Tory sleaze rears its head again, but will it stick in voters’ minds?
Is this something voters care about – or even know about? Or is it a Westminster bubble issue?
FORMER West Midlands MEP David Hallam is hoping to make a comeback, as the next MP for North Shropshire.
The Labour activist was MEP for the Hereford and Shropshire constituency from 1994 to 1999. He’s now applied to be the party’s candidate in the by-election taking place on December 16, following the resignation of former MP Owen Paterson.
Conservatives won Shropshire North with a huge majority of 22,949 in the 2019 general election. But Mr Hallam claims Labour can win. He said: “In 1997, Owen Paterson limped home with a majority of just 2,100.
“The other thing about that seat is that there are a lot of conservatives, with a small ‘c’, but I don’t think they are very happy with the brash Toryism of people like Boris Johnson.
“I think a lot of people are doing a lot of thinking. People in the constituency have said they are just disgusted with what’s happened and it doesn’t reflect well on their area. So we may well get an upset.”
Mr Hallam (a well known figure in West Midlands Labour who has held a range of behind-the-scenes roles) may not be chosen as the Labour candidate.
And either way, he’s clearly not an impartial observer. But he seems to believe he could win.
Conservatives remain confident. They point out that Mr Paterson was popular locally, and by-election voters may take a more nuanced view than the national media, who have been gleefully painting him is a villain.
There’s also some sympathy for Mr Paterson following the death of his wife last year.
In addition, if the Conservatives have any sense, they will appoint a nice youngish candidate with no obvious connection to Mr Paterson, who will talk a lot about fighting for better local bus services (former West Midlands Police Commissioner Jay Singh Sohal is one possible candidate).
But whoever gets the role, Labour and other parties will paint the
by-election as a chance for voters to deliver their verdict on “sleaze”.
As you’ll recall, Mr Paterson was found by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to have breached paid advocacy rules by lobbying government departments, and other official bodies, on behalf of businesses which employed him as a consultant.
This is against the rules, and the Commons Select Committee on Standards recommended that he be suspended from the Commons for 30 sitting days.
This raised the prospect of a by-election, as the law states that a vote can be held when an MP is suspended for more than 10 days, if ten per cent of constituents sign a recall petition.
But Conservative MPs – obeying instructions from the Government, led by Boris Johnson – voted to overturn the suspension and, instead, to review the House of Commons disciplinary proceedings.
This provoked justified outrage, and Mr Johnson swiftly committed a U-turn.
It meant those MPs who loyally supported Mr Paterson in the vote, including Birmingham Conservative MPs such as Andrew Mitchell (Con Sutton Coldfield) and Gary Sambrook (Con Northfield), looked foolish. One could argue that they have the Prime Minister to blame for that.
There are two questions for MPs. One is whether the issue has “cut through” with the general public.
Is this something voters care about – or even know about? Or is it a “Westminster bubble” issue, of interest only to politicians and journalists?
It always takes some time for this to become clear, but it’s certainly dominating the headlines.
Boris Johnson’s decision earlier this week to visit a Northumberland hospital rather than attending a Commons debate on the affair – leaving Cabinet Minister Stephen Barclay to express “regret” over the initial vote – looked cowardly, and was condemned on the front pages of newspapers including the Tory-supporting
Daily Express.
The incident also encouraged journalists to do a bit of digging into other MPs’ outside interests.
The big earners were identified (though most of these stories weren’t new – MPs have always declared their outside earnings).
And it emerged former Conservative Cabinet Minister Sir Geoffrey
Cox had been working for a legal firm representing the British Virgin
Islands in a corruption inquiry.
It’s claimed he used new rules allowing MPs to vote by proxy, designed to allow them to self-isolate during the Covid crisis, to take part in Commons votes while in the Caribbean.
So it’s certainly possible that voters will have got the impression that there is a problem.
The second big question is whether this adds to the perception that there is a general issue with “sleaze” at Westminster, leaving all MPs tarred with the same brush, or whether voters come to associate the Conservative Party specifically with the problem.
During the expenses scandal, in 2009, MPs in general felt they were being seen as corrupt, even though it was only a small number that broke the rules.
However, back in the mid-1990s, when Conservative John Major was Prime Minister, there was a perception that the Conservative Party specifically had an issue with greed and corruption – allowing Labour to promise to clean up politics if elected to government.
I don’t think we know how the current situation is going to play out, and whether voters will come to associate the Tories with sleaze.
What past experience does suggest, however, is that if a party gains a reputation for dishonesty then it’s very hard to lose it in a hurry.