretary Liz Truss and her EU Commission counterpart Maros Sefcovic wrestle with a potential compromise deal over the protocol, which would ease the rules on checks.Civil servants have continued to carry out agri-foods checks this weekend amid legal uncertainty, while Mr Poots’s order for border officials to stop the checks is being challenged in the courts.It remains unclear whether the checks will be halted next week – or whether the order will be stuck in legal limbo for many weeks to come. Trade bodies are advising companies to carry on as normal, for now.Sinn Fein, not unfairly, have described the DUP’s moves as “stunts” purely aimed at improving the party’s chances at the forthcoming May elections. But the radical electioneering has intense and potentially catastrophic real-world consequences.The Republic of Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney, has said that the ending of the checks required by the protocol would be a “breach of international law”, and would violate the terms of the Brexit deal.Top EU officials are keeping calm for now, but are deeply unimpressed that Ms Truss and other ministers are refusing to condemn the DUP or otherwise get involved, with the UK government taking the line that the mess is a “matter for the executive” in Belfast.Mr Sefcovic has said that the UK government has a “responsibility” for the checks agreed in the protocol, and can’t blame the failure to meet these obligations on the naughty children running the show in Northern Ireland.But Ms Truss and Team UK will try to argue that the facts on the ground show exactly why the EU needs to give way and ease up on the checks.It’s unlikely that the EU would look at the end of agri-food checks as amounting to the triggering of Article 16 – the means by which Downing Street has threatened to suspend parts of the protocol – by default.But the ending of checks would put considerable pressure on the UK to agree to a deal with the EU quickly. And in the absence of an agreed London-Brussels compromise, the DUP’s incendiary move could light the fuse on the dispute, hastening a breakdown in talks and pushing Boris Johnson’s government into triggering Article 16.This takes us into trade-war territory, in which the EU takes a series of retaliatory measures for the suspension of protocol arrangements.Brussels chiefs have previously been said to have a “nuclear” option of terminating the Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), forcing the UK to trade with the EU on World Trade Organisation terms – essentially a “no-deal” Brexit scenario.But Brussels experts think it’s more likely they would consider retaliating through a lesser-known part of the TCA: Article 506. The moves could range from stopping fishing in EU waters to tariffs on UK fish going into the EU, and then move on to tariffs on other goods.Alternatively, the two sides could see sense and do a deal that would ease much of the red tape on agri-food products through an agreed list of certain goods that would still require stricter checks.Sam Lowe, a trade expert at the Centre for European Reform, said that there is another scenario in which the whole rotten mess rumbles on indefinitely – one in which the UK “continues to engage in low-level non-compliance” while “negotiations begin, stall, and begin again”.What about Mr Johnson? What does he want to do now? It’s hard to say if the embattled prime minister, fighting to stave off a Tory rebellion over Partygate, has given the problem much thought in recent days.Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader (yes, there is actually someone in charge), has claimed Mr Johnson told him privately that there was only a “20 to 30 per cent chance” of negotiating a new protocol deal with the EU in the next few weeks.Make of that what you will. Mr Johnson makes a lot of promises that turn out to mean very little. So we are left hoping there are still enough grown-ups around to sort the whole thing out. For a while, at least. More

The Labour leader started writing his long essay, now published as a Fabian Society pamphlet, when he was travelling the country this year, talking to people whose votes the party had lost.He claims to have sensed that Boris Johnson’s appeal was beginning to wear thin, and that people were prepared to look again at Labour, so he tried to set out the kind of argument that might win them back.The pamphlet begins by declaring: “People in this country are crying out for change.” He sets out where the country went wrong in the “lost decade” of the 2010s; what it learnt about “the power of people working together” during the pandemic; and the choice for the future.He tries to tie Boris Johnson to 11 years of Conservative rule, including the attempt by David Cameron and George Osborne to “roll back the state”. More ambitiously, however, he tries to lay claim to the slogan Take Back Control. “The desire of people across the country to have real power and control – expressed most forcibly in the Brexit vote – remains unmet,” Starmer argues. He promises that the next Labour government will “give people the means to take back control”.Although Johnson presents himself as different from his Tory predecessors and points to the huge public spending on furlough and business support as evidence, Starmer argues that this conversion is not real, and that the Conservatives’ true colours are starting to show. “This current