Care vote and Peppa Pig pile pressure on Johnson
BORIS Johnson faces pressure within the Tory party to reestablish his grip following a chaotic speech to business leaders and a revolt over social care.
Senior Tory Jeremy Hunt said it had “not been a great month” for the Government, “not just on trivial issues like speeches going wrong but on much more serious issues like parliamentary standards”.
Downing Street insisted the Prime Minister was physically “well” and “focused on delivering for the public” following questions about his leadership.
The Prime Minister’s address to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on Monday saw him lose his place in his notes, talk about Peppa Pig and impersonate a car.
The Government then survived a rebellion over its social care reforms, with 19 Tories opposing the plans and dozens more not voting at all in response to the cap on costs being less generous than expected.
It followed a bruising few weeks which have seen Mr Johnson’s judgment being questioned over his handling of the Owen Paterson row on parliamentary standards and Tory criticism of scaled-back plans for rail upgrades in the North.
Former Cabinet minister Mr Hunt, who stood against Mr Johnson for the Tory leadership in 2019, said the CBI speech “wasn’t a great moment and it hasn’t been a great month for the Government”.
In a sign of the questions being asked about Mr Johnson, a Downing Street source told the BBC “there is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM.... It’s just not working”.
“Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes otherwise it’ll keep getting worse. If they don’t insist, he just won’t do anything about it,” the source said.
Mr Hunt acknowledged there were “noises off” about Mr Johnson’s leadership within the Tory party, but insisted the criticism was not on the same scale as that faced by David Cameron or Theresa May.
“I’m sure there are things that we can do better,” he said.
“But I was in the Cabinet for nine years from 2010 and frankly there’s never been a time when there weren’t noises off in Westminster, there weren’t backbench MPs with complaints about the way the Government is operating,” Mr Hunt told Times Radio.
On Sky News, he said: “We all have bad moments and yesterday was not a great one for the Prime Minister.”
Mr Johnson’s official spokesman sought to minimise the fallout from Monday’s events.
“The Prime Minister briefly lost his place in a speech,” the spokesman said. “He has given hundreds of speeches. I don’t think it’s unusual for people on rare occasions to lose their place in a speech.”
The spokesman added: “The Prime Minister is very much focused on delivering for the public.”
Asked whether Mr Johnson had a core group of ministers around him to offer advice, the spokesman said: “The Prime Minister has an entire Cabinet to draw on who provide advice, as you would expect.”
The spokesman said he “wants people to be able to speak freely and give their views” around the Cabinet table.
Mr Hunt, the Commons Health Committee chairman, was one of the Tories who abstained over the social care reforms in Parliament.
The Prime Minister narrowly succeeded in getting MPs to back his new policy to cap care costs in England on Monday evening.
The Government won the vote by 26, a major cut to the Prime Minister’s working majority of around 80 MPs, as 19 Conservatives including former Cabinet minister Esther McVey and ex-chief whip Mark Harper rebelled to oppose the plans – while 68 Tories did not vote for them, either because they abstained or could not attend.
Mr Hunt told the BBC: “I was conflicted, I actually ended up abstaining because it is a big disappointment that they changed the way the cap is calculated.”
Not including council support in calculating whether the cap on care costs has been reached means it “won’t protect the assets of as many people as we had hoped for”, he said.
The scale of the revolt could encourage peers to seek to amend the legislation when it reaches the Lords.
Crossbench peer Baroness Finlay of Llandaff said an impact assessment of the reforms – which was not available to MPs – will be “very important”. She told the BBC’s Today programme: “It may be that we will say to the Commons, ‘can you think again?”. It may be that we come up with constructive amendments to improve what is on the table at the moment because, clearly, there’s a lot of disquiet.”
WATCHING the Prime Minister deliver his speech to the CBI on Monday was excruciatingly embarrassing.
It’s tempting to believe that he is losing interest in his job.
Either that, or he is uninhibited in displaying contempt for his audience, both those who were in the hall and those watching on TV and social media.
No sixth-former delivering a mini-lecture to their classmates would be happy to lose their place in the script, be unable to ad-lib, and to ramble inconsequentially about a theme park.
It may be that Boris Johnson is finally losing the cachet that helped him be elected London Mayor and in due course Prime Minister.
His popularity with his own MPs has certainly taken a knock, most of that attributable to the way they were made to look foolish by the U-turn over the Owen Paterson affair.
There have also been some polls that saw support for the Conservatives dip below that for Labour, although so far that hasn’t become a consistent trend.
Many Tory MPs – as well as those who run constituency associations across Britain – will for the moment remain loyal to Mr Johnson, remembering the success he brought them in the 2019 General Election.
But loyalty has its limits and many will be watching developments over the next few months.
If the drop in support becomes a trend, and especially if one or more of the pending by-elections in what have been safe Conservative seats are lost, the Prime Minister may well be in trouble.
History shows that the Conservatives are loyal up to a point, but that when a consensus develops that the leader has to go, they will be ruthless in despatching him or her .
That’s what happened to Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. In due course it’s likely to happen to Mr Johnson too, unless he decides to throw in the towel himself.
It’s highly unusual for Downing Street sources to be speaking in almost apocalyptic terms about their own Prime Minister, but that’s what is happening.
If he can redeem himself by pulling back support and emerging triumphant from the by-elections, Mr Johnson’s tenure will be secure.
But if anything further goes wrong, his premiership could soon be over.