Inside Politics: Anger as ministers use rent expense loophole to cash in while letting own homes

Tory grandee warns PM of Thatcher-style felling as fall out from Paterson lobbying scandal rumbles on, writes Matt Mathers

(Independent)

“We have started a fire and we have no idea how to put the fire out.” Those were the now prophetic words of Nigel Mills, one of the rebel Tory MPs who last week stood his ground and refused to back No 10’s attempt to rip up sleaze rules to save Owen Paterson from suspension. More than a week on from the vote and Paterson’s resignation, there is plenty of scorched earth to survey while the blaze still shows no signs of dying out. Mills himself probably did not anticipate just how furious the backlash would be and there are more than just a few Tory MPs wishing they followed his example, rather than their boss down into the trenches – or the sewers, as the opposition parties have become fond of saying. Friday’s papers and news websites are brimming with yet more allegations of sleaze, with a renewed focus on MPs’ renting of second homes. According to analysis by The Independent 17 MPs – five ministers and Sir Geoffrey Cox among them – have picked £1.3m in rent expenses from the pocket of the taxpayer while letting out properties that they own in London. This morning’s Times splashes on a similar story while the Financial Times has on its front page a story saying Boris Johnson has raked in some £4m since entering the House of Commons. Looks like it’s going to be another less than straightforward weekend for Downing Street. Elsewhere, it’s the final day of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow and Lord Frost is holding further Brexit talks with the EU.

Inside the bubble

Parliament not sitting

Coming up:

– Scotland first minister Nicola Sturgeon on BBC Breakfast at 8.20am

– Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband on BBC Radio 4 Today at 8.40am

Daily Briefing

COINING IT: International trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, defence secretary Ben Wallace, Foreign Office minister James Cleverly, prisons minister Victoria Atkins and junior Treasury minister John Glen are the government ministers using a rent expenses loophole to line their pockets. There are a few ex-ministers and two Labour MPs – Geraint Davies and Clive Betts – who also make the unsavoury list. All the MPs have put their housing costs on expenses while earning more than £10,000 a year each renting out their own properties in recent years. This week’s revelations have heaped further pressure on the PM, who has come under fire from angry MPs on the government benches – and those who sat there before them. As a new poll showed that Labour had taken the lead over the Conservatives, former cabinet minister and party grandee Malcolm Rifkind warned Johnson that he is in danger of becoming “a liability” to his party and of being toppled by his own MPs as Margaret Thatcher was. The former foreign secretary told The Independent there is a growing mood that the PM is failing to show proper leadership. “I was in the cabinet when Margaret Thatcher was required to fall on her sword. And if somebody of the stature of Thatcher can be disposed of pretty quickly and pretty ruthlessly by the parliamentary party, no prime minister can assume that they’re free from that risk.”

‘COMPLETELY UNTRUE’: Keir Starmer has not escaped scrutiny over work he’s done in the past and last night denied a claim by Jeremy Corbyn’s team that it was the former leader who blocked his plans for a second job with a law firm. While in the shadow cabinet, Starmer said he had been “in talks” about working for Mishcon de Reya in 2017 but never followed through on taking up work for the firm. “Corbyn stopped Starmer taking a second job doing high-paid consultancy work for law firm Mishcon de Reya in 2017, several key figures from the Corbyn leadership have confirmed to me,” Corbyn’s former speech writer and biographer Alex Nunns tweeted . “The matter was raised at a meeting of the shadow cabinet, where ‘Jeremy very politely reminded Keir what Labour Party policy was’, according to a senior member of Corbyn’s shadow ministerial team.” But the claim was described as “entirely untrue” by Starmer’s spokesperson, who declined to say why the job was not taken up. “Keir had rejected the offer from Mishcon de Reya before the then leader’s office was even aware of it”. Starmer has declared more than £25,000 for legal work carried out before he became Labour leader, including almost £10,000 for advising the government of Gibraltar, widely seen as a tax haven.

10 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT: Cop26 enters its final day on life support with UK president Alok Sharma warning yesterday that securing a deal to keep 1.5C alive will be “monumental challenge”. Officials are still hopeful that an agreed text will be produced by the scheduled end of the summit on Friday afternoon, though many delegates think that the summit will spill over into the weekend as wrangling intensifies on crucial details. “Whilst we have made progress, we are not there yet on the most crucial issues,” Sharma said. “There is still a lot more work to be done and Cop26 is scheduled to close at the end of tomorrow. Time is running out.” Sharma’s comments came after the UK declined to join an international alliance aiming to end new oil and gas projects, leaving a small group of other countries led by Costa Rica and Denmark to forge a path away from fossil fuels.

LONDON CALLING: The latest round of talks with the EU to rehash the UK’s post-Brexit trade arrangements for Northern Ireland are due to begin in London. Britain’s chief negotiator to the EU, Lord Frost, is to meet European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic later. An agreement is still some way off and both sides have been issuing threats on trade sanctions, although the rhetoric used has died down somewhat.

JOBS FOR THE BOYS: An ex-Conservative advisor who is married to a Tory MP will help choose the UK’s next media regulator, the government has confirmed. Michael Simmonds, husband of former schools minister Nick Gibb and brother-in-law of former No 10 communications chief Robbie Gibb, will sit on the interview panel who will choose the next chair of Ofcom. Downing Street is widely reported to want former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre to take the job and has already re-booted the recruitment process once after the right-winger unexpectedly failed his final interview and was deemed “not appointable”.

On the record

“The big incidents of the week, and a number of smaller ones as well, suggest that old habits die hard. The events of the last week have been intensely damaging. I’m not in the House of Commons, but it would appear he’s in danger of becoming seen as a liability rather than an asset. And the Conservative Party has a reputation, a well-deserved reputation, of being ruthless when prime ministers are deemed to have outlived their usefulness.”

Tory grandee Sir Malcolm Rifkind on PM.

From the Twitterati

“-Johnson took the moral high ground with Tory MPs yesterday, saying:

“you must put your job as an MP 1st and you must devote yourself primarily and above all to your constituents”

-we calculate the PM himself has made over £4.3m from outside interests.”

Financial Times chief political correspondent Jim Pickard on Johnson’s outside earnings.

Essential reading

• Cathy Newman, The Independent: Being robust on rule-breaking is a bit rich coming from Boris Johnson
• Caroline Lucas, The Independent: Emissions need cutting to zero, not net zero, to avoid catastrophe
• James Forsyth, The Times: Levelling up is the next Tory fault line
• Polly Toynbee, The Guardian: A Brexit trade war with the EU could backfire on Boris Johnson

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