the times | Wednesday June 8 2022 9
News
Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Con-
servative party will “implode” over the
coming months without the need for
further “plots or coups”, supporters of
Jeremy Hunt said yesterday.
The former foreign secretary effec-
tively put himself as the head of the
anti-Johnson faction before Monday’s
confidence vote by urging Tory MPs to
change their leader or lose the next
election.
Following the result, Hunt’s allies
said that he did not intend to destabilise
the prime minister further, arguing that
such measures would be counterpro-
ductive and reduce the chances of him
winning any future leadership race.
They also said that Hunt had not
instigated Monday’s vote by urging his
supporters to submit letters of no confi-
dence in the prime minister, and that he
had not submitted a letter himself.
However, Hunt’s move infuriated
Johnson loyalists, who claimed that he
was already running a fully fledged
leadership campaign and offering
potential cabinet jobs to supporters.
They said that he had approached
senior Tory chairmen of select commit-
tees in an effort to win their support,
and even suggested that he could bring
Theresa May back into government in
a senior role such as foreign secretary.
One cabinet minister suggested that
George Osborne had been advising the
Hunt team — a claim that the former
chancellor has categorically denied.
Hunt’s supporters said that although
he had made no secret of his leadership
ambitions in the past he was “absolutely
not” running an organised campaign to
unseat Johnson. “No one is running or
co-ordinating any campaign,” said one.
“No one is going around offering any-
one jobs. It is just absurd.”
Sources close to Hunt said that he
had been contacted by MPs from across
the party after Nadine Dorries, the cul-
ture secretary, publicly attacked him
before the vote on Monday. In a series
of tweets and interviews that were
authorised by Downing Street, Dorries
accused Hunt of failing to prepare the
NHS for a pandemic such as Covid
when he was health secretary.
“Our pandemic preparation during
[your] six years as health secretary wasWe’re waiting for
Johnson to fall,
say Hunt allies
Oliver Wright, Steven Swinford found wanting and inadequate,” she
said. “Your duplicity right now in desta-
bilising the party and country to serve
your own personal ambition, more so.”
One senior Conservative back-
bencher pointed out that Dorries had
been a senior minister in the Depart-
ment of Health since 2019 and also bore
responsibility for the slow initial
response to Covid.
One supporter of Hunt described
Dorries as their “deep secret agent” in
the government. “She, more than
anyone, is turning people away from
Johnson and towards Jeremy.”
An ally of Hunt said that his strategy
would be not to become a figurehead
for anti-Boris opposition but instead to
allow Johnson to deal with the prob-
lems that confronted him. They added
that by the end of the month, after the
results of two key by-elections, it would
be clear if Hunt was right when he said
that the party needed to change its
leadership.
Others said they believed that there
would not be another leadership chal-
lenge until the autumn, by which stage
the rebels would have the extra 30 votes
they needed to unseat Johnson without
any formal campaign.
“There were a number of colleagues
who were nervous this time round but
now they’ve seen the strength of the
opposition they’ll be with us,” said one
Hunt supporter. “Johnson is going to
implode without any need for coups
and plots.”
Meanwhile, Ben Wallace has not
ruled out putting his name forward for
prime minister should Johnson step
down. Speaking en route to Iceland, the
defence secretary said that in the past
he had said he was not interested in the
top job, but there was a “problem to
solve”. Asked if he would consider run-
ning if he had the backing of colleagues,
he said: “I’ve often said I’m not really
interested, as I’m interested in being
defence secretary.”
Wallace, the MP for Wyre and Pres-
ton North, continued: “I’m a politician.
Ultimately I’m in the business of trying
to problem solve and make the country
better for people.”
He went on to say that he believed
Johnson would last until the next
election despite the results of his
confidence vote.Scottish Conservatives who fear that
Boris Johnson is harming the union are
confident that their leader, Douglas
Ross, will outlast the prime minister.
Ross said yesterday that Johnson has
“got to look at” quitting after he
survived a confidence vote despite a
large rebellion by MPs.
Four out of six Scottish Conservative
MPs moved against the prime minister
and the vast majority of the group at
Holyrood also support Ross’s position.
Multiple party sources said that there
was no pressure on the Tory leader in
Edinburgh despite concerns that it
would be impossible for him to
campaign for Johnson in a general
election. In contrast, one senior figure
said of the prime minister that it was
“clearly a matter of when not if he goes”.
Ross, the MP for Moray, was amongChief scientific adviser
‘disappointed’ by parties
Geraldine Scott Political Reporter
Scots Tories believe it’s a matter of time
the most senior Conservatives to call
for Johnson’s resignation after reports
of parties in Downing Street during
lockdown. He then changed his mind,
citing a need for stability during the first
European war for decades.
Ross said his latest stance would be
his final position. Asked by the BBC if
Johnson should resign, he replied: “He’s
got to look at it.”
He added: “This isn’t just some
Scottish MPs, some Welsh MPs, a few
from a certain part of England. This is
across the entire parliamentary party,
from people who supported staying in
the EU and people who campaigned
strongly to leave the EU, people who
are on the right of the party, some in the
centre and some on the left.”
His words put him at odds with
Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary and
a Johnson ally, who called for unity.
The prime minister was widelycriticised by Conservative members of
the Scottish parliament as they largely
rolled in behind Ross.
Maurice Golden, MSP for North East
Scotland, said: “If MPs had the union at
the forefront of their mind, they would
vote for Boris Johnson to resign and
wouldn’t vote for him. I think the case
for the union is very strong but Boris
Johnson detracts from that.”
Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick,
Roxburgh and Berwickshire, said that
she had supported Johnson up until
Monday. Asked if she could tell voters
in good faith that Johnson should be
prime minister in a general election
campaign, she said: “I think that will be
quite a difficult moment.”
Stephen Kerr, the chief whip at
Holyrood, urged Johnson to consider
his position and said his leadership “is
like a dark shadow over all of the good
things that the government is doing”.Kieran Andrews Scottish Political EditorSir Patrick Vallance found it “disap-
pointing” that coronavirus rules had
not been followed in Downing Street
and Whitehall during the pandemic.
Vallance, the chief scientific adviser
who appeared at numerous press con-
ferences from Downing Street while re-
strictions were in place, collected an
honour Buckingham Palace yesterday
for his work on coronavirus.
He often appeared alongside Boris
Johnson and Professor Sir Chris Whit-
ty, England’s chief medical officer. Val-
ance and Whitty have mostly refrained
from commenting on the lockdown
parties, but Whitty has acknowledged
people would be angry if they felt there
was “unfairness in high places”.
Vallance, 62, who was knighted in the
2019 new year honours, said: “It was
really important at all stages that
everyone stuck to the rules. It works
when people stuck to them. It is disap-
pointing that that wasn’t the case.”
He said the darkest days of the pan-
demic came amid the “huge uncertain-
ty” about the fast-spreading virus, in-
cluding when Johnson was struck down
with Covid-19. “Lots of people became
very ill quite quickly... and those were
very difficult days. It was mostly about
the uncertainty. We did not know much
about the virus. We did not know much
about exactly how it spread. We did not
know there were going to be vaccines
and treatments. We hoped there would
be and we were trying to work on them,
but we just did not know.”News
Allies of Jeremy Hunt,
who urged Tory MPs
to oust the prime
minister, say that
criticism of him by
Nadine Dorries has
backfired. Boris
Johnson probably
passed bus routes
that coincided with
the confidence vote
split on his runPETER MACDIARMID/LNP; KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/AP; BEN CAWTHRA/LNP