Boris johnson

Friday

Francis Elliott

How Boris Johnson survives

When the Conservative party looks in the mirror what does it see? Beyond the bruising, what face peers back from the glass? The problem for the party is that no two MPs can agree – and that just might be Boris Johnson’s best chance of survival. Contradictions shatter a unified surface that might once have offered the chance of self-reflection for the Conservative party. Some of the cracks are obvious, such as the one running through Downing Street over the proper size and limits of the state, for example, or that which separates No. 10 from many of its backbenches over Covid public health measures and liberty. It has been obvious

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The joy of Boris’s bungled by-election

By any reasonable standard the result in the North Shropshire by-election must be reckoned the funniest in years. Perhaps even decades. All governments need checking from time to time and desserts are always served justly. So this is a welcome result and not just because it is, viewed objectively, hilarious. Nevertheless, it is quite an achievement to lose a seat held by the Conservatives, in one shape of another, for 120 years. To do so just two years after winning more than 60 per cent of the vote and a majority of almost 23,000 votes is quite something. To do so to the Liberal Democrats, who took just ten per

Steerpike Steerpike

Bookies turn on Boris

Betting markets are famously more reliable than pundit prognostications or political polls. Steerpike was intrigued, therefore, to note this morning that bookmakers are now saying that Boris will not be party leader by Tory conference next autumn. On the Betfair exchange overnight, the price has moved towards Boris Johnson being gone by autumn as the favourite outcome. At the same time, 2022 is now evens to be the year in which Boris is replaced in No. 10. The more interesting market, though, is who will replace Johnson as Conservative leader. On Betfair’s Sportsbook, the favourite is Chancellor Rishi Sunak at 2/1. He’s followed by Liz Truss at 7/2 and then the perennially ambitious

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If the Tories can lose in Shropshire, they can lose anywhere

The Tory defeat in North Shropshire is a far worse result for the party and Boris Johnson than their loss in Chesham and Amersham. Chesham and Amersham could be put down to local anger about HS2 and disquiet over planning reform. It was also a seat ripe for tactical voting given it had voted Remain and the Lib Dems were a clear second. North Shropshire, by contrast, is a heavily voting Leave seat where the Liberal Democrats were in third place. There was also no single policy driving voters away from the Tories in the way that planning reform did in Chesham and Amersham. If the Tories can lose this

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tory defeat in North Shropshire as Lib Dems take former safe seat

Ministers are waking up this morning to a big Tory upset in North Shropshire. In the by-election sparked by the Owen Paterson sleaze row, the Liberal Democrats have won the seat from the Conservatives overturning a majority of 22,949. In what has long been regarded as a safe seat for the Tories (they have come out on top in the area for almost 200 years), the Liberal Democrats won 17,957 votes with the Conservatives managing just 12,032 votes. This gives the Lib Dems a majority of 5,925. Labour came third with 3,686 votes. This result clearly will be tied to Boris Johnson’s leadership and the difficult time the Prime Minister

Thursday

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson is in a bind on Covid

This morning, it’s the Tory party versus the scientists, with a number of Conservative MPs seeing red following Wednesday’s downbeat press conference on the Omicron variant. As the number of Covid cases soars, Boris Johnson has been accused of a lockdown by stealth – after he appeared alongside Chris Whitty in a press conference urging caution over Christmas. The Chief Medical Officer suggested people ought to prioritise the social events they most care about. This morning Whitty is giving evidence to MPs where he has suggested it is too early to say whether further restrictions will be needed. In all of this, no one is quite sure where the Prime

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Lockdown, protests, parties and Matt Hancock’s kiss

January The United Kingdom found itself in possession of a trade agreement with the EU. Coronavirus restrictions were tightened. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was administered with authorisation for the first time; retired doctors could not vaccinate before undergoing ‘diversity’ training. To prevent vaccines being exported from the EU to Northern Ireland, the EU prepared to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, but soon changed its mind. The Capitol in Washington, DC was overrun by weird people, one with horns, supporting President Donald Trump, despite his electoral defeat. Joe Biden was inaugurated as President a week later. February The government promised to legalise the drinking of coffee by two people

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Has Boris made you better off?

