6 Saturday May 28 2022 | the times
News
Boris Johnson has weakened the rules
on standards in government so that
ministers found guilty of breaking the
ministerial code will no longer be
expected to resign.
The prime minister, who is facing an
investigation into whether he misled
parliament, argued it would be “dispro-
portionate” to require ministers who
breach the code to step down. Ministers
will instead be asked to take a salary cut
or make a public apology.
No 10 said that the decision to
remove the need for rule-breaking
ministers to resign had been taken
following consultation with the
committee on standards in public life
and Lord Geidt, Johnson’s independent
adviser on ministerial standards.
In the updated code, Johnson has
also refused to give Geidt the power to
launch his own investigations — some-
thing which had been demanded by a
number of ethics bodies.Boris Johnson would lose his seat if an
election were held tomorrow, accord-
ing to a poll that suggests the Conserva-
tives face annihilation in the red wall
constituencies they won in 2019.
Johnson would be the highest-profile
casualty on a night of Tory losses with
Blyth Valley, Burnley, Leigh, and Stoke-
on-Trent North among the seats likely
to return to Labour.
The YouGov MRP poll, which used
the same model that predicted the out-
come of the general election, shows
that the Tories would lose all but three
of the 88 battleground seats that they
hold by a slim margin over Labour.
Johnson would be unseated in his
constituency of Uxbridge & South
Ruislip, with much of London and its
suburbs turning red. Sir Iain Duncan
Smith, the former Tory leader, would
lose his Chingford & Woodford Green
constituency, while Steve Baker, the
prominent Brexit rebel, could be
defeated in Wycombe.
Last night a senior Tory MP became
the sixth backbencher to publicly de-
mand Johnson’s resignation after the
publication of Sue Gray’s report into
parties during lockdown. Sir Bob Neill,
chairman of the justice committee, said
that he had submitted a letter of no con-
fidence to the 1922 Committee of back-
benchers because of the “wholly un-
acceptable behaviour” in No 10.
“He has lost the trust of many, nor-
mally Conservative voters,” he told
Times Radio. Asked whether he
thought the Tories would lose the next
election, he said: “Frankly, yes”.
Paul Holmes, the Conservative MP
for Eastleigh, became the first member
of the government to quit after the pub-
lication of Gray’s report.
He accused Johnson of presiding
over a “toxic culture” in No 10 as he re-
signed as a parliamentary private secre-
tary to Priti Patel, the home secretary.
In a statement on his website to his
constituents, Holmes, 33, said he was
“shocked and angered” by Gray’s re-
port. He said the parties had caused the
electorate to have a “deep mistrust” in
the government and he said the revela-
tions that cleaners and security staff
had suffered abuse were “disappointing
and unacceptable”.
Holmes stopped short of calling for
Johnson to step down but 20 MPs have
done so since he was issued with a fixed
penalty notice. Sir Graham Brady, the
chairman of the 1922 Committee,
requires 54 letters, equivalent to 15 per
cent of Tory MPs, to trigger a leader-
ship contest.
Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP for Rut-
land & Melton, said that Johnson had
brought the Tory party into “disrepute”.
Kearns, who was the ringleader of the
“pork pie” plot this year to oust John-
son, said the revelations about parties
had made “hard-working and law-
abiding Conservatives feel ashamed”.
“There are broader issues with the
culture that breeds under this regime in
parliament, from the shameful lengths
some will pursue to preserve this
premiership, to some of the individuals
and actions permitted to continue
under it,” she said.
Johnson said yesterday he would sur-
vive the attempts to oust him and tried
to draw a line under the scandal.
Asked on a visit to Stockton-on-Tees
whether he was confident he had
Boris Johnson
visiting a training
academy in
Stockton-on-Tees
yesterdayNews Politics
Poll shows Johnson facing red
enough support from Tory MPs, he said
yes, adding that he had given “vintage
and exhaustive answers” to questions
about Downing Street parties.
The YouGov poll is likely to prompt
further angst from backbenchers who
return to their constituencies this
weekend while Johnson waits to see
whether public anger translates into
more backbenchers calling for him to
go during the parliamentary recess.
Tory MPs were set to lose every-
where from Keighley to Kensington,
the poll showed. MPs with seats in the
northeast and east Midlands would see
a swing of 11 points away from the To-
ries, rising to 14 in the south of England.
The poll also shows they are on
course to lose the by-election in Wake-
field next month after the Tory MP Im-
ran Ahmad Khan was forced to resign
following his conviction for sexually
abusing a teenage boy.
The YouGov study looked at all seats
where Labour are within 15 points of
the Tories or which were Tory gains in- Of the seats won by the Tories
from Labour at the last general elect-
ion, only Ashfield, Bassetlaw and Dud-
ley North would remain in Tory hands.
The poll is a boost for Sir Keir Starm-
er, the Labour leader, after he staked his
leadership on a police inquiry into an
alleged breach of lockdown rules.
Starmer has offered to resign if he is
fined by Durham police for drinking
beer and eating curry while campaign-
ing for the local elections last year.
