Section:GDN 1N PaGe:6 Edition Date:190907 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/9/2019 19:03 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Saturday 7 September 2019
(^6) National
Politics
Johnson’s shift
to ‘Farage-lite’
party will deter
many Tories,
warns Gauke
Heather Stewart
Political editor
Boris Johnson’s divisive strategy
risks turning the Conservatives into a
“Farage-lite party ” that will alienate
millions of traditional Tory voters, the
former justice secretary David Gauke
has warned.
Speaking after he and 20 colleagues
lost the Conservative whip this week
for supporting legislation aimed at
preventing a no-deal Brexit, Gauke
said voters in his South West Hert-
fordshire constituency were baffl ed
by the purge.
“Middle-class commuters in Rick-
mansworth and Berkhamsted are
wondering whether the Conservative
party is the party that they have tradi-
tionally supported. And they certainly
don’t want to support a Farage-lite
party,” he told the Guardian.
“If the Conservative party hasn’t got
room for Ken Clarke and Philip Ham-
mond and 19 others, there is also a
message there to millions of people
who vote Conservative that it’s not a
party for them. If you go down a divi-
sive route, the scars will be very deep.”
Less than three months ago Gauke
was the justice secretary and lord
chancellor: an ancient title that car-
ries the right to wear ceremonial
gold-embroidered robes.
By the end of this week he was holed
up in a shabby House of Commons
offi ce, watching the Old Traff ord Test
on television.
By contrast with Hammond’s barely
concealed fury in recent days, Gauke
said he felt “immensely sad” about
the chain of events that had led to his
expulsion from the party he joined at
university 29 years ago.
But his condemnation of the prime
minister was no less devastating for its
laid-back delivery.
“I don’t like the idea of being
chucked out of parliament, chucked
out of the party, for basically doing
the bleeding obvious: trying to stop
an absolutely damaging policy that a
responsible political party should be
opposing vigorously,” he sa id.
“Boris Johnson was elected on a
strategy that went down well with
members, but was inevitably going to
collide with reality and unravel. And
it’s happened more quickly than it
might have done, for reasons for which
he and his team are responsible.”
In particular, he has concerns about
the role of Johnson’s chief strategist,
Dominic Cummings. “ The buck stops
with the PM. But it does seem to me
that Mr Cummings is extraordinarily
infl uential, and it is his strategy, he is
the driving force,” he said. “He’s out of
control, and Boris needs to take back
control, to coin a phrase.”
Gauke resigned from Theresa May’s
cabinet in her fi nal days as prime min-
ister, rather than give Johnson the
pleasure of fi ring him.
Even as a cabinet minister, he had
taken delight in trolling the Brexit
wing of his party, styling himself as
the slayer of Brexit “unicorns”. On his
summer break, he gleefully posted on
Twitter a picture of himself posing
with a unicorn infl atable.
But despite his concerns, Gauke
returned minded to give the new
prime minister the benefit of the
doubt, rather than support measures
to block a no-deal Brexit immediately.
But Johnson’s decision to shut
down parliament, and his combative
approach, made the rebels feel they
were being “goaded,” he sa id.
“ There was a distinct sense that this
was all part of a deliberate plan: that
they were trying to goad us,” he sa id.
“He was deliberately picking a fi ght,
because he wanted the Conservative
party to win over all the votes of the
Brexit party, and to do that he essen-
tially had to rebadge the Conservative
party as the Brexit party .”
Johnson has repeatedly insisted he
is working hard to secure a new Brexit
deal, without the Irish backstop. But
Gauke says he saw little evidence of
progress when he was invited to No
10 earlier this week, as Johnson sought
to win over the rebels, fl anked by the
government’s Brexit negotiator, David
Frost.
“All the evidence I am hearing from
Whitehall is the cupboard is bare,” he
said. “One of the things we were told at
the meeting on Tuesday by David Frost
is that we haven’t submitted our pro-
posals up until now, because if we did,
we think they would just be rejected
out of hand.”