Despite the political misery for Boris Johnson as he ends the year, he has a big hope: that salaries will boom in 2022. At Conservative party conference in October, he told fellow Tories what to expect. Yes, the country has gone through a phase of economic chaos — and as a result some supermarket shelves have been empty and truck drivers have been hard to find — but this was actually good news, he claimed, because it marked the start of a new, high-pay economic model. ‘We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity,’ he boasted. Change

The Spectator

It’s not too late for Boris Johnson

It is two years since Boris Johnson achieved one of the most remarkable election victories in modern history. The large Tory majority gave him personal power to a degree rarely seen in British politics, a chance to reshape his country and party. Having stood for office as a ‘liberal Conservative’, he would be able to govern as one. What has he done with that authority? He ends the year with dozens of ‘red wall’ Tory MPs in open rebellion against him, rejecting his vaccine passports. During Tony Blair’s premiership, Johnson crusaded against the principle of identity cards, saying they were not just intrusive and pointless but represented a huge and

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Can Boris take back control of No. 10?

There’s a mutinous mood in Westminster this Christmas. In quiet corridors on the parliamentary estate the question is being asked: has Boris outlived his usefulness? Ministers are laying low. Tory WhatsApp groups are hushed. MPs are dodging calls from the whips, claiming to be sick or working from home. In conversations with Tory MPs, it isn’t long before the topic of Johnson’s long-term future comes up. ‘Everyone’s sniffing the air — you can just feel it,’ says a former adviser to the Prime Minister. Members of the cabinet, from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, are accused of being on manoeuvres. One former minister has taken to measuring his office to

Andrew Sullivan

The PowerPoint plot against Joe Biden

If the revolution won’t be televised, the counter-revolution will at least be on PowerPoint. A series of 36 corporate-style PowerPoint slides have now been handed over to the Congressional Committee investigating the 6 January insurrection. Written and conceived by a retired colonel (who else?), the PowerPoint lays out a clear, if bonkers, strategy for keeping Donald Trump in power earlier this year. It involves the assertion that China had directly intervened in the election, skewing the electronic results to favour Joe Biden. Quite where the evidence would be procured to prove this is not so clear. But the plan barrels past that small problem to the main event: ‘1. Brief

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

What was the Covid press conference for?

What was the point of tonight’s Covid press conference? Boris Johnson didn’t have anything big to announce, other than a very dubious-looking new lectern telling people to ‘Get Boosted N0w’, with the 0 in the ‘now’ looking a lot like a Hula Hoop. His purported focus was on the doubling rate of Omicron, and to announce today’s record high number of positive tests (78,000). A cynic might argue that calling a press conference on the vaccination programme is distracting from the self-inflicted political mess Boris is currently wallowing through. Given people are already queuing round the block for their booster jabs, it doesn’t seem as though the message about Getting Boosted Now really

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Unbowed Boris has put his Tory rivals in their places

Boris was resurgent at PMQs today. He sprinkled scorn, merriment and mischief in all directions. He even boasted that last night’s Plan B crackdown was a Tory triumph that had not been won with Labour votes. Sir Keir Starmer (who also had a good day) clasped at his hair in incredulity. ‘He’s so far socially distanced from the truth that he actually believes that,’ scoffed the Labour leader. Boris is surrounded by cabinet plotters who are not without their qualities. Liz Truss has nice hair. Rishi Sunak looks like the perfect son-in-law. Priti Patel’s mean streak may win her a few votes. But that doesn’t add up to a leader

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Starmer dropped his usual caution

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was predictably ugly, with Boris Johnson in a visibly bad mood and unable to contain himself as he tried to defend his leadership against a full-throttle assault from Sir Keir Starmer. Tory MPs fear the goodwill he has enjoyed over the vaccine programme is fading Starmer for his part saw last night’s huge Tory rebellion as the signal to drop his previous caution. Today he branded Johnson the ‘worst possible Prime Minister at the worst possible time’, said Tory MPs were right not to trust their leader, and that he was ‘socially distanced from the truth’. He continued: ‘We can’t go on with a prime minister who

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Can Boris Johnson take back control of No. 10?

