Boris fights back after Tory murmurs about his leadership
BORIS Johnson was cheered by Tory MPs yesterday as he faced down claims that he is losing his grip on power.
In a spirited Commons fightback, the Prime Minister ignored taunts, focusing instead on his economic record.
Ministers also dismissed suggestions Tory rebels were gathering signatures in a bid to trigger a party leadership contest.
Mr Johnson’s defence follows backbench unease at recent policy decisions and his Peppa Pig World ad-lib while addressing the CBI on Monday after losing his notes.
But an ex-minister and ally declared: “Boris Johnson is a fighter and a winner.”
The support came as a poll last night gave Labour a narrow lead but showed no evidence Tory voters were switching to Sir Keir Starmer’s party in significant numbers.
Mr Johnson came out fighting at Prime Minister’s Questions after Sir Keir taunted: ”Is everything OK, Prime Minister?” The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford chipped in: “With his party falling in the polls and his colleagues briefing against him, has he considered calling it a day before he is pushed out the door?
“Why is he clinging on, when it is clear that he is simply not up to the job?”
Mr Johnson replied: “We are delivering for the people of this country, we are fixing the problems that they thought could never be fixed and we are doing things that they thought were impossible.
“There are now more people in work in this country than there were before the pandemic began. That is because of the policies that this Government has followed.” Senior MPs have rejected claims Tory rebels had written to Sir Graham Brady, who chairs the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, to demand a leadership contest.
One former minister said: “Boris is not going anywhere. He is a fighter and he is a winner. He has charisma with a capital C and retains his extraordinary popularity with voters.
“Some of our more recent MPs are clearly nervous. They need to toughen up and learn that being in Government isn’t always easy. They need to rally round and defend the PM.”
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab did just that, insisting: “The Prime Minister is an ebullient, bouncy, optimistic, Tiggerish character and he livens up his speeches in a way that few politicians past and present have done.
“But actually there is a steeliness to him as a prime minister, and indeed his team, and we work as a team.”
Mr Johnson has endured barbs from Tory ranks after his Peppa Pig speech and botched handling of the Owen Paterson sleaze row. He also suffered a backbench rebellion in a Commons vote on Monday about watered-down plans for a cap on social care.
His aides were enraged when the BBC quoted a Downing Street insider as saying there was “a lot of concern inside the building about the PM”.
Mr Johnson’s press secretary yesterday denied that the jibe came from the Treasury in an attempt to destabilise him.
Meanwhile a monthly poll by Savanta ComRes showed the PM’s popularity fell to its lowest level yet.
His net favourability dropped five points to -14 from minus nine last month.
The figure fell 13 points from +48 to +35 among those who voted Conservative at the last general election. Labour had a two-point lead over the Tories, with Sir Keir’s party backed by 38 per cent of voters quizzed. But Mr Johnson was still considerably ahead on the “Best PM” measurement, backed by 39 per cent to the Labour leader’s 31 per cent.
Despite Labour’s poll lead, Chris Hopkins of Savanta ComRes said: “Conservative voters are not abandoning the party for Labour, nor are Red Wall voters appearing to return to Starmer’s party.
“Waiting for the Tories to screw things up has felt like Labour’s strategy for almost 18 months. There’s nothing to suggest that they’re ready or trusted to take advantage.”
CONSERVATIVE MPs are currently indulging in their favourite activity: manufacturing another leadership crisis. As they have shown repeatedly in recent decades, there is nothing they enjoy more than the prospect of another bout of regicide.
The elder statesman of the 1950s David Maxwell Fyfe once famously said “loyalty is the Tories’ secret weapon” but just the opposite is true. It is less than two years since Boris Johnson won a landslide General Election victory, yet the party at Westminster is now convulsed by plots and whispers against his troubled premiership.
His authority has taken a battering from the row over sleaze, sparked by his misguided attempt to save the backbencher Owen Paterson from punishment for an “egregious” breach of Commons rules against paid lobbying. The cynical manoeuvre, which ended in a humiliating U-turn, outraged the public, squandered his political capital, and opened the floodgates to a deluge of accusations about greed and cronyism.
This self-inflicted fiasco was compounded on Monday by the Prime Minister’s disastrous, illprepared speech to the CBI, where bizarre ramblings about the Peppa Pig cartoon character and imitations of car engines were matched by a long, awkward silence as he lost his place in his insubstantial text.
IT WAS an embarrassing performance which was followed that evening by a rebellion in the Commons against the Government’s plans for social care reform, after an official admission that many poorer families may have to sell their homes to pay care bills, despite all Johnson’s pledges to the contrary.
As the sense of unease deepens in Tory ranks over the Prime Minister’s grip, the murmurings of discontent intensify. “There is real anger. He has until spring to get back on track or he will be in real trouble,” says one MP.
Some in his Parliamentary Party want action even sooner. According to the latest speculation, around a dozen letters of no confidence in him have been submitted to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee. If the total reaches 54, there will have to be a leadership ballot.The disillusion extends to the heart of the Government, with a senior Downing Street source telling the BBC, “It’s just not working. The Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes.”
That mood is reflected by the public. Johnson’s approval rating has plummeted to minus 35 per cent, even lower than Sir Keir Starmer’s, while 64 per cent of people think he is doing a poor job.
Indeed, there is a danger of his unique assets being turned against him, so his humour is seen as clownish frivolity, his charisma as empty bombast, and his unorthodoxy as lack of conviction.
Even his supporters worry about the absence of experienced advisers in No 10, whose operation is regularly condemned as dysfunctional. None of this helps the Government to deal with the growing catalogue of serious policy problems, headed by the migrant crisis in the English Channel, the pressures on the NHS, and surging inflation.
Meanwhile, credibility is further eroded by broken promises, not just on social care, but also on the high speed rail link, levels of taxation and the triple lock on pensions.
Y‘Prime Minister has unrivalled gifts for seizing the initiative’
ET it would be a great mistake to write-off Boris. Throughout his career, he has been through stormy periods, only to bounce back strongly. In fact yesterday, at Prime Minister’s Questions, he was on remarkably combative form, given all that he has endured in recent days. For all his flaws, he remains by far the biggest personality in British politics, with unrivalled gifts for seizing the initiative, setting the agenda and dominating the landscape.
This is the man who defied all his critics by serving two terms as a popular and successful London Mayor in a Labourdominated city. On the national stage as Prime Minister, in just two years, he delivered Brexit, presided over the world’s most successful anti-Covid vaccine programme and ensured a much stronger economic recovery from the ravages of the pandemic than any experts predicted. He also smashed Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing Labour party, something that proved far beyond the ability of predecessor Theresa May.
Boris Johnson has the size of personality for the role. He should never be underestimated. In 1968, during a spell of anti-leadership rumblings in the Labour Party, Harold Wilson declared, “I know what’s going on. I’m going on.”
Boris Johnson should adopt the same dictum today.