government might talk a different talk,” he says, “but when it came down to it, they used the pandemic to hand billions of pounds of taxpayer money to their mates and to flout the rules they expected everyone else to live by.”That is the argument running through the pamphlet: that the country now has the chance to build on the solidarity shown during the pandemic, or to go back to the selfishness and individualism of Conservative business as usual. With a secondary argument that, although Johnson presents himself as the change, his party hasn’t really changed and he cannot be trusted.The essay contains a number of side-arguments. It accuses the Conservatives of having veered from patriotism to nationalism – the symptoms of which include “a botched exit from the European Union, the erosion of our defence and military capabilities and an unfolding foreign policy disaster in Afghanistan”. It distinguishes between nationalism, which divides, using the flag as a threat, and patriotism, which unites, using the flag as a celebration. And it attacks Johnson for trying to import “American-style divisions on cultural lines”.It includes some surprisingly pro-business lines: “Business is a force for good in society.” But also some rather airy rhetoric about fundamental change to the economy: “That means a new settlement between the government, business and working people. It means completely rethinking where power lies in our country – driving it out of the sclerotic and wasteful parts of a centralised system and into the hands of people and communities across the land.”The pamphlet concludes with 10 “principles to form a new agreement between Labour and the British people”. The cynic might say that these are designed to overwrite the 10 Corbynite pledges on which Starmer was elected leader, as none of them bears any resemblance to his leadership manifesto.These are described as 10 principles for a “contribution society”, which Starmer defines as: “One where people who work hard and play by the rules can expect to get something back, where you can expect fair pay for fair work, where we capture the spirit that saw us through the worst ravages of the pandemic and celebrate the idea of community and society; where we understand that we are stronger together.”The principles begin with: “We will always put hard-working families and their priorities first.” Only two of them are remotely specific. The fourth is: “Your chances in life should not be defined by the circumstances of your birth.” That is the end of the royal family, then. And the eighth: “The government should treat taxpayer money as if it were its own. The current levels of waste are unacceptable.” That could be a popular theme if ministers become complacent.Overall, the pamphlet sets out an ambitious but mostly platitudinous argument for Labour to lay claim to one of the oldest political slogans, namely “change vs more of the same”. Its test will be in whether those lost Labour voters to whom Starmer spoke in Ipswich, Wolverhampton and Blackpool decide that Johnson can offer them the change they say they want. More

As a practical result of the cabinet reshuffle, Britain will soon have to get much more used to the voices of two previously relatively low-key politicians – the former secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Oliver Dowden, and his surprising successor, Nadine Dorries, whose announcement was an unusually well-kept secret in this notoriously leaky administration. They highlight two important aspects of what Boris Johnson is up to.First, then, Nadine Dorries. She has always been an extreme Boris loyalist, and that’s a quality he values (though doesn’t always reciprocate). She’s a former nurse, writes historical novels set in Britain’s near past of Heartbeat, Call the Midwife and a post office in every village, and was a health minister during the pandemic, and mostly managed not to disgrace herself. More than anything, though, she is a dedicated and sincere populist-nationalist of a kind and to a fanaticism that is still relatively rare even in today’s purged Conservative party. In particular, she is a sworn enemy of the British Broadcasting Corporation and all it stands for (or at least all that its enemies on the right imagine it stands for). Her role will be to terrorise the corporation into a state of subjugation, and it’s precisely her unreasoning demeanour that makes her so well-suited to the task at hand. There is, in other words, no point trying to argue with her. It suits Johnson well to allow such a figure to rough up the corporation while he remains relatively aloof from the unpleasantness and maintains useful and friendly relations with Laura Kuenssberg. If Nadine goes too far one day then the PM can be quietly distanced from the gaffe or unpleasantness. Ms Dorries second objective, again deploying her unique gift for twisted logic and the deduction of a kamikaze pilot, will be to insert Paul Dacre, former editor of the Daily Mail, to head up the media regulator Ofcom, and thus a chilling effect on the entire media landscape, rather as his critics say he did in the Mail newsroom. Mr Dowden, for whatever reason, didn’t succeed in getting Dacre done, so to speak, and spawned into Ofcom; and so Johnson has, so to speak, called the midwife. Her forceps are ready. The public should be ready to see much more of her forceful personality, one that Johnson must hope will