TORY REBELS ROUND ON PRIME MINISTER
DISCONTENT in the Conservative ranks is growing because MPs fear they may lose their seats over the Downing Street lockdown parties fallout, a former cabinet minister has said.
Boris Johnson critic David Davis said his colleagues “see their own seats disappearing” as Tory popularity continues to languish in the wake of the socalled “partygate” saga.
The comments come as the Prime Minister faces mounting calls to resign following the publication of senior civil servant Sue Gray’s investigation into Covid rule-breaking in No 10 and Whitehall during the lockdowns in England.
They also follow First Minister Mark Drakeford’s withering assessment both of the Prime Minister’s partygate actions and of Mr Johnson’s reponse to the Gray report.
“Truthfully, the the biggest reaction, I have to it [the Sue Gray report] is a sense of despair really,” the Welsh Labour leader said on Friday.
“That things could have got to a pitch where, right to the heart of government, where all those decisions were being made that had such an impact on other people’s lives, that people conducted themselves in the way that we did. The Sue Gray report has now all those pretty grim details of the way that people felt it was alright for them to behave.”
He went on to say that he did not find Mr Johnson’s apology “credible”, adding: “I don’t think many other people do either.”
Yesterday, it emerged that former health minister Steve Brine has added his name to the list of Tory MPs to have handed in letters of no confidence in the Prime Minister.
Newton Abbot MP Anne Marie Morris is also among the letter writers, having confirmed to PA news agency that she has had the Tory whip restored after it was removed in January for her decision to support an opposition move to cut VAT on energy bills.
Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories, will be obliged to order a confidence vote if he receives 54 letters demanding one
More than 20 MPs have publicly stated that they no longer support Mr Johnson but more may have penned letters given the process is carried out in secret.
Mr Brine said Ms Gray’s report had not altered his view that it was “inevitable the Prime Minister would face a vote of confidence”.
“All I can do as a backbencher is seek to trigger that process and (some time ago actually) I have done that,” he confirmed in a statement published on his website on Wednesday but only picked up by the media yesterday.
“I have said throughout this sorry saga I cannot and will not defend the . indefensible. Rule-makers cannot be law-breakers.”
The band of rebels had increased on Friday, with Sir Bob Neill, Conservative chairman of the Justice Select Committee, confirming he had submitted a letter of no confidence in Mr Johnson’s leadership.
Alicia Kearns, a member of the 2019 intake, accused the No 10 incumbent of “misleading” Parliament with reassurances that coronavirus laws were upheld.
In her report, Cabinet Office official Ms Gray detailed how leaving-dos got out of hand, with staff throwing up after drinking excessively, being rude to security staff and even damaging a child’s swing in the Downing Street garden. She found the Prime Minister – who was slapped with a fine by police for attending his own birthday bash in June 2020 when indoor mixing was forbidden – attended a number of leaving-dos in No 10 during the lockdown months in England and the rest of the UK.
The warning by Mr Davis of increasing mutiny comes after polling company YouGov produced new modelling suggesting the Conservatives would lose all but three of 88 “battleground” constituencies if a general election were held this weekend, putting the Government’s Commons majority in jeopardy.
The predicted outcome would see Mr Johnson’s own Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat “likely fall” into Labour hands and Red Wall seats such as Blyth Valley and Stoke-on-Trent North also revert back to Sir Keir Starmer’s opposition.
Only Ashfield, Bassetlaw, and Dudley North would remain blue, according to YouGov.
Despite facing criticism over his partygate defence, the Prime Minister chose to announce changes to the ministerial code last week in a move his rivals said watered down punishments for ministers.
An update said ministers will not automatically lose their jobs if they breach the standards code, and can instead apologise or possibly have their salary suspended instead.
Chris Bryant, the chairman of the Commons Standards Committee, and the Labour MP for Rhondda, told the Today programme the move demonstrated why an independent process was required when it came to judging possible ministerial wrongdoing.
Mr Bryant, who has recused himself from chairing the Privileges Committee investigation into whether Mr Johnson misled Parliament with his partygate reassurances, said the current system means “it still all lies in the Prime Minister’s hands and we know that the Prime Minister always finds himself innocent in the court of his own opinion”.