Inside Politics: The spy who gagged me

Rishi Sunak facing another rebellion on planning as two Tory big beasts join revolt, writes Matt Mathers

(PA)

Hello there, I’m Matt Mathers and welcome to The Independent’s Inside Politics newsletter.

Good luck to the England squad as they take on the USA this evening. Rishi Sunak will reportedly watch the Three Lions from the Darlington Economic Campus. Is the prime minister beginning to lose his own dressing room? Two Tory big beasts have joined another rebellion on planning.

Inside the bubble

Commons action gets underway at 9.30am for private members bills. Former cabinet minister Liam Fox is up first with his bill to create an independent compensation system for National Grid disruption. The next one, from Tory MP Henry Smith, would ban the import of trophies from endangered species.

Daily briefing

Trouble ahead

Inside Politics is not sure that Rishi Sunak ever had a honeymoon period. But if he did, it is now definitely coming to a shuddering halt as the prime minister gets deeper and deeper into the reeds of governing, still just weeks into the job.

Today’s papers and news websites do not make good reading for Sunak going into the weekend and there are two stories in particular that will be worrying officials in No 10 as they chew over their cornflakes. The first is a report that former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have joined a back bench rebellion against a de facto ban on new onshore wind farms.

It hardly needs saying but this is bad news firstly because of the mere fact that both are former occupants of No 10, which is never a good look for the incumbent, and second because Johnson – and to a lesser extent Truss – have big followings among Tory MPs, meaning they will be able to get plenty of colleagues onside to vote against the government.

Truss moved to relax planning rules during her short tenure at No 10, but Johnson did not seek to overturn the effective moratorium on onshore wind, in place since 2015, when he was in office. Sunak has already faced a significant challenge over planning policy from within his own party and this will be another test of his authority.

The second is a reported plan by Sunak to reduce immigration by cracking down on foreign students bringing dependents and studying “low-quality” degrees. It comes after figures published yesterday showed that migration to the UK climbed to a record half a million this year, although the government said the figures were driven by “unique” factors including visa schemes for Ukrainians and Hong Kong citizens, and students arriving from outside the European Union.

According to the i, the plan threatens a backlash in cabinet by ministers concerned that the government could further harm growth in the economy by reducing immigration. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has previously said that immigration will be very important for the UK economy if the government wants to get back to growth. There have been plenty of whispers that it was Hunt – or people close to him – who briefed The Sunday Times on its controversial story last weekend about the government pursuing a ‘Swiss-style’ Brexit.

Hunt has reportedly said that the story was “completely untrue” but yesterday declined to categorically deny that he was the source behind it.

Quizzed by MPs, the chancellor said “I do not support, I have never contemplated” tearing up threadbare the current Brexit deal.

(PA)

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The spy who gagged me

The government has spent £376,775 in legal fees to keep secret the identity of an MI5 agent who abused his former partner before moving abroad to carry out work for a foreign intelligence agency, The Independent can reveal.

Labour said that ministers had lost “any chance” of recovering the money spent to protect the agent, who had a background in rightwing extremism, the “moment somebody put the case into the public domain”.

The case of the informant, who attacked his ex with a machete and is said to have used his position within the domestic intelligence service to further threaten her, first came to light in January.

A newspaper report revealed that Suella Braverman, the attorney general at the time, had sought an injunction against the BBC, which had been seeking to run a story identifying the agent as working overseas.

Emily Thornberry, Labour’s shadow attorney general, said: “Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, it is clear that the government lost any chance of recovering the vast legal costs involved the moment that someone decided to make public a case that Suella Braverman claimed she wanted heard in private.

“That decision to give The Telegraph an exclusive briefing that the attorney general would be seeking an injunction against the BBC may therefore have ended up costing the taxpayer up to £377,000.

“The questions that urgently need to be answered are who gave that briefing, who authorised that briefing, and were the consequences known to Rishi Sunak when he made his cabinet appointments last month.”

The Attorney General’s Office was contacted for comment.

Today’s cartoon

See all of The Independent’s daily cartoons here

(Dave Brown)

On the record

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, when asked about his role in a firm linked to Baroness Mone.

“I would have hoped that you or I, if someone said ‘I can provide PPE’, that we would have said: ‘Great. The thing to do is to go to this official government process, to go through this procurement gateway, to have the quality of the contract that you’re seeking to secure assessed.’”

From the Twitterati

Kevin Schofield, Huffpost UK politics editor, on back bench rebellion reports.

“There may be trouble ahead...”

Essential reading

• Jonathan Portes, The Independent: Why are politicians unwilling to acknowledge the truth about migration?
• Cathy Newman, The Independent: Did Sturgeon get the result she wanted?
• Polly Toynbee, The Guardian: Call these voter ID laws what they really are – voter suppression and an attack on young people
• Harriet Sergeant, The Independent: The Iranian regime is at war with its own children

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