“He went on to say, to be fair, that
once we’ve shown that parliament
can’t step in the way then we think
we’re going to get a better reception.
But you can’t simultaneously say :
‘ We’re making very, very good pro-
gress,’ but they haven’t even seen our
proposals yet. So they’re just taking a
punt that somehow all will be fi ne.”
Along with other rebels, Gauke
is exploring whether there are any
grounds for a legal challenge to the
decision to withdraw the Conservative
whip. If that fails, he has not ruled out
standing as an independent candidate.
Lib Dems’ London tactics
Umunna aims for the city
Chuka Umunna is to vacate his
existing south London seat to
fi ght the Cities of London and
Westminster constituency for the
Liberal Democrats, as the party risks
angering local activists by shuffl ing
candidates to accommodate high-
profi le arrivals.
The announcement of Umunna’s
move from Streatham comes as
party sources said another ex-
Labour MP, Luciana Berger, could
be parachuted into a north London
seat, Finchley and Golders Green.
The proposed move for Berger,
who currently represents Liverpool
Wavertree, has upset some local Lib
Dems. One activist said: “People are
fed up with celebrity MP entryism.
Hardworking candidates are
being yanked out of their seats or
pressured not to stand.”
Umunna, who quit Labour in
February and joined the Lib Dems
three months later, will move from
his current seat to take on Mark
Field, the former Foreign Offi ce
minister who escaped punishment
after being fi lmed grabbing a climate
protester by the neck. In the 2017
election Field secured a 3,000-plus
majority over Labour, with the Lib
Dems third. But the party believes a
better indicator is May’s European
elections, where in both parts of
the constituency the Lib Dems won
more votes than the Conservatives
and Labour combined. Peter Walker
▲ David Gauke expressed ‘immense sadness’ at being ejected from the party he
joined as a student 29 years ago PHOTOGRAPH: MARTIN GODWIN/THE GUARDIAN
Continued from page 1
PM’s options
narrow as rebels
vow to break him
House of Lords, clearing the way for
it to receive royal assent on Monday.
- Johnson was criticised by the chief
constable of West Yorkshire police for
using new police recruits as the back-
drop for a political speech.
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader,
Liz Saville Roberts, who was involved
in the “rebel alliance” talks, said: “We
need to make sure we get past 31 Octo-
ber, and an extension to article 50. We
were in agreement that the prime min-
ister is on the run. Boris is broken. We
have an opportunity to bring down
Boris, to break Boris ... and we must
take that. She added: “Our intention
is to be here, in this place, to hold him
to account and to make sure that he
abides by that law.”
Johnson will fl y back this morning
from a visit to the Queen’s summer res-
idence of Balmoral with his partner,
Carrie Symonds, to spend the week-
end plotting his next move.
The passage of Hilary Benn’s back-
bench bill means Johnson will be
legally obliged to request an extension
to article 50 if he has failed to pass a
Brexit dea,l or received MPs’ approval
to leave without a deal, by 19 October.
Speaking in Scotland yesterday,
the prime minister insisted he would
refuse to ask for any delay. “We’ve
spent a long time trying to sort of fudge
this thing and I think the British pub-
lic really want us to get out. They don’t
want more dither and delay,” he said
during a visit on Friday to a farm near
Banchory, Aberdeenshire, at which he
encountered a prize bull called Keene.
Asked how he would secure a new
deal at the EU summit on 17 October,
he said: “By powers of persuasion.
Because there’s absolutely no doubt
we should come out ... It’s a pointless
delay.”
But Gauke, one of the 21 Conserv-
ative rebels who lost their party whip
this week for supporting the Benn bill,
said Johnson would ultimately be left
with little choice.
“During both the leadership elec-
tion and subsequently, has just boxed
himself in, again and again and again.
Just this week he is now saying there
are no circs in which he will seek an
extension. But if the law requires him
to seek an extension, he either has to
comply with the law, or resign. Surely
he must comply with the law?”
In an interview with the Guardian,▼ Boris Johnson on the Opportunus
IV fi shing trawler during his visit to
Peterhead, Scotland, yesterday
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