20NEWS
A WEEK
OF WOE
It started with an address from
No 10 but within hours the PM
was on the ropes and stayed there
More than 100 Tory MPs vote against
Johnson’s plan B for Covid, marking the
biggest rebellion of his premiershipSir Keir Starmer
did not visit
North Shropshire
and sent Angela
Rayner insteadvoters notice and vote
tactically.
We witnessed the same in
the Chesham & Amersham
by-election in June, when the
Lib Dems won a seat held by
the Tories since its creation.
Without such activity in
dozens of marginals, Labour
will not enter government.
The party’s collapse in
Scotland, where it has gone
from 56 seats in 1997 to only
one now, and its declinethat it does not believe in a
progressive alliance: an
arrangement in which anti-
Conservative parties agree to
rally behind the candidate
most likely to win and so
withdraw candidates and
resources in certain seats.
Successive leaders have
adopted this position because
Labour cannot afford to say it
can no longer win a majority.
Doing so would prompt
questions about who it would
govern alongside and on what
terms, and would amount to
an acknowledgment it is no
longer a national party.
The Lib Dems and the SNP
are unlikely to subscribe to a
formal pact.
Yet Starmer’s approach in
Shropshire provides a
template for the sort of co-
ordination we are likely to
witness at the next general
election: giving the nod to
these parties in seats Labour
feels it cannot win, receiving
concessions in return in
places it can and hopingStarmer’s election
tactics under fire
as party critics
try to quash talk
of ‘progressive
alliance’
The seismic defeat of the
Conservatives in North
Shropshire may ultimately be
remembered for having
undermined Boris Johnson’s
leadership. However, its true
importance could lie in what
it revealed about the viability
of a progressive alliance and
how this could shape the next
general election result.
The Liberal Democrats
took the seat with a majority
of 5,925 last Thursday,
displacing the Tories in a
constituency they had held
for all but two of the past 189
years.
Heading into the contest,
Labour had its biggest
national poll lead over the
Conservatives since 2014, yet
came a distant third. Sir Keir
Starmer had opted not to visit
the seat, and the party fought
a low-key and inexpensive
campaign.
Labour’s formal position isGabriel Pogrund
Whitehall Editortank UK in a Changing
Europe, Alan Wager, Aron
Cheung and Tim Bale said a
progressive alliance in such
seats would have, in theory,
yielded 24 seats for Labour
and 17 for the Lib Dems.
Even in the context of
Johnson’s landslide victory,
that would have almost
deprived the Tories of their
majority — although, they
note, a right-wing alliance
would have enabled them to
gain 11 seats and the Brexit
Party two at Labour’s
expense.
Wager, Cheung and Bale
note that there is a clear
imperative for Labour-Lib
Dem co-ordination in most of
the 41 seats in question
because they are not in
meaningful competition
there anyway. In only one,
York Outer, is Labour the
main challenger and the Lib
Dems within 15 points of their
vote share, and there are only
four (Cities of London &
Westminster, Finchley &outside big cities in England
make that all but impossible.
The question, then, is:
where does Labour do this,
and how?
In 2019 the Tories won 41
seats in England where
Labour, the Lib Dems and the
Greens had a higher
combined share of the vote
than that of the Conservatives
and Brexit Party. In
Breaching the Blue Wall, a
recent report by the thinkAFP/PRUNHS leaders predict they will struggle to
meet Johnson’s pledge as queues build
up at vaccination booster centresMONDAY
DEC 13TUESDAY
DEC 14In an address from No 10, Boris Johnson
vows that every adult will be offered a
booster jab by the end of the monthSUNDAY
DEC 12CAROLINE
WHEELERPolitical EditorW
hen a backbencher deliv-
ered his letter of no confi-
dence in Boris Johnson last
week, a secretary gave an
insight into the crisis fac-
ing the prime minister.
Taking the letter on
behalf of Sir Graham
Brady, the chairman of the powerful
backbench 1922 Committee, she prom-
ised to “put it in the cupboard with the
others”.
The growing number of MPs agitating
for a change of leader is one of many
woes for the prime minister. Last night,
Lord Frost, Johnson’s key ally during last
year’s painful negotiations with Brussels
and the continuing row over the North-
ern Ireland protocol, quit the govern-
ment, complaining about its “direction”.
His departure leaves the prime minis-
ter even more isolated, singing the Christ-
mas blues. Johnson’s premiership has hit
the buffers with a damaging backbench
rebellion, a by-election defeat in a seat
the Tories held for nearly 200 years,
more party revelations and a new Covid
crisis that threatens to spill into a new
year lockdown.
Despite the prime minister’s “week
from hell”, which has led supportive MPs
to wonder if he has lost his winning
touch, Johnson is likely to be left in place
to steward the Covid response at least
until the spring.
Last Sunday he looked worn out when
he addressed the nation on television,
warning of the need for booster jabs. But
as the public responded in droves, MPs
were unimpressed by plans for new
restrictions. On Tuesday Johnson
addressed backbenchers and surprised
them by reading from a prepared state-
ment. “It was clear the bull and bluster
from Boris doesn’t wash any more,” said
one Tory MP.
It did not work, as hours later the
prime minister suffered his biggest Com-
mons rebellion with more than 100 of his
MPs voting against his Covid plan B.
Had Johnson not spoken to the 1922
Committee, one cabinet minister fears
that the rebellion could have been even
worse. It is understood that at least a
dozen parliamentary private secretaries
had indicated their intention to resign.
The rebellion came after a fortnight of
revelations about Christmas parties last
year and a dramatic collapse in the polls,
with Labour enjoying its biggest lead
since 2014.
The prime minister appointed Simon
Case, the cabinet secretary, to investigate
whether anyone had held an illegal party
in Downing Street. He began looking into
it for ten days before it emerged on Friday
that a party had been held in his own pri-
vate office on December 17 last year. Brit-
ain’s top civil servant recused himself.
Bizarrely, before being asked to lead
the inquiry, Case is understood to have
admitted seeing the party, but it was
ignored. Baroness Finn, Downing
Street’s deputy chief of staff, has been
accused of trying to use the Case party to
“hold over him” to ensure No 10 “got off
lightly”. Dan Rosenfield, the PM’s chief of
staff, is also believed to have been there
but this was last night denied by No10.
Last week a photograph of a drunken
get-together with the London mayoral
candidate Shaun Bailey at Conservative
Party headquarters was used by the Lib-ILLUSTRATION: TONY BELL