EXPLOSION OF LOATHING AT No10
From ex-Chancellor’s savage attack on Boris’s Brexit tactics to PM thumping Cabinet table, the incendiary row that led to Tory defeat
IF Boris Johnson woke up yesterday thinking the prospect of an early election, combined with his threat to deselect Tory MPs who try to thwart his Brexit plans, would cow the rebels, he was swiftly disabused of the notion yesterday morning.
At 8.10am on Radio 4’s Today Programme, Philip Hammond – 22 years a Tory MP, a former defence and foreign secretary and until a few short weeks ago Chancellor of the Exchequer – was defiant.
Not only would he vote for a Labour-backed Bill designed to stop No Deal and force Mr Johnson to ask for a three-month extension to Article 50, but he believed the rebels had the numbers to force the controversial legislation through.
Taking clear aim at Mr Johnson’s de facto chief of staff Dominic Cummings, he added: ‘I am going to defend my party against incomers, entryists, who are trying to turn it from a broad church to narrow faction.
‘People who are at the heart of this Government, who are probably not even members of the Conservative Party, who care nothing about the future of the Conservative Party, I intend to defend my party against them.’
Last night’s vote set the seal on a battle that raged around the Palace of Westminster yesterday on what, it is no exaggeration to say, was one of yet another of those extraordinary and exhausting political days.
At the start of the day, the number of Tories publicly committed to rebellion was in the single figures. If Downing Street could keep the numbers down, there was at least some hope of averting defeat.
Both in public and private, No 10 aides condemned a law they called a ‘blueprint for legislative purgatory’, which would cost taxpayers £1billion a month, which was ‘very clearly in Brussels’ interests not in the British interest’. One, invoking the kind of classical allusion enjoyed by Mr Johnson, called it ‘the worst terms since Rome and the Carthaginians’.
The Romans took Carthage, killed most of the inhabitants, sold the rest into slavery and destroyed the city.
Just before 10.15am, around 15 rebels entered Downing Street.
Nobody was calling them peace talks, and by the end it was clear they had only served to expose the Brexit civil war tearing the Conservative Party apart.
One attendee described it as ‘the most extraordinary meeting I have ever been in’. The rebel group
‘Worst terms since Rome and Carthage’
included former Chancellor Philip Hammond, former justice secretary David Gauke and ex-business secretary Greg Clark – as well a raft of former junior ministers and senior backbenchers including Sir Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill.
The meeting was held in the Cabinet room, around which many of the rebels had sat as ministers only weeks earlier.
On the Prime Minister’s left sat Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, who has urged him not to pull the trigger on the rebels but to ‘hold our party together’.
The Prime Minister began by arguing that progress was being made with the EU, and the threat of No Deal was having a real impact on Brussels.
If the Bill was to pass, he argued, it could result in a second referendum or even the revocation of Article 50 – the death of Brexit. And he made clear to the rebels that, yes, they really would lose the whip if they did not back down. From his seat in the corner, next to Mr Gauke and Michael Gove, Mr Hammond couldn’t hide his displeasure. In truth, he argued, No 10 didn’t have a negotiating strategy or even team in place.
They weren’t really trying to get a deal. Even if Mr Johnson could secure a last-ditch deal at the European Council on October 17, there wasn’t time to pass the required legislation ahead of Brexit day on October 31, he insisted.
No, Mr Johnson said, there was in fact time. What’s more, he said, there would also be time for the rebels to try again to stop No Deal after the Council.
But Mr Hammond wasn’t listening. ‘Hammond and Boris were just refusing to listen to one another. Hammond kept talking over him, tutting and shaking his head,’ one source said. ‘Boris was doing the same.’ At one point the exasperated PM declared: ‘You all just want to keep us in the EU.’ Hammond hit back: ‘We voted for the deal three times.’ The row escalated.
PM: ‘I will not tolerate a Bill that hands over power to Corbyn.’ Hammond: ‘We are handing over
power to Parliament.’ PM: ‘You are handing power over to a junta that includes Jeremy Corbyn.’
He added: ‘Extension [of Article 50] would be an extinction-level event for the Conservative Party.’ ‘Their mutual loathing was very apparent,’ a source told me.
Dominic Cummings was not present throughout the meeting, but had spoken to a group of rebels waiting outside. One later accused him of ‘hectoring’ them and starting a row, a claim denied by Government sources. ‘I’ve seen Dom argue and it was not a Dom argument.’
He did, though, make one short cameo appearance in the room, described as ‘deliberate trolling’ of the rebels. ‘Dom turned up to just to needle Hammond.’ (Insiders also say that while they were waiting for the meeting to start Mr Cummings had told the waiting rebel MPs: ‘I don’t know who any of you are!’)
One hour and 25 minutes after the meeting began, Mr Johnson banged the table, urged the rebels to ‘trust my position’ and the meeting was over. The PM concluded: ‘I assume everyone is with me.’ It would quickly become clear they were not. Then the briefing war began. Government sources accused Mr Hammond of having mentioned EU ‘legal advice’ in a discussion about the extension.
Had he unwittingly revealed his connivance with the enemy in Brussels? No, rebel sources insisted. A Hammond spokesman called the claim ‘ridiculous and categorically untrue’. He was simply citing the ‘established view of the EU legal service’.
No10 was not convinced. Rebels accused Mr Johnson of offering an ‘unconvincing’ account of how he would pass a deal and providing ‘no convincing proof’ that a negotiation is even taking place.
As that meeting finished, another began in the parliamentary offices of Jeremy Corbyn where the Labour leader and other opposition parties agreed to back the Bill. No such clarity, however, on whether to back an election.
During the morning and early afternoon, the number of confirmed rebels began to tick up. Former minister Sam Gyimah and Sir Nicholas both confirmed they would be voting against the Government. Yet some still had hope.
At lunchtime, Tory chief whip Mark Spencer told junior ministers that Labour Leavers could come to the rescue, with somewhere between three and ten prepared to vote with the Government.
But by the time the Commons began sitting at 2.30pm the number of publicly declared rebels was up to 15 and several more were still making up their minds. What wasn’t expected was Tory Phillip Lee’s public defection to the Lib Dems. When Mr Johnson stood up to make his Commons statement on the G7, Dr Lee stood up and crossed the floor of the House to sit with Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson and at a stroke he erased Mr Johnson’s majority.
Tory MPs were deflated. Only when Mr Johnson baited Jeremy Corbyn with accusations of ‘surrender’ did they cheer up.
In the briefing for journalists afterwards, Mr Cummings popped up again, in the background, refusing to answer questions on whether he was a member of the Tory Party. At a little after 6.30pm, it took barely a minute for leading rebel Sir Oliver Letwin to set out his unprecedented proposal to take control of the House away from the Government, and for the Speaker John Bercow to agree it should be discussed. The fix was on. The House was in uproar.
At one point, the Speaker openly mocked the Prime Minister by throwing a Brexit quote back in his face. To applause from Labour MPs he said he would ‘facilitate’ the House of Commons ‘come what may, do or die’.
Mr Hammond wasn’t finished, though. Standing in central lobby with the vote only hours away, he spoke of his ‘outrage’ that the party he has been a member of for 45 years was ‘thinking of throwing me out’.
‘Some of my colleagues have chosen to call it a day because they don’t like what’s going on. My approach is to stay and fight and I will fight for the party I joined and the party that I believe the Conservatives must be, a broad inclusive centre-Right party, for as long as I am able to do so,’ he said.
Backing down? Not a chance.
HAMMOND: We’re handing power to Parliament
BORIS: You are handing power to Corbyn’s junta
‘No convincing proof of negotiation’