Red Box - Thursday September 26 2019

PLUS: More voters think PM is dislikeable

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Thursday September 26 2019

By Matt Chorley

Good morning,

Of all the people to copy your speech from, Chris Grayling might not be your first choice.

But as Grant Shapps addressed the Commons about the Thomas Cook crisis yesterday his speech had a familiar ring to it, with large sections a duplicate of what Grayling said when the Monarch airline went bust, with just a few figures changed.

I suppose pretending to be Chris Grayling makes a change from being Michael Green.

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Matt Chorley

Red Box Editor

@MattChorley

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The briefing

Boris Johnson addresses a meeting of Tory MPs at 11.30am as he tries to fire them up for the Conservative conference (which is happening) and the general election (which isn't).
The government will try to secure a recess for the Conservative conference this weekend, with Labour threatening to vote it down. Johnson last night left open the possibility of a second prorogation, telling ITV's Peston: "I would like to have a Queen’s Speech."
Senior judges could face US-style confirmation grillings from MPs before taking up their posts, the attorney-general has suggested, as a cabinet divide emerged over attacks on the judiciary.
More than half of a £100,000 grant given by the government to a company owned by a friend of the prime minister has been frozen.
Luciana Berger, who joined the Liberal Democrats after leaving Labour, will give up her Liverpool constituency to stand in Finchley and Golders Green, a seat
once held by Margaret Thatcher.
Esther Webber's trivia question: On this day in 1960 John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon faced each other for the first ever televised presidential debate, one of a series of four head-to-heads between the pair. When did the next televised debate take place and who featured? Answer at the bottom of today's email

Mind your language

Maybe it was too much to expect humility, but to get hostility with a side order of hatred was shocking and utterly, utterly depressing.

Boris Johnson arrived in the Commons to face the music for being found by the highest court in the land to have acted unlawfully in suspending parliament. Was there even a hint of contrition? Of course not. He respected the court, he said with a smirk, but thought it was wrong.

"Let's get Brexit done and take this country forward," he declared. Applause broke out in the Commons, cries of "more!": Tory MPs openly goading John Bercow to stop them, knowing that after he has let the rules lapse for opposition MPs so often he could hardly step in now.

But then it turned nasty. Over the course of three hours we saw not the zipwiring, flagwaving, pasty posing, olive-reincarnating, whiff-whaffing, hair-ruffling jester.

Instead we got a nasty, mean-spirited, cruel, sarcastic bully who seems to have torn a page out of the playbook of another blonde bombsite on the other of the Atlantic, who also concluded that once you have reached a tipping point where half the country hate you all you can do is embrace it.

This month I will have been working in parliament for 14 years. It began with a year spent sitting in the press gallery covering debates day and (often) night. Since then I have spent too many hours to mention watching high and low politics played out in the nation's cauldron of debate. Many of them, it has to be said, quite dull, punctuated by moments of political theatrics and passion.

Nothing comes close, though, to matching the spectacle on display to millions of people watching at home last night.

The prime minister told MPs dogged by death threats that the best way to ensure that they are “properly safe” was to help him deliver his Brexit.

What?

Now, I know that to criticise him will be to fall into his trap. That you are either with him and the 17.4 million, or against them. Pitching his critics against the mob is a sign of weakness, not strength.

For goodness sake, we are only disagreeing about some legal and political arrangements which until a couple of years ago few people understood or cared about, including those now leading the charge on both sides.

Sending a death threat because you disagree with someone about the merits of free trade or who should decide how loud your vacuum cleaner should be strikes me as an extreme reaction.

But MPs across the Commons shared their stories again last night, many leaving in tears. They had pleaded with the prime minister to moderate his language and he laughed in their faces.

Paula Sherriff is the Labour MP for Dewsbury. She has spoken out about death threats before, including one calling for her to be beheaded.

Referring to the Commons plaque in tribute to Jo Cox, the Labour MP murdered by a far-right fanatic in 2016, she told Johnson: “We stand here under the shield of our departed friend, with many of us subjected to death threats and abuse every single day. They often quote his words: ‘surrender act’, ‘betrayal’, ‘traitor’, and I for one am sick of it. We must moderate our language and it has to come from the prime minister first. He should be absolutely ashamed of himself.”

His response? "I have to say that I have never heard such humbug in all my life."

What?

Imagine that. Imagine a fellow human being asking you politely, albeit passionately, to tone it down a bit because you risk inflaming violence, and your response is to reach for a funny word and dismