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| Boris Johnson prepares to speak to the media outside 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/AP |
High drama,
low politics: can Johnson survive the chaos?
The
Observer
Boris
Johnson
As defeat
followed defeat, the Brexit masterplan of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings
came undone, torn apart by Tory rebellion and cross-party collaboration
Toby Helm
Sun 8 Sep
2019 09.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 8 Sep 2019 09.10 BST
At 11am
last Tuesday a group of senior Tory MPs opposed to a no-deal Brexit gathered
outside the cabinet room at No 10 for a meeting with the prime minister. The
former chancellor Philip Hammond, the ex-justice secretary David Gauke and the
former business secretary Greg Clark were among them. Along with other Tory
MPs, including Sir Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, and Labour’s Keir Starmer
and Hilary Benn, they had spent their summer holidays drawing up a bill they
believed would force Boris Johnson to seek an extension to Brexit if he could
not strike a new deal with the EU by mid-October.
Johnson had
insisted before and since becoming prime minister that he would never ask the
EU for another postponement and would take the UK out of the EU on 31 October
“deal or no deal”, “do or die”. To limit the amount of parliamentary time the
rebels would have to pass the bill, the prime minister had already announced he
would shut parliament down for five weeks from next week ahead of a new Queen’s
speech on 14 October. But the cross-party alliance opposed to no deal had moved
fast in response, and accelerated their plans. As they chatted before the
meeting, they were confident they had both the numbers to get the bill on the
statute book and the time to do so before parliament was closed.
Outside in
Whitehall, and down the road in Parliament Square, a constant din of protest
and counter-protest rang out from Remainers and Leavers alike. It was
parliament’s first day back after the long July and August recess – and the
controversial prorogation announcement. Police had separated people on
different sides of the Brexit divide as best they could but still arguments
broke out between them on the pavement. Remainers chanted “stop the coup” while
Leavers carried banners saying “Traitor Parliament” and “Boris. No Deal is
Ideal”. Opposite the entrance to the Commons one of the protesters, Dr John
Dinnen, said he had woken up at 2am so worried about what Brexit would mean for
peace on the island of Ireland, where he was born, that he had decided to get a
train from Hereford to protest about a possible no deal. “I feel very strongly
about it,” he said.
When the No
10 meeting got under way, the former Tory ministers – members of the so-called
Gaukeward Squad – asked Johnson what proposals he had to break the deadlock
with Brussels and secure a new agreement to stop the UK crashing out in less
than two months’ time. If he really had such a plan, and it proved acceptable
to the EU and parliament, they made clear that their efforts to force him to go
to Brussels to ask for another delay would be unnecessary and everyone would be
happy.
“He had a
folder on the desk with him and pointed at it, suggesting the plans were
inside,” said one source at the meeting. The MPs then inquired whether the
folder’s contents had been presented to EU leaders. “His response was that the
EU would only really begin negotiating in earnest when it was sure the UK was
serious about no deal,” said another source. “And the PM was clear the EU was
not yet sure that we were serious about no deal so nothing had been sent to
them yet.”
The message
Johnson wanted to convey was that the MPs’ attempts to block no deal were
taking the heat off Brussels. During an hour of discussions, Clark asked for
some specific details on particular issues and Johnson said someone from his
office would get back to him. Later that day, Clark received a phone call from
Johnson’s closest aide, Dominic Cummings, which failed to provide answers.
Instead Clark found himself on the end of a foul-mouthed tirade.
According
to sources aware of the exchange, Cummings bawled at him, saying: “When are you
MPs going to realise that we are leaving on 31 October?” before adding: “We are
going to fucking purge you.”
Boris
Johnson speaking in the House of Commons for the first time on Tuesday.
Photograph: Jessica Taylor/AP
Just a few
hours after the meeting, Johnson made his first speech in the chamber as prime
minister. Reporting on the G7 summit in Biarritz, he struck a different tone
about the Brexit talks. “It is simply not true to say we are not making
progress,” he said. “I returned from the G7 with real momentum in the Brexit
discussions.” This ran contrary not only to the impression he had given to
rebel MPs earlier, but also to a report that day in the Daily Telegraph which
had quoted Cummings as having admitted in a private meeting that negotiations
with the EU were “a sham”.
