Johnson is making the sleaze row worse

Is there anyone left in the Conservative party who is happy with Boris Johnson? The Prime Minister has now managed to wind up pretty much every single Tory MP with his handling of the second jobs row, opening up still more fault lines in the past 24 hours. His letter to the Speaker yesterday saying he wanted a ban on MPs taking paid work as parliamentary strategists, advisers or consultants — and that outside work should also be within ‘reasonable limits’ — has upset the many backbench Tories. They now worry that they’ll suffer a big drop in income thanks to the mishandling of the Owen Paterson case.

The letter was also sufficiently vague to reignite the whole row about whether being an MP is a full-time job. This morning International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan ended up in a tangle as she did the broadcast round, suggesting in one interview that 20 hours on top of your parliamentary work would be acceptable, and on other outlets that eight to ten hours would be OK.