Inside Politics: Big Dog badly wounded

Boris Johnson wins confidence ballot but 40 per cent of MPs vote to remove him, writes Matt Mathers

Britain Politics (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Boris Johnson will today attempt to shift the conversation on from last night’s damaging confidence vote. But are his days in office now numbered? Amid the Tory bloodletting over the Big Dog’s future, a cabinet minister appeared to admit that the government’s preparation for the Covid pandemic was in inadequate.

Inside the bubble

Our chief politics commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for today:

Boris Johnson starts the fightback by chairing a meeting of the cabinet, which was billed as discussing the NHS coronavirus backlog, but which at which the government’s wider future might be touched on. Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, might remind Johnson of his troubles when he gives evidence to the Public Accounts Committee at 10am. The Commons sits from 11.30am with business questions, followed by a Labour attempt to keep up the pressure with an opposition debate on ministerial standards.

Daily Briefing

Death by 148 cuts

Boris Johnson, as expected, won last night’s confidence vote. But did he do so by enough to silence his critics and put an end to the manoeuvring against him, drawing a line under the Partygate scandal?

The magic number of letters required to trigger the vote was 54. And the figure most Westminster watchers were listening out for as Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1992 Committee, read out the result was 133 – or one third of Conservative MPs (there are currently 359).

The general consensus was that, if a third of MPs could not be persuaded to back Johnson, then it would likely spell the beginning of the end of his premiership. In the end, 148 MPs (41 per cent) decided that they wanted to oust the Big Dog (211 voted for him). 148 was at the top end of what No 10 had expected and in excess of what even the most optimistic rebels had predicted.

The result means Johnson performed worse in confidence ballots than his predecessors John Major in 1995, Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and most recently, Theresa May in 2018. Thatcher and May resigned after losing their contests while Major limped on to the 1997 general election only to get trounced in Labour’s historic landslide victory.

What happens now? Under current Tory rules, Johnson is safe from challenge for 12 months and will remain in office. His loyalists were already laying the groundwork yesterday before the vote had taken place, saying that a victory of one would be enough for him to continue.

Ministers are out on the broadcast round this morning, claiming it is business as usual for the government. But the truth is that the size of last night’s rebellion looks to have dealt a terminal blow to Johnson’s authority.

The MPs who voted against Johnson and who are trying to remove him from office will have been emboldened by the result and opposition parties will today seek to maximise the damage inflicted upon him. The Lib Dems will later try to hold a parliament-wide confidence vote in Johnson and Labour plans to have a vote on standards.

Tory MPs, meanwhile, are calling for a wholesale cull of Johnson’s cabinet. All of this comes with two byelections just around the corner, both of which current polls suggest the Tories are going to lose. There is also the small matter of a privileges committee investigation into whether or not Johnson misled parliament.

In a speech following the result, Labour leader Keir Starmer condemned the Tory MPs who voted to keep Johnson in office. Privately, however, it is the result he and other Labour MPs and strategists will have wanted.

The story splashes the front of most major news outlets this morning. The Telegraph says Johnson’s “hollow victory tears Tories apart”. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, backs Johnson’s pledge to “bash on” while simultaneously kicking off what looks like the beginnings of a campaign to keep Labour out of government, pointing to what it describes as a Lib Dem, Labour and SNP “coalition of chaos”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks after surviving an attempt by Tory MPs to oust him as party leader (PA)

Blue on blue

As the Tory bloodletting intensified yesterday ahead of the vote, Nadine Dorries appeared to concede that the government’s preparation for the Covid pandemic was “wanting and inadequate”. The culture secretary and Johnson ultra-loyalist made the comments in a tweet as she took a swipe at Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary and leadership contender, who called on his colleagues to vote for “change” in the confidence ballot.

She said that the former health secretary had been “wrong about almost everything (and) wrong again now [on the confidence vote]”. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, claimed the comment was “a damning indictment” of the government’s preparedness which showed that the Conservatives were “not fit to govern”.

Hunt, who is the current favourite to replace Johnson if he is eventually removed from office, was one of the first senior Tories out of the blocks to confirm that he would vote no confidence in the PM. In a statement on Twitter shortly after the vote was announced, he wrote: “The Conservative Party must now decide if it wishes to change its leader. Because of the situation in Ukraine this was not a debate I wanted to have now but under our rules we must do that.

“Having been trusted with power, Conservative MPs know in our hearts we are not giving the British people the leadership they deserve. We are not offering the integrity, competence and vision necessary to unleash the enormous potential of our country.”

Today’s cartoon (Brian Adcock)

On the record

“Whilst Boris Johnson has clung on today – make no mistake, his reputation is in tatters and his authority is now totally shot.”

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey says PM’s authority has gone following vote.

From the Twitterati

“PM now in very dangerous territory. Although his allies insisted he would cling on if he won ‘even by one vote’ his authority is seriously undermined. Major moments of peril ahead – including two key by-elections – mean pressure to accept his time is up will be intense.”

Daily Mirror politics editor Pippa Crerar on last night’s vote.

Essential reading

• Sean O’Grady, The Independent: Boris Johnson beware – even leaders who survive a confidence vote are left wounded
• John Rentoul, The Independent: PM is holed below the waterline
• Marie Le Conte, The Independent: After 10 years of Westminster chaos, we’ve forgotten what ‘normal’ looks like
• Gideon Rachman, The Financial Times: Ukraine and the start of a second cold war

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