As Johnson
spoke, the Tory MP Phillip Lee, a Remainer, crossed the floor of the house to
join the Liberal Democrats on the opposition benches. In an instant Johnson had
lost his majority; his ability to govern was draining away. Lee and the rebels
could see that the Prime Minister was putting out one set of messages in
private and another in public. “The only conclusion to be drawn was that he was
actually planning for No Deal,” said one of the rebels. Lee wrote in his
resignation letter that Brexit had transformed the Conservative party into a
“narrow faction” that had “increasingly become infected with the twin diseases
of populism and English nationalism”.
Later,
during a debate that evening on the rebel plan to take control of parliamentary
business, the leader of the Commons, Jacob-Rees Mogg, reclined on the
government frontbench. The image went viral within minutes. He was accused of
being “contemptuous of this house” by the Green MP Caroline Lucas.
The photo
of Jacob Rees-Mogg relaxing on the front benches rapidly went viral.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
When the
result of the vote on the Tory rebel plan was announced, the opposition benches
erupted while Tory Remainers tried to control their glee. The government had
lost by 328 to 301 votes. Twenty-one Conservative MPs had defied their party by
voting to allow debate on a bill that would force their own prime minister to
ask the EU for an extension – which he had promised over and over again never
to do.
As MPs left
the chamber, the purge Cummings had threatened began. All rebel MPs, including
the father of the house, Kenneth Clarke, and Sir Nicholas Soames, the grandson
of Winston Churchill, had the whip withdrawn, and were told they would not be
allowed to stand as Conservatives at the next election. The veteran Tory MP
Roger Gale said Johnson was “in danger of tearing the party apart” and rumours
spread that cabinet ministers, including Amber Rudd, were seething and
considering how long they could remain in the government.
It was
clear by the evening that part one of the Johnson/Cummings masterplan - to use
prorogation coupled with threats - had not only failed spectacularly but had
backfired. One of those who were purged, the former foreign office minister
Alistair Burt says: “I have never seen a government strategy so misjudged, nor
fail so speedily, as that devised in Downing Street since late July.”
All trust is gone ... and the PM only has one
way out
Alistair
Burt
The
treatment of grandees such as Clarke and Soames had upset Tory MPs of all
Brexit persuasions, even some of the most committed Leavers, such as Sir Edward
Leigh, who voiced his disquiet at a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory
backbenchers. The rebels said the behaviour of No 10 was swelling their
numbers, not reducing them so had been utterly counter-productive as well as
deeply divisive.
On the Tory
benches on Wednesday – a day No 10 had set aside for Sajid Javid’s spending
review, with its many promises to increase funding of public services – purged
MPs rose one after another to decry the gradual disintegration of a
once-tolerant and internationalist Conservative party.
There was
defiance and dark humour. Soames was emotional and scathing in turns, saying he
was sad his long career as a Conservative MP was ending in this way, before
noting that Johnson’s “serial disloyalty” in the past “had been such an
inspiration to many of us”. Burt asked “if we are being purged now, who is
next?” and vowed that the anti-EU obsessions his party had developed “may have
curtailed my future but it will not rob me of what I believe. I will walk out
of here looking up at the sky, not at my shoes.”
That
evening’s first vote on the “Benn bill” passed at 7pm by 327 and 299. Barring
problems in the Lords it was heading on to the statute book.
On only the
second day of parliamentary business under Johnson’s premiership he had
suffered two defeats and lost his majority. Ian Blackford, leader of the SNP at
Westminster, observed that “this must be the shortest-lived honeymoon in
parliamentary history”.
Incredibly,
some Conservatives went further, predicting that Johnson was cornered and could
be finished as PM. He had promised never to extend the Brexit deadline but had
failed to stop a new law being passed that was about to force him to do so. “I
don’t like to say this, and I hardly dare, but I think it could be checkmate,”
said one of the leading Tory rebels.
He was
right to be cautious. Johnson, Cummings, and No 10’s head of legislative
affairs, Nikki da Costa, might not have succeeded yet, but they had another
scheme up their sleeves which they believed would still scupper the rebel
plans.
At 7.51pm
on Wednesday, Johnson rose in the Commons to move a motion “that there shall be
an early general election” on 15 October. If parliament were to vote in favour
in sufficient numbers, and the Tories were to win the election with a big
enough majority, Johnson could then repeal the Benn bill and avoid having to
ask for an extension. The pressure, it seemed, was on the Labour leader Jeremy
Corbyn.
