Now Boris Johnson should be really worried: Labour is offering to support him

Wes Streeting, the new shadow health secretary, offered the opposition’s help to put coronavirus passports on the statute book, writes John Rentoul

Wes Streeting (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

The moment a prime minister has to worry is when the opposition offers its support to overcome opposition from the government back benches. One of those rare moments occurred last night, when Sajid Javid, the health secretary, was forced to go to the House of Commons to make a statement about the new coronavirus rules at the same time as the prime minister was speaking in Downing Street.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, has been so annoyed about ministers making announcements outside parliament that we now have a system by which a secretary of state has to provide a simultaneous translation service in parliament while Boris Johnson is speaking across the road.

This gave Wes Streeting, Javid’s new Labour shadow, his chance. “I want to be clear with the House and the country that Labour will support these measures in the national interest,” he said.

Where some Labour partisans had briefly seen a chance to defeat the government in a vote on coronavirus passports, which are particularly unpopular among Conservative backbenchers, Streeting seized the opportunity to do something more damaging to Boris Johnson, namely to hug the government close: “Let me reassure the secretary of state that he does not need to compromise with the interests behind him; he has the votes he needs to do what is right by the public.”

This was a clanging echo of the moment David Cameron offered his party’s votes to Tony Blair to get his schools reforms through parliament against backbench Labour opposition. At his second outing at Prime Minister’s Questions after he was elected Tory leader, 16 years ago this week, Cameron said: “With our support, he can have the reforms that our schools need or he can give in to the Labour Party.”

By then, Blair had already surrendered to the majority of his MPs, who were unhappy with his plans for “trust schools” that would have in effect turned all schools into self-governing academies. The legislation was watered down to conceal the retreat, but Labour MPs’ support for Blair was ebbing away, and within a year he was forced to pre-announce his departure.

We shall see how much history will repeat itself by next Tuesday, when the Commons will vote on the new rules. Johnson could retreat on coronavirus passports. As it is, the proposal is limited simply to nightclubs, large indoor events (500 people) and even larger outdoor ones (4,000 people). When passports were originally floated nearly a year ago, they were modelled on the Israeli green pass, and the intention was that people would have to show them to go into shops, pubs, restaurants and cinemas. All those have gone, and yet Tory libertarians remain adamantly opposed.

As Streeting pointedly noted, Javid was heckled by his own MPs during his statement. After it, they queued up to announce their opposition, either in the Commons or on Twitter or both.

Streeting, with Keir Starmer’s support, is at last engaging in smart politics. It might be tempting to try to defeat the government: Labour could easily knock together a rudimentary civil liberties argument and make common cause with the anti-lockdowners on the government back benches. But that isn’t what the public wants. The British public has consistently supported more restrictive measures than those in place at any time.

This is one of those occasions when claiming to do the right thing – “in the public interest” – is the most effective form of attack. Because it is more damaging to the prime minister to have Labour separate him further from his backbenchers than it would be to lose a parliamentary vote over a relatively minor measure.

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It looks as if the number of Tory MPs opposed to coronavirus passports is easily greater than the 40 needed to wipe out Johnson’s majority. Therefore he knows that he can get the measure through only with Labour’s support. That is not a position any prime minister wants to be in. Johnson has already done lasting damage to his relationship with many of his MPs by asking them to vote to get Owen Paterson off his punishment for paid lobbying. Relying on Labour votes to pass something that so many Tories are uneasy about would stretch those tenuous bonds of loyalty still further.

We are not yet at the point where significant numbers of Tory MPs are thinking of getting rid of him – it would take 55 to trigger a vote of confidence in his leadership – but Paul Goodman, the former Tory MP and editor of Conservative Home thinks the events of this week have made a change of leadership more likely than not before the next election.

Hence Streeting’s calculated closing comment: “Members on the government benches need to think and to search their own consciences about whether, at this moment of serious crisis, we have the serious leadership our country needs. If not, they know what to do.”

Suddenly, Johnson’s hold on power feels as if it is slipping.