10 2GM Saturday June 11 2022 | the times
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Boris Johnson knew the result before it
was announced — but only just.
About a minute before Sir Graham
Brady, the chairman of the 1922 com-
mittee, arrived in committee room 14
the prime minister received a text mes-
sage with the numbers: 148 against, 211
for. “It’s done,” he told colleagues gath-
ered in the outer office of No 10.
While the result was far worse than
whips expected, in public Johnson’s
team was defiant. “A win’s a win,” an ally
of the prime minister said. “He was very
clear going into it that his mandate
came from 14 million people at the gen-
eral election for him. That’s his view.” At
prime minister’s questions on Wednes-
day Johnson was in full bravado mode.
The mass revolt of Tory MPs was, he
said, not even a flesh wound. His polit-
ical career had barely even begun.
But behind the scenes it was a slightly
different picture. One close ally admit-
ted that the narrow scale of his victory
was not lost on the prime minister.
“He is very concerned by the vote
and knows that he’s in the last chance
saloon,” they said. “He realises that he
has to deliver on the economy. If he
doesn’t then come autumn or winter
he’s dead.”
In the Commons tea room it was
open season. The fact that 148 Tory
MPs had voted to remove the prime
minister meant there was safety in
numbers. “He’s deluded if he thinks he
can build back from this,” one minister
said. “The numbers were absolutely
devastating. His political authority is
gone. He’s like Gerald Ratner — the
trust is gone.”
The Conservative Party is in stale-
mate. The prime minister has pledged
yet another reset, while those who want
him gone think their best strategy is to
sit back and wait for the next implosion.
Whether it is after the by-elections
later this month, the privileges commit-
tee’s investigation into the prime minis-
ter in the autumn, the cost of living cri-
sis this winter or even the local elec-
tions next year, they are confident he
will be gone before the next election.
There are also more immediate signs
that Monday’s vote has emboldened
MPs who sense an opportunity to exert
their authority on a weakened prime
minister. On Tuesday Michael Gove,
the levelling up secretary, was said to
Boris Johnson will be told by his own
MPs that levelling up “hasn’t yet mate-
rialised” and that it is time to make good
on promises to the north of England if
he is to remain prime minister.
Johnson is due to speak at the first
conference of the 80-strong Northern
Research Group (NRG) of MPs next
week. Loyalists and rebels alike hope he
will come armed with new policies they
can sell to voters.
However, his weakened position
after the confidence vote on Monday
has emboldened even loyalists to in-
crease the pressure over levelling up
and consider how they can stake their
claim with a future leader. Rishi Sunak,
the chancellor, is expected to attend a
News Politics
Open season in the tea room as
have expressed concerns during a
meeting with Johnson that key housing
policies were being “shotgunned” into a
speech by the prime minister before
they were ready.
“It was quite heated,” a source said.
“Several aspects of the policy were
dropped.” A source close to Gove said
he was fully supportive of the policy.
There were further clashes over
Brexit. That evening Johnson was
called into a meeting with Tory Brexit-
eers who demanded changes to legis-
lation overriding significant parts of
Northern Ireland protocol that was due
to be published on Thursday.
The prime minister knew the bill was
already going to inflame the left of the
party, but now he was facing a revolt
from an emboldened right abetted by
the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, who felt
it didn’t go far enough.
They told him he needed to harden
up the bill and unless he agreed to the
changes — that would effectively end
any role of the EU in Northern Ireland
— they would kill the legislation in the
Commons. “He was implicitly warned it
would be like the Theresa May years all
over again with the European Research
Group causing trouble,” said onesource. “Some were dubbing it ‘mean-
ingful vote four’.”
But at the same time other senior
cabinet ministers including Rishi Sun-
ak, the chancellor, and Gove were furi-
ous at attempts to unpick the legislation
and demanded Johnson stood firm.
At an at-times heated cabinet discus-
sion on Wednesday, Johnson sided with
Gove and Sunak. Truss was told she
would have to take on the Brexiteers.
“He told Truss to take out most of the
changes that were being demanded by
the ERG,” said one source. “He didn’t
want the ERG’s tail wagging the gov-
ernment dog.” Johnson is gambling
that when the legislation is published
on Monday Brexiteers and the Demo-
cratic Unionist Party will be angry, but
it will not trigger a full-on revolt.
“It is fundamentally not in their
interests to defeat the bill because then
the protocol stays as it is,” said one gov-
ernment source. “He is not acting like
Theresa May but he is weakened.”
One of the biggest issues facing John-
son is whether or not to attempt a gov-
ernment reshuffle before summer —
and if so, how extensive to make it.
Those in the most senior jobs — Sun-
ak, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel and Truss— are said to be completely safe. But
others, who have been seen to be disloy-
al over the confidence vote, are at risk.
“There will be a reshuffle and there
are a number of people who have got to
go,” said one ally. “I don’t think he’ll
worry about chucking out Penny Mor-
daunt [the trade minister who failed to
say whether she supported Johnson on
Monday] or the others in government
who have been rather badly behaved.”
A minister added: “My instinct is he
won’t hug the rebels close because he
just can’t turn the hostile people into
supporters. There’s nothing he can ever
do to convince them he’s a great and
moral person. My instinct is he will cull
people and go for it.”
But with two by-elections later this
month, both of which the Tories are
expected to lose, there is a fear that
ministers might use a poor result to
jump before they are pushed.
Three — John Glen, a treasury min-
ister, Vicky Ford, a foreign office minis-
ter and Jo Churchill, an environment
minister — are on resignation watch
after failing to give their public support
on the day of the confidence vote.
Monday’s confidence vote led to
fresh concerns about the prime minis-
ter’s operation. The whips had forecast
that at most 120 Tory MPs would vote
to remove Johnson from office, an esti-
mate that fell well short amid accusa-
tions of complacency.
Ministers are increasingly worried
that the impact of losing the by-elec-
tions on June 23 — Tiverton & Honiton
in Devon and Wakefield in West York-
shire — has been underpriced.
The problem is exacerbated by the
fact that Johnson will be more than
4,000 miles away at a summit in Kigali,
Rwanda, when the results are
announced. “I think that strategically it
is very difficult to change the narrative
especially when we are going to receive
two by-election defeats immediately,” a
minister said. Johnson knows this. He
will spend the weeks after the by-elec-
tions wooing MPs who supported him
on Monday — only 30 of whom would
need to switch sides to oust him from
No 10. A Chequers barbecue for back-
bench loyalists is in the diary for July.
One loyal cabinet minister predicted
that once the furore of the parties scan-
dal died down, MPs who opposed John-
son on Monday might return to the
fold. “I just don’t see anyone who would
do better for us than Boris at the next
election,” they said. “Colleagues need
to reflect on who would do better and
step back from committing electoral
suicide.” But another senior minister
disagreed: “This is the start of a termi-
nal decline but how and when it ends is
difficult to predict.”
Johnson’s Deliveroo bag is empty,
Matt Chorley, page 31He may be putting up a
brave front but the PM
knows he is in trouble,
write Steven Swinford,
Oliver Wright and
Henry Zeffman
Boris Johnson found no lack of supporters when he made a surprise visit to theinside today
The flaws and woes of
Boris Johnson are mirrored
in the country as a whole
Tom McTague, pages 22-Keep your promises to northern voters, red wall MPs demand
private dinner with the group the night
before the conference.
An NRG source told The Times John-
son needed to show northern MPs
“that he cares about them”, adding:
“For the most part we’ve supported
him this week but we need some-
thing to take [to] the doorstep to
tell voters.”
One “red wall” MP said the confer-
ence was an opportunity for
Johnson to firm up support
with “skittish” members of
the 2019 intake. But
another said: “We also
need to be preparing to
tell any new leader not
to ignore the north.”
Lord Frost, the
former Brexit secretary,said Johnson had until the autumn to
save his job. He warned of new efforts to
oust the prime minister and called on
Johnson to adopt traditionally Con-
servative policies such as scrapping
VAT on energy bills, removing
most tariffs on foreign goods,
abandoning laws designed to reg-
ulate big tech companies and lift-
ing a moratorium on fracking.
“The main concern I hear
from party members and
potential Tory voters is
not about partygate,”
Frost wrote in The Daily
Telegraph. “It is that
they don’t understandwhat the government is trying to do
and why.”
Many red wall MPs elected in 2019
feel personal loyalty to Johnson, but
some who supported him on Monday
said they would not do so again after
seeing the size of the rebellion. The
NRG source said: “People who voted
Conservative for the first time were told
their lives would improve substantially
but, if anything ... they’ve gotten worse.”
Nick Fletcher, Tory MP for the Don
Valley in Doncaster, where the confer-
ence will be held, was elected in 2019
and backed Johnson but said he needed
to live up to his pledges. “The whole
point of this government is two things,”
he said. “To get Brexit done and then to
level up... because of Covid, the level-
ling up hasn’t really been done yet.”Geraldine Scott Political Reporter
Nick Fletcher, the Tory
MP for Don Valley6 Heather Wheeler, a parliamentary
secretary in the Cabinet Office, has
been accused by Labour of showing
contempt for voters after saying that
Birmingham and Blackpool were “god-
awful” places. Wheeler, who is also an
assistant government whip, made the
comment at an initiative to upgrade
digital civil services.
The MP for South Derbyshire, who
grew up in Wandsworth, southwest
London, was heard to say: “I was just at
a conference in Blackpool or Birming-
ham — somewhere god-awful.”
She later tweeted: “I made an in-
appropriate remark that does not
reflect my actual view. I apologise for
any offence caused.”
The Conservative Party conference
will be held in Birmingham this year.