Johnson
told MPs it would be unthinkable for the Labour party leader to refuse a chance
to go to the country. “He has demanded an election for two years while blocking
Brexit. He said only two days ago that he would support an election...is he now
going to say the public cannot be allowed an election to decide which of us
sorts out this mess?” Labour and the other opposition parties, including the
SNP, had, however, agreed their lines. They would back a general election – but
not on Johnson’s terms and not on 15 October.
Instead
they would vote against the motion and say an election should be called when
the Benn bill had received royal assent or, better still, when Johnson had
actually asked the EU for an extension. Corbyn responded to the election call
with mockery. “The offer of the election today is a bit like the offer of an
apple to Snow White from the Wicked Queen, because what the Prime Minister is
offering is not an apple or even an election, but the poison of no deal.”
To force an
election, Johnson needed a two-thirds majority of all MPs to back him. But
Labour MPs abstained en masse. The result when it came at 9.21pm was 298 in
favour and 56 against. The election ploy had failed, Johnson had lost again,
and everyone wondered what on earth he could do next. In the early hours of the
next day – Thursday – exhausted peers who were opposed to the Benn bill gave up
their attempts at filibustering in the House of Lords and the last hurdle in
the way of the Benn bill had been cleared. It is expected to gain royal assent
early this week.
The
headlines in the Tory-supporting papers tore into Corbyn. The Daily Mail
declared: “Corbyn chickens out of an election”. But it was the prime minister
who was in far deeper trouble. And things were to get worse. Shortly after
11pm, the prime minister’s brother Jo, a Remainer, resigned from the cabinet,
saying he had been “torn between family loyalty and the national interest”.
Johnson
speaking in West Yorkshire on Thursday; he was criticised for using police
cadets for political purposes. Photograph: Reuters
On a visit
to Morley, in West Yorkshire, the prime minister was harangued in front of TV
cameras by residents, with one accusing him of “playing games” when he “should
be in Brussels negotiating”, and another telling him: “Please leave my town”.
On the same trip north he gave speech in Wakefield, with rows of police cadets
lined up behind, declaring that he would rather “die in a ditch” than ask for
an extension to the UK’s EU membership. The decision to use police cadets for
political purposes was widely criticised as senior Tories, including some in
the Cabinet, called for a change of strategy. At a dinner that night, the
former Conservative prime minister John Major called on Johnson to “get rid” of
Cummings and reinstate the MPs he had suspended, without whom “we will cease to
be a broad-based national party, and be seen as a mean-minded sect”.
This
weekend, Johnson and his advisers suffered another blow: Amber Rudd quit as work
and pensions secretary and resigned the Tory whip. She cited the same concerns
that Gauke’s rebels had raised, that she no longer believed Johnson wanted to
get a deal with the EU. His decision to withdraw the whip from the 21 rebels
was “an assault on decency and democracy”.
Amber Rudd
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Amber Rudd resigned as work and pensions secretary and quit the Tory whip on
Saturday. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
They are
desperate to find ways to trigger a general election in which they can attack
Labour and the other opposition parties for blocking the “will of the people”.
Polls this weekend, including the latest Opinium survey for the Observer,
showing a 10-point lead for the Conservatives, will encourage them to hang on
and fight.
No 10
insists that the prime minister will neither resign nor ask for an extension to
Brexit. But doing neither would mean Johnson being in contempt of court and
having to quit, say lawyers.
There are
suggestions that he will try on Monday to call a vote of no confidence in his
own government in an attempt to force a general election, and ask Tory MPs to
back that motion. But would the speaker, John Bercow, allow such a move that
was clearly aimed at achieving a purpose other than that stated in the motion
itself? Another idea floated by sources close to Johnson yesterday was that he
would try to force the EU to expel the UK by refusing to nominate a
commissioner, a ploy Downing Street seems to think would bring the EU to its
knees – but which Brussels insists would not work.
After a
week of such drama culminating in Rudd’s resignation, MPs have no idea what
will unfold next. “We just have to wait and see what the latest genius plans
are from No 10,” said a senior Labour figure. “If they are as disastrous as
those they tried over the last few days, I don’t see how he can survive.
“But what
do I know? What does anyone know?”
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