Sue Gray’s interim report into events at No 10 finds “failures of leadership and judgment”. Exactly whose failures are left hanging, for now.
I’m a serial Boris supporter. As an MP, I backed his abortive leadership bid in 2016 and his victorious campaign in 2019. I was drawn to his brand of Brexity, one-nation Conservatism. I doubt any of us backed him because we’d spotted a paragon of virtue. We were clear eyed about him then, we must own the consequences now.
Indeed, a sense of vicarious liability for the man we advanced has probably stayed the hand of several MPs in recent days. But the Conservative party is notoriously unsentimental. It likes to be a winning machine. Dark arts are always in scope. The calculus my colleagues are now grappling with is whether Boris is ultimately an electoral asset or liability. It seems a tipping point in either direction has not yet been reached.
But if and when the men and women in grey suits do end up calling time on the PM, he will be entitled to leave with head held high. Guardian readers can spit as many tacks as they like, but he delivered Brexit. Only Boris could. He won a jaw-dropping election victory, seizing votes in districts that had eluded my party for decades.
To the uncomprehending fury of the fashionable London left, UK politics will never again be the same. The judgment calls on Covid have – generally – been the right ones. OECD data points to the UK’s economic recovery leading the G7 in 2022. These are things that have real life consequences for people I represent, who live way outside the M25.
I am not attempting to belittle or distract from partygate. Integrity and honesty should be at the very heart of government alongside leadership and judgment. Law makers simply can’t be law breakers. The parliamentary Conservative party may hand Boris his P45 if the Met or Gray’s definitive report collar the PM. But I’m guessing the point of danger for Boris will be in May. Then we will probably have a perfect storm – the widely predicted midterm council election hit, with disposable incomes falling as energy costs bite, national insurance rises, and inflation erases any uptick in wages.
What to do?
The usual deputies’ head may roll, obviously. Then there’s the rumoured bandolier of eye-catching policy announcements that researchers believe will appeal particularly in so-called “red wall” seats. These deliverables, the young ones calculate, will shore up the PM’s position among wavering MPs.
But government must never be a self-licking lollipop.
For example, it’s all very well calling in the navy to sort out the Channel crisis. Mobilising the troops always look good. But unless the fundamentals are changed – and they have not been – the problem is simply kicked down the road and, in this case, the navy’s reputation with it.
No, the key to any reset can only be an unrelenting focus on driving through manifesto commitments. No gimmicks, no smoke and mirrors – for example around what is and is not a new hospital and, for goodness sake, no more mayors.
Two years of this parliamentary term have been lost to Covid. That means the government has to work twice as fast to ensure big-ticket items such as social care, and a truly epic deal on new homes, raising them up from the nation’s brownfield sites in a way not seen since the early 1950s, are under way by the time voters next have an opportunity to pass judgment.
Andrew Murrison is the Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire, and a former minister of state for international development and the Middle East
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