Tory discontent with Boris Johnson spreads as MPs
fear losing seats
Minister says PM in ‘yellow card territory’ after Sue
Gray’s Partygate report as more MPs hand in letters of no confidence
Jane
Clinton
Sat 28 May
2022 09.45 EDT
Anger among
Tory backbenchers is spreading amid fallout from the Sue Gray report, with one
minister warning Boris Johnson is in “yellow card territory”.
Speaking on
BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions, the Treasury minister John Glen said he had had a
“very frank and very honest” meeting with Johnson to express his and his
constituents’ misgivings.
“I think we
are in yellow card territory but as a member of the government I went to see
him and let him know how I felt and my constituents felt, but he asked me to get
on with the job of driving reforms in financial services,” he said on Friday
night.
The former
cabinet minister David Davis said unease was spreading across Conservative
ranks as MPs feared the Downing Street lockdown parties scandal could cost them
their seats.
“Nobody in
the world could have made it plainer, I don’t think, that I want the prime
minister to go – I haven’t changed my mind about that,” he told BBC Radio 4’s
Today programme.
Asked
whether discontent was spreading in the Tory party, Davis said: “There is no
doubt about that, for two reasons.
“Number
one, frankly they see their own seats disappearing in many cases, they see themselves
losing the next election on the back of this.
“Also, it
has a bad effect on the country … it is a distraction on everything you do and
it doesn’t help the reputation of the country.”
The former
Brexit secretary said party leadership trouble traditionally took a long time
to be sorted out, pointing to the length of time John Major and Theresa May
stayed in No 10 despite experiencing backbench revolt.
He added:
“I fear we’ll not resolve this until the latter part of the year.”
The warning
by Davis of increasing mutiny came after polling company YouGov produced new
modelling suggesting the Conservatives would lose all but three of 88
“battleground” constituencies if a general election were held on Saturday,
putting the government’s Commons majority in jeopardy.
Under the
predicted outcome, Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat would “likely
fall” into Labour hands and “red wall” seats such as Blyth Valley and
Stoke-on-Trent North would revert back to Labour, according to YouGov.
In order
for a vote of no confidence to be triggered, the chair of the 1922 Committee,
Graham Brady, must receive letters from at least 54 Conservative MPs – 15% of
the parliamentary party.
Former
health minister Steve Brine has added his name to the list of Tory MPs to have
handed in letters of no confidence, it has emerged.
Brine said
the Gray report had not altered his view that it was “inevitable the prime
minister would face a vote of confidence. All I can do as a backbencher is seek
to trigger that process and (some time ago actually) I have done that”, he said
in a statement published on his website on Wednesday but only picked up by the
media on Saturday.
“I have
said throughout this sorry saga I cannot and will not defend the indefensible.
Rule-makers cannot be law-breakers.”
Newton
Abbot MP Anne Marie Morris is also among the letter writers, having confirmed
that she has had the Tory whip restored after it was removed in January for her
decision to support an opposition move to cut VAT on energy bills.
The veteran
Conservative Sir Bob Neill, a qualified barrister and chair of the Commons
justice committee, confirmed he had submitted a letter of no confidence on
Friday.
And also on
Friday, the Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton Alicia Kearns , a previous critic
of Johnson, released a statement saying she still had no confidence in him.
Her
constituency, which includes Melton Mowbray, sparked talk of a “pork pie
putsch” when she and other Tory MPs discussed trying to oust the PM in January.
In a
stinging Facebook post, Kearns said calls to move on “treat with contempt and
disregard” the sacrifices other people made. She wrote: “I can only conclude
that the prime minister’s account of events to parliament was misleading.”
Johnson
announced changes to the ministerial code on Friday in a move his rivals said
watered down punishments for ministers.
An update
said ministers would not automatically lose their jobs if theybreached the
standards code, and can instead apologise or possibly have their salary
suspended instead.
Chris
Bryant, the chair of the Commons standards committee, said the “loosening” of
the ministerial code by Johnson was “bizarre” and showed why there should be an
independent system in place for judging the conduct of ministers.
The Labour
MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he disagreed with recommendations made by
the independent committee on standards in public life, which allow ministers to
remain in their jobs for what could be deemed minor breaches of the code.
“Maybe this
is what you would expect from people who have mostly been civil servants in the
past – that’s how they end up on the committee on standards in public life –
that they would support a strong government that is, broadly speaking, able to
do what it likes,” he said.
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He called
for a “proper system whereby an independent figure, entirely without the prime
minister’s involvement, decides whether or not to launch an investigation into
a minister, and decides whether it is a very serious case or a less serious
case, and then suggests the sanction”.
Bryant
added: “That’s not what the prime minister has got, it still all lies in the
prime minister’s hands and we know, don’t we, that the prime minister always
finds himself innocent in the court of his own opinion.”
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