be almost perfect for the prejudices of the former red wall.Which brings us to the more emollient sounding Mr Dowden, co-chair of the Conservative Party. He’ll be looking after the political side of things, while his co-chair Ben Elliot keeps on with the untidy business of fundraising. Traditionally, the Tory chairman in the first half of a parliament was supposed to clear up after a general election and concentrate on internal party affairs, such as membership and campaigning. Then there’s a swap to a chair with a more public-facing, all-purpose presentational role – articulate, deeply partisan, getting the message across. Hence Mr Dowden – a former PR man, he learned the smooth arts of politics as deputy chief of staff to David Cameron, a typical graduate of the Cameron-Osborne era. His past (also a Remainer, predictably) doesn’t seem to have done him any harm. As the “minister for the Today programme”, he will be the go-to spokesperson ready to explain how the prime minister’s words have been taken out of context, or explain patiently what the new justice secretary really meant to say about taking the knee, or, indeed, what point Ms Dorries was really trying to make during a meeting with BBC bosses. He’ll be busy.In his first public utterances, Mr Dowden, a little mischievously, told the nation to be ready for a general election. Perhaps what he, this time, meant to say was that his party should be on a war footing and in permanent campaign mode as it launches wave after wave of new culture wars against the opposition, with Ms Dorries in the thick of it. He doesn’t quite have the common touch, it’s fair to say, of a Lee Anderson or Andrew Bridgen, but there are limits, and this is the cabinet, the public face of the party, that will be charged with having something to show for their four or five years in office, other than a gigantic pile of debt and record taxes – Gove building the houses, Javid cutting waiting lists, Zahawi sorting the schools out, Patel stopping the migrants, Shapps getting things moving, and all the rest of it. They’ll all be busy. More

Given that they are one of the few places where MPs and peers from different parties and with radically different philosophies can learn to work together, it seems a bit of a shame that the system of All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) is the latest institution to be brushed with the taint of sleaze. The Commons standards committee is to investigate this obscure, under-reported corner of political life. Concerns have arisen because the members of some groups may have a conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict, due to their involvement with companies or organisations closely linked to a relevant APPG’s remit. There may also be questions about who funds the APPGs’ work, research and secretarial support, and who pays for travel and hospitality. In short, there is a suspicion that the groups are being “lobbied” in some insidious way.The APPGs are a curious thing. Unlike select committees or those scrutinising bills, they have no formal constitutional role. They are simply a group of MPs and peers (normally backbenchers) clubbing together because they have some particular interest – a charitable cause, say – or because they have constituency, family or sentimental links to a particular part of the world, or a shared area of expertise. They organise events and a little publicity, and sometimes issue reports on areas of concern. Thus in recent weeks, the APPG on Democracy and Human Rights in the Gulf has reported that the government is funding groups that whitewash human rights abuses in the Gulf states; the APPG on the Future of Aviation has expressed concern about the traffic-light system of Covid travel controls; the APPG on Beauty, Aesthetics and Wellbeing has recommended better screening for people seeking Botox and filler treatments; and the APPG on Zimbabwe has appealed to the Home Office to stop deportations to the country. There’s an APPG for almost everything, in fact, and not all causes are entirely political, or indeed obvious candidates. To take a few at random, there are groups for Afghanistan, Cameroon, San Marino, Slovenia, Iceland, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, 22q11 syndrome, Alevis, British Sikhs, coronavirus, Crossrail, the death penalty, electoral reform, gasworks redevelopment, jazz appreciation, Lancashire, pigeon racing, running, vaping, wrestling, and youth employment. As can be guessed from the numbers, running into the hundreds, they have expanded greatly over the years for some reason. The old cliche was that the members sometimes joined so that they could take part in important on-the-ground fact-finding missions to places such as Bermuda, Thailand or the Maldives (all have APPGs) or enjoy the generous hospitality that might be expected to follow from a close interest in scotch whisky, wines of Great Britain, or hospitality and tourism (again, all have APPGs), but the current inquiry by the standards committee suggests that something rather more serious than the occasional complimentary bottle of single malt may be at stake. At any rate, it would indeed be a shame if the genuinely valuable work of many of the groups’ MPs and peers, toiling for fine causes and with no personal reward, were harmed by some of their more mercenary colleagues and the heavy intrusion of unaccountable special interests. More