There’s a mutinous mood in Westminster this Christmas. In quiet corridors on the parliamentary estate the question is being asked: has Boris outlived his usefulness? Ministers are laying low. Tory WhatsApp groups are hushed. MPs are dodging calls from the whips, claiming to be sick or working from home. In conversations with Tory MPs, it isn’t long before the topic of Johnson’s long-term future comes up. ‘Everyone’s sniffing the air — you can just feel it,’ says a former adviser to the Prime Minister. Members of the cabinet, from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, are accused of being on manoeuvres. One former minister has taken to measuring his office to

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Boris is in deep trouble

This evening feels eerily familiar to anyone who remembers the meaningful votes of Theresa May’s premiership. The Tory rebellion on the Covid measures is bigger than expected; the rebels are claiming to be the mainstream of the parliamentary party; the cabinet ministers loyalists to the PM are blaming the whips office; there are mutterings about how long this can go on for. There is, of course, one crucial difference: thanks to Labour, Boris Johnson won tonight’s vote. But it is clear that if he wants to tighten restrictions further, he will be reliant on Starmer’s party’s support in doing so. Relying on the opposition to get their business through is

Steerpike Steerpike

Can the rebels trust Boris’s word?

There’s white smoke blowing over the House of Commons today as Sajid Javid declares ‘Peace in our Time.’ The Health Secretary – Daladier to Johnson’s Chamberlain – has emerged with an olive branch to the dozens of Tory MPs opposed to Covid passes. In a bid to placate potential rebels like Danny Kruger, Javid and Johnson are offering a compromise: they won’t proceed with mandatory jabs and vaccine passports will always carry the option of showing a lateral flow test (LFT). Many MPs remain unconvinced, with many citing the government’s failure to produce evidence that vaccine passports actually work.  Still, the concession by Johnson shows even he recognises the limits of coercion. Yet Mr

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why a large rebellion matters for Johnson

Boris Johnson will this evening face his largest Tory rebellion yet as the issue of vaccine passports comes to a vote in the House of Commons. Today MPs will vote on various aspects of the government’s Covid Plan B proposals — much of which has already come into force. There will be four votes: one on face masks being mandatory in venues like the cinema and theatre; another on daily lateral flow testing to avoid self-isolation if you are a close contact of a positive Omicron case; a third on mandatory vaccination for NHS staff and finally — and most controversially — the introduction of vaccine passports.  The Spectator has a live tally of

Monday

Patrick O’Flynn

Johnson is imperilled. So why are his enemies helping him?

It’s a topsy turvy world when your friends and allies do you all kinds of damage and then your enemies and detractors accidentally ride to the rescue. But that’s what’s going on in the life of Boris Johnson. His lax approach to the conduct of his own circle is a major factor in his popularity slump. Whether that be backing Owen Paterson, wilfully being taken in by partying Downing Street staffers or over-indulging his wife’s focus on animal rights, utopian environmentalism and support for the Stonewall agenda.  Yet now the cavalry has appeared over the brow of the hill and it is made up of people who wish to bring him down.

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris Johnson is becoming a risk to his own Covid rules

‘It feels like a tipping point. Trust in Boris is collapsing. It could be fatal’. So spoke a senior Tory, who hitherto has been a great cheerleader for the Prime Minister. Sunday night’s address to the nation by Boris Johnson won’t, he says, change the perception of Tory MPs that his recent performance has been wholly inadequate. That feeling may in fact be reinforced by Johnson’s choice of simply speaking sombrely down the barrel of a camera lens rather than holding a press conference and taking questions. The point is that — by design — there was no media challenge after Boris Johnson broadcast, in which he said he wants all adults to