Johnson’s lurch to the right adds to momentum for
leadership vote
Several Tory MPs believe the 54-letter threshold has
been reached and that a challenge to PM could be mounted as soon as next week
Rowena
Mason, Heather Stewart, Helen Pidd and Josh Halliday
Mon 30 May
2022 19.37 BST
Boris
Johnson’s lurch to the right after Partygate is fuelling even more anger among
rebel Tory MPs, with momentum now building for a leadership challenge next
week.
Conservative
whips spent the first day of recess anxiously phoning round the parliamentary
party to shore up support for the prime minister, as four more MPs called on
him to resign, including Jeremy Wright, the former attorney general.
Several
Tory MPs told the Guardian they believed the threshold of 54 letters
withdrawing support for Johnson was close to being crossed – or may have been
already. This would trigger a secret ballot on whether they still have
confidence in the prime minister.
It is
understood that Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, will have to
use his own judgment about whether to announce the milestone being passed
straight away if it occurs while parliament is off this week, or wait until
Monday, when the House of Commons returns after the Queen’s jubilee
celebrations.
One
backbench critic of the PM said MPs from the 2019 intake were “gathering their
courage” to put in letters before next Monday, but were worrying about
repercussions if No 10 were to identify them after an unsuccessful coup. They
said the opposition to Johnson was increasingly coordinated and determined to
trigger a vote, with almost 30 MPs having publicly declared their opposition so
far.
In his
statement withdrawing support for the prime minister, Wright said Johnson had
done “real and lasting damage” to the institution of government, and while he
could not be sure that the prime minister had misled parliament, Johnson had
been at best “negligent” in how he had approached the issue.
Elliot
Colburn, a Tory MP with a small majority against the Lib Dems, said he had put
in a letter “some time ago”, while Nickie Aiken, the Cities of London and
Westminster MP whose council turned Labour this month, called on Johnson to
bring an end to the situation by submitting a no-confidence letter in himself.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen also told constituents he had resubmitted his letter.
The dismay
over Johnson’s premiership is worsening among Tories in so-called “Blue Wall”
seats at risk of losing them to the Lib Dems, and “Red Wall” marginals where
they have narrow majorities over Labour.
With
Johnson’s future in the balance, No 10 has begun launching a number of
rightwing, nationalistic policies in recent weeks. These include the return of
imperial measures, plans to override the Northern Ireland protocol, a hint
about expanding grammar schools, a review of fracking, and repeated promises to
tear up more EU regulation.
A cabinet
minister told the Guardian that Johnson appeared to be trying to stop the right
of the party turning against him in the event of a leadership challenge, citing
policies such as the review of fracking – which is electorally unpopular but
appeals to a minority in parliament.
But Tory
pollsters and some centrist MPs warned that this “core vote” direction was the
wrong route to go down with public trust in Johnson so low among swing voters.
Tobias Ellwood, a Tory former minister and chair of the defence committee,
warned: “We will lose the next election on the current trajectory as reflected
in recent elections.
“There is
not only just a concern on the conduct of behaviour in No 10, because that has
breached the trust with the British people, it is now concerns about No 10
thinking what our policies are.”
On the
weights and measures policy, he told Sky News: “There will be some people in
our party which will like this nostalgic policy in the hope that it’s enough to
win the next election. But this is not the case. This is not one-nation
Conservative thinking that is required to appeal beyond our base.”
One Tory
cabinet source said the imperial measures policy was “absolutely bananas”,
while another cabinet source said they had “no idea which muppet had come up
with that idea”, as “this is not what the government’s overall strategy is
about”.
Another
Conservative MP said he represented a seat in the “heart of middle England” and
about half of the core Conservative voters there had lost faith in the prime
minister.
Some local
government leaders also expressed a lack of confidence in Johnson. Rishi
Sunak’s local council leader, Carl Les, the Conservative leader of North
Yorkshire county council, said he thought it was time for a leadership
election, blaming Johnson for heavy losses in the local elections.
“I am very
disappointed that the strong majority we had in North Yorkshire has diminished
down to a working majority, but only just, and a lot of the comment we were
getting on the doorstep was about the impact of Partygate,” said Les.
The
warnings from MPs and councillors were echoed by pollsters and political
strategists, including former No 10 advisers James Johnson and Will Tanner.
Both said Johnson was on course to lose the election by swinging to the right
instead of focusing on delivering goals on schools, hospitals, housing and the
cost of living.
Tanner, a
former No 10 aide and the director of Conservative thinktank Onward, said: “My
view is that while it’s understandable that the prime minister and Downing
Street would want to demonstrate their commitment to rightwing policy issues,
to satisfy some of his backbenchers at a moment where clearly the prime
minister is worried about his future, those issues are not going to win the
Conservative party the next election.”
He said he
had “never sat in a focus group or conducted a poll where issues like imperial
weights and measures or Channel 4 privatisation has come up repeatedly” from
the voters Johnson is seeking to court.
He added:
“It is NHS, immigration, crime, wages, good jobs in my town. Those are the
fundamentals that the Conservative party needs to be focusing on, not these
quite small and niche issues, which only matter to a few people.”
James
Johnson, a pollster at JL Partners, who worked for Theresa May,
said: “Some
of these things that might have raised a smile in the past will actually invite
ridicule, the pounds and ounces thing being
a good
example of that. We’re approaching the situation with Johnson similar to one we
faced with Corbyn, where the individual policies might be popular, but the
brand attached to them is toxic.”
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