Baker the Brexit hardman vows to firm up the backbench revolt

There was fighting talk from Tory rebel Steve Baker on Wednesday night after he was among 34 Conservative MPS to vote against Boris Johnson’s second lockdown.

Appearing on ITV’S News At Ten, the MP for Wycombe and self-styled “Brexit hardman” warned: “In 28 days’ time, I’m very clear what my view will be. We’ve got to learn to live with it and if, in 28 days’ time, the Prime Minister hasn’t developed a plan to deliver to live with it, I will certainly organise against. And then I’m afraid it will be a very unhappy Christmas.”

Downing Street may have won the battle over the latest coronavirus restrictions, which passed with a huge majority of 478. But with 55 Tories from all wings of the party having refused to support the measures, including Theresa May, the former prime minister, who abstained, the war with disgruntled backbenchers is by no means over.

Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPS, appeared to sum up the mood among those who defied the three-line whip when he said that he had voted against the Government “with greater conviction than I have in casting any vote” in his 23 years as an MP.

Yesterday, he said Conservative MPS were unlikely to support the lockdown beyond Dec 2, let alone a third one. It means the Government may only be able to get future measures through the Commons with Labour support.

“Many of us voted against the second lockdown but many colleagues made clear that they were willing to give their support reluctantly on this occasion but not in the event of another extension,” he said. Similarly, Tory MP Richard Drax told Chopper’s Politics podcast: “Fifty-five [MPS] is a large number, on the first occasion, and there are a lot more who would.

“And I cannot see the Prime Minister who wants presumably to be prime minister for another three years or so, is going to risk a massive rebellion of 80, 90, 100 or more.”

Tories fear Mr Johnson is privately preparing to extend the lockdown after Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, extended the furlough scheme – when the taxpayer pays 80 per cent of people’s wages – to March.

Amid mounting criticism of the scientific data being relied upon by Downing Street to close the country down, MPS have been gleefully sharing a spoof graph projecting the scale of the Tory rebellion should the restrictions run into Christmas.

Echoing Sir Patrick Vallance’s doomsday prediction of 4,000 deaths a day, the mocked-up graphic shows rebellion spreading as virulently as the virus through the Conservative ranks should No 10 refuse to open the economy back up on Dec 2.

As one senior Tory put it: “The centre of gravity on the Conservtive benches has moved.

“Given this ends on Dec 2, it will only be three weeks before MPS will be voting on the next steps.

“They won’t get a majority for an extension. If they decide the whole country has to go into Tier 3, I doubt they’d get a majority for that.

“If they come up with a mix of Tier 2 and Tier 3, it’s still going to be tricky because they’ve damaged the credibility of the whole tier system.

There were a lot of MPS who voted for the Government this time but were privately saying ‘never again’.”

Beleaguered Tories are also continuing to demand the publication of an economic impact assessment on the lockdown and increasingly questioning what Mrs May summed up as Downing Street’s tendency to use “figures to support the policy, rather than the policy being based on the figures”.

Having been invited into No 10 on Saturday afternoon to scrutinise the scientific data, there is a sense that Mr Baker now expects the “lockdown sceptics” to be brought into the tent in a similar vein to the European Research Group (ERG), which he chaired, during the Brexit negotiations.

It seems Mr Johnson still risks squandering his 80-seat majority on Covid if he doesn’t sort out his ongoing party management problem.

‘There were a lot of MPS who voted for the Government this time but were privately saying “never again” ’