If he escapes a fine, Starmer’s gamble
would appear to have paid off with La-
bour picking up seats everywhere from
Cornwall to West Sussex, the poll finds.
Truro & Falmouth, a Conservative
constituency since it was created in
2010, would be won for the first time by
Labour, as would East Worthing &
Shoreham, which has also only ever
been represented by Tories.
Signature victories for Labour would
be recorded in Sedgefield, Tony Blair’s
former seat, and Workington, the con-
stituency that became the embodiment
of the red wall in 2019 because of its
association with the phenomenon
known as “Workington Man”.
Christian Wakeford, the MP for Bury
South, who defected to Labour from the
Conservatives, would appear to be vin-
dicated because his seat is on course to
be won by Starmer on a 15-point swing.
In Wales, the Conservatives would
endure a particularly poor night, losing
seats such as the former Labour heart-
land constituencies of Bridgend, Delyn,
and Wrexham.
On Anglesey, Plaid Cymru, the
Welsh nationalist party, would take the
seat of Ynys Mon from the Conserva-
tives with a 26-point swing.
The poll paints a bleak picture for
Tory MPs considering whether to con-
tinue offering their support to the
prime minister. A separate YouGov poll
after publication of Gray’s report found
that 59 per cent of people think John-
son should resign — up from 57 per cent
when he received a fine last month.
In an email to a constituent seen by
The Times, Oliver Heald, the Tory MP
for North East Hertfordshire, said he
was “dismayed and appalled” by the
revelations and would be discussing
with colleagues “what happens next”.
John Penrose, the anti-corruption
tsar, suggested that Johnson’s fate was
tied to an investigation by the privileges
committee. He told LBC: “There is a
great deal of concern about whether or
not he’s been telling the truth in
parliament. That’s another example of
something that hasn’t been answered.”
Chancellor’s £21 billion spending
bonanza, letters, page 32
Time we all moved on and followed PM...,
Matt Chorley, page 35
My Week, Sue Gray, page 38
P
romoting
government
policy to young
people can be a
challenge, so one
could forgive Nadine
Dorries for trying
something new. Even if
she has ended up rapping
about the Online Safety
Bill on TikTok (Joshua
Thurston writes).
The culture secretary,
65, posted a 40-second
video peppered with gifs,
memes and screenshots of
legislation to promote
new laws tackling harmful
online material. Set to a
hip-hop beat from a stocklibrary, she reads out
rhymes to camera in a
series of edited clips.
It begins: “The internet
is passing some new
legislation / To make the
internet safer for the
younger generation.”
Another choice rhyme
follows later: “Is it true it
will impact freedom of
expression? / No! We’ve
put in legal protections in
the 19th section.”
The video ends with
Dorries dropping a
microphone, usually done
when a performer thinks
it has gone well.
She has spent about amonth posting on TikTok,
where music, irreverence
and combinations of the
two can put anyone in the
spotlight in front of a
billion users.
But although her rap
has received plenty of
comment on other
platforms, it is far from
viral on TikTok: by Friday
afternoon it had attracted
9,000 views and about
200 likes. Dorries’s most
popular video by a
distance, an itinerary for
the Platinum Jubilee, has
129,000 views.
The bill will impose a
duty of care on
technology companies to
protect users from illegal
and harmful content. The
definition of what is
harmful is not precise,
leading to warnings of
censorship from
campaigners and some
Conservative MPs.
Boris Johnson made hisTupac, Eminem ...
Dorries? Minister
does TikTok rap
George Grylls Political Reporter
Nadine Dorries, the
culture secretary,
went on TikTok with
a video featuring gifs
and screenshots of
legislation to
promote new laws
tackling harmful
online materialBreaching code on standards is no
George Grylls Last year Geidt led an inquiry into
the funding of the makeover of John-
son’s Downing Street flat which
ultimately absolved the prime minister
on the basis that he was not aware that
Lord Brownlow of Shurlock Row, a
Tory donor, had given him £58,000 to
help to pay for the refurbishment. John-
son eventually repaid the money.
The Institute for Government, an
independent think tank, which has
called for Geidt’s powers to be strength-
ened, said that without the ability to
launch his own inquiries, Geidt could
not be considered truly independent.
Tim Durrant, an associate director at
the think tank, said: “It means that the
prime minister is marking his own
homework. And as we have seen over
the last several months, the prime
minister does not really seem to think
upholding standards in public life is
important.”
Sir Alistair Graham, the former
chairman of the committee on
standards in public life, said thatJohnson was “allergic to the rules”.
“It’s a sad day for our democratic
system that a prime minister feels he
has to redraft the code mid-term after
we’ve gone through this scandalous
partygate period,” he said.
Nick Timothy, a former adviser to
Theresa May, said: “If any Tory MPs arelabouring under the impression that
the PM might listen, learn or change,
amending the ministerial code so he’s
not expected to quit when he breaks it
ought to clinch the argument.”
Despite the other alterations, the
updated version of the ministerial code
maintains the rule that ministers who
mislead parliament must resign.Lord Geidt is the
independent
adviser on
ministerial
standards