the times | Thursday December 3 2020 1GM 35
Comment
Johnson needs a plan or Tories will oust him
After Brexit and coronavirus the PM will have served his purpose unless he can unite MPs behind a levelling-up agenda
Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826done: to win an election and to
deliver Brexit. The first was achieved
and the second will happen, one way
or the other, next month.
After that, and mass vaccination
against Covid-19, it is fair to ask:
what is this government for? Where
are the public sector reforms to
power improvement? Where are the
policies to capitalise on what should
be a boom next year unless the
government screws it up?
The prime minister may object,
with some justification, that he has
had a hell of a year and everyone in
government looks whacked. He can
complain about unjustness and
ingratitude all he likes but this is a
tough old world and the Tory tribe
are a ruthless bunch. So are the
voters. There are always alternative
prime ministers available.
That Onward report does contain
some encouragement for the prime
minister. Its authors say that the
2019 election marked a big
realignment, making the Tories as
much a party of the working class as
of the provincial middle class. If so,
Johnson has a special connection
with those voters who will look to
see whether or not he delivers.
If he is to succeed he’ll need an
agenda and to implement it he will
require the solid support of his party.
That means he must learn the art of
party management, and quick.Johnson’s judgment is low. Among
the discontented are former cabinet
ministers. Says one: “No 10 has
behaved with such hubris in the last
nine months during the Covid crisis
that colleagues have concluded the
government has no monopoly of
wisdom.”
Tory factionalism is not a new
phenomenon. In the 1840s the party
split over the Corn Laws, with the
free-trading leadership peeling away.
In the aftermath of the First World
War there was internal warfare. In
the early 1980s, much of Margaret
Thatcher’s first cabinet was opposed
to the prime minister’s approach.
From the late 1980s until 2019, the
party was bedevilled by divisions on
Europe.
But what should worry the prime
minister now is that today’s divisions
don’t appear to be particularly
ideological — yet. The situation is
more perilous than an arcane row
about policy because it rests on that
most subjective of qualities,
personality. The doubts are about his
ability to function effectively in
government, to process the flow of
paper and decisions and make good
use of patronage.
The squabbling is displacement
activity while the party works out
what to do with him. Johnson was
selected as a winner by MPs and
Tory members to get two thingswhipping operation has started to
produce serious fractures. On
Tuesday evening, 55 Tory MPs voted
against the new coronavirus
restrictions. The prime minister’s
hide was saved only by the Labour
leader Sir Keir Starmer ordering his
MPs to abstain. In the Westminster
game, this is a significant moment.
The opposition knows that the prime
minister cannot rely on his majority.
It can now bait and switch its
position, saying it will abstain on a
controversial matter before perhaps
changing suddenly, closer to the vote,leaving the Tory whips scrambling.
A senior Conservative MP, a
veteran of the whipping war during
the doomed attempts to pass a Brexit
deal during the May premiership,
blames backbenchers for bad habits:
“Many Tory MPs are still to be
weaned off the Brexit years rebellion
adrenaline fix.” Rebels respond that
it is the fault of a high-handed No 10,
which until his departure recently
was built around Dominic
Cummings, a revolutionary who
actively dislikes the party. A noxious
atmosphere was created and trust inS
o much has gone wrong
since the Tories won their
general election victory a
year ago next week that it is
easy to take their majority of
80 for granted.
A new report, No Turning Back,
published today by the think tank
Onward, serves as a reminder that
the victory was hard-won, even
against Jeremy Corbyn, because it
involved the construction of a
remarkable new electoral coalition of
interests. Quite deliberately, the Tory
leadership set out, Disraeli-style, to
reposition the party, appealing to
patriotic, working-class voters.
This was smart politics that
worked. Boris Johnson duly smashed
through the “red wall” to turn parts
of the north of England blue for the
first time in generations. Two in five
Tory voters are working class. The
Tories hold 57 per cent of the seats in
the north and Midlands, their
highest share since the mid-1930s.
To retain those seats and to
maintain a winning coalition at the
next election in 2024 or earlier, the
Onward report suggests the Tories
must now deliver on “levelling up” in
the north, while not neglecting
southern Conservative voters.
Obviously, this balancing requires a
high degree of political dexterity and
focus.
At Westminster, where the
Balkanisation of the party continues
apace, the need for unity has not yet
got through to many Conservative
MPs. So widespread is the fashion for
factionalism that new groupings are
continually springing up, with Tory
MPs forming ever more interest
groups to apply pressure to the prime
minister.
The CRG, the Covid Recovery
Group, was formed last month and
has organised resistance to the virus
restrictions. The other CRG is the
China Research Group, pushing for a
tougher policy against the CCP
(Chinese Communist Party). Then
there is the Northern Research
Group, the NRG. And the grandaddy
of contemporary Conservative
internal warfare is the ERG, the
European Research Group, which
organised resistance to Theresa May.
Its members are still on guard
against any backsliding on Brexit by
their former hero Johnson.
With rebellions rolling, the steady
corrosion of the government’sAfter mass vaccination,
it is fair to ask: what is
this government for?
Iain
Martin
@iainmartin1