Labour plotting to push back election to November
Mastermind of Vote Leave’s campaign may actually be hindering, rather than helping, the Prime Minister
LABOUR is plotting to delay a general election until November, after MPS warned that Jeremy Corbyn would lose if it came any sooner.
The Labour leader believes he can trap Boris Johnson by refusing to agree to his preferred Oct 15 election date, forcing him to seek a Brexit extension before a poll is held.
Mr Corbyn has been in talks with the SNP and agreed not to allow an election until Oct 20 at the earliest. Three of his shadow ministers want it pushed back to November.
The Prime Minister said yesterday he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than delay Brexit further, as he refused to rule out the option of resigning instead. In another blow, Jo Johnson, his brother, quit the Government over his elder sibling’s Brexit policy, saying he had been “torn between family loyalty and the national interest”.
Labour seized on the propaganda opportunity, telling voters the Prime Minister “poses such a threat that even his own brother doesn’t trust him”.
Tonight the Prime Minister goes to see the Queen at Balmoral, accompanied by Carrie Symonds, his girlfriend, but he will cut short his visit to deal with the crisis.
Mr Johnson’s election campaign effectively began yesterday with a speech at a police training centre in West Yorkshire in which he repeated his claim that he did not want an election but could see no other way to end the deadlock after MPS removed his power to take Britain out of the EU on Oct 31 without a deal. He said Parliament had voted “effectively to scupper our negotiating power” by passing a Bill that would force him to seek a Brexit extension if he failed to agree a new deal at the next summit of EU leaders on Oct 17-19.
Mr Johnson said the country faced a simple choice of letting him try for a deal on the basis that the UK would leave the EU either way – “or else somebody else should be allowed to see if they can keep us in beyond Oct 31”.
Today Mr Johnson will continue campaigning as he visits Scotland, where he will vow to prevent the breakup of the Union. Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, he says: “I find it hard to comprehend why anyone would wish to break apart a successful country, tear the cross of St Andrew out of the Union Flag and draw an international frontier across our island … I will strain every nerve and sinew to strengthen and preserve all that we prize and cherish – and doggedly resist those who would seek to wrest us apart.”
The Government confirmed yesterday that a vote would be held on Monday calling for “an early election”, the same motion rejected on Wednesday.
Yesterday Mr Corbyn met Ian Blackford, the SNP’S Westminster leader, and agreed to withhold support for an election before Oct 19. John Mcdonnell, Emily Thornberry and Sir Keir Starmer, his most senior ministers, want to delay it until November so Article 50 will already have been extended by the time Britain goes to the polls. Labour sources suggested most party backbenchers also wanted a November date amid fears Mr Corbyn would lose if it was any earlier, pointing to recent polls showing Labour trailing by 10 points.
Mr Corbyn’s personal approval ratings compare poorly against Mr Johnson’s. A party source said: “We know that Jeremy isn’t polling brilliantly.”
Downing Street aides were last night meeting to discuss ways of stopping Mr Corbyn hijacking the timetable for a general election. Monday’s vote will require two thirds of MPS to back it under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. If passed, the Prime Minister would choose the date of the election.
Election motions under the Act are supposed to be unamendable but No10 fears John Bercow, the Speaker, could find a mechanism allowing Labour to amend it to a date of their choosing.
If Mr Bercow refuses a Labour amendment, Mr Corbyn will tell his MPS to reject it for a second time. He is then likely to call a confidence vote to force Mr Johnson from office and seize control of the election timetable.
Mr Corbyn could also try to use the process to install himself as prime minister of a coalition government without an election, as Mr Johnson is now 37 MPS short of an overall majority. No10 said last night it would be “insanity” for Labour to stop Brexit, adding: “The British people won’t stand for it.”
He was the architect of Vote Leave’s “take back control” slogan, hitting the ceiling when the Brexit campaign won the referendum.
But with Boris Johnson’s “do or die” pledge to deliver Brexit on Oct 31 “with or without a deal” now hanging in the balance, some are starting to question whether Dominic Cummings, his chief strategist, has been punching above his weight. For it was not long ago that the 47-year-old political Svengali insisted there was “nothing” Remain MPS could do to stop a no-deal Brexit. “Politicians don’t get to choose which votes they respect,” he told Sky News.
Fast-forward six weeks into Mr Johnson’s fledgling premiership and Tory rebels, with the aid of opposition MPS, have done exactly that.
The Prime Minister now faces the humiliation of having to seek a three-month extension to Article 50 if he cannot agree a deal with Brussels by Oct 19 – days after the EU Summit.
After warning that the Bill, proposed by Labour’s Hilary Benn, would “chop the legs out” of our negotiating position, Mr Johnson said there were “no circumstances” in which he’d seek a delay. But with one motion for an early general election already defeated, and Labour prevaricating over whether to support a second – preferring the poll to take place after Mr Johnson has had to delay Brexit – Downing Street appears very much on the back foot.
This, coupled with unease over the decision to strip 21 rebel Tories of the whip – including Ken Clarke, Father of the House, and Sir Nicholas Soames, Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson – has called his judgment into question.
Yet interestingly, it is not the Prime Minister many are blaming for the party’s civil war, but Cummings – a man who has made no secret of his dislike for elected politicians and who once remarked: “The Tory Party is run by people who basically don’t care about people like me.” Summing up the mood, expelled rebel Margot James said: “The great lady [Margaret Thatcher] … once said, ‘Advisers advise, ministers decide.’ Can I ask the Prime Minister to bear that statement closely in mind in relation to his own chief adviser, Dominic Cummings?” She later revealed that it was a report by The Daily Telegraph’s Peter Foster – in which Cummings described the Brexit negotiations as a “sham” and that government policy was to “run down the clock” – that had convinced her to rebel. Last night, Sir John Major, the former prime minister, called for Cummings to be sacked before he “poisons” the Government beyond repair.
It followed reports of Cummings “berating” the rebels while they waited to meet the Prime Minister before Tuesday’s crunch votes, saying: “I don’t know who any of you are.”
Downing Street has subsequently rebutted claims he told Greg Clark, the former business secretary: “When are you f------ MPS going to realise we are leaving on Oct 31? We are going to purge you,” and insisted that he didn’t use any foul language.
Coming after Cummings had Sonia Khan, Chancellor Sajid Javid’s special adviser, frogmarched out of No10 after accusing her of leaking information,
‘He basically stuck a walking stick into a wasps’ nest and stirred it’
he appears to have developed a habit of appearing in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. It perhaps explains why Alistair Burt, another expelled rebel, told The Telegraph: “We don’t blame Boris – we blame Cummings.”
Yesterday, Mr Javid appeared to agree, describing the expulsion of MPS as “not something I wanted to see”.
More than 100 “One Nation” Tory MPS have lobbied Mr Johnson to reinstate the rebels, but according to one Downing Street source: “If Boris … said all was forgiven, he would be completely undermining Mark Spencer, the Chief Whip.”
Describing Cummings as “the perfect foil” to Sir Eddie Lister, Mr Johnson’s “calm and considered” co-chief of staff, the source added: “I’ve not heard Dom raise his voice, but he does do a lot of his business standing up and pacing around. He inherited a lethargic, undynamic government and made it much more responsive. The easiest thing to do is to love the PM and hate the adviser, but every decision that’s been taken is because Boris has decided to take it. You do need a complete f----- behind the scenes getting this stuff done.”
Yet when it comes to winning an election with a large majority, might Cummings prove more of a hindrance than a help? He is also unpopular with Brexiteers, who blame him for mishandling the prorogation.
“He basically stuck a walking stick into a wasps’ nest and stirred it,” said one former minister. “There’s real anger that Cummings may have deliberately b------- things up.”
Members of the European Research Group are already said to be agitating for Mr Johnson to agree to Nigel Farage’s offer of an election “nonaggression pact” – but blame Cummings for standing in the way.
“Cummings is the obstacle to any deal between Johnson and Farage,” said one senior Tory source. “Boris is much more dogmatic, but Cummings hates the idea. He regards [Farage] as a grubby little street urchin.”
With Michael Gove having told the Brexit select committee yesterday that he would support Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement if it returned – we appear to have reached peak paranoia among the so-called spartans.
Gove knifed Mr Johnson in the back after the referendum, and Leavers fear that history is to repeat itself. Noting Cummings’s closeness to Mr Gove – having acted as adviser when he was education secretary – one MP remarked: “There is a theory that the real plan is to crash Boris and create chaos, only for Gove to emerge as the elder statesman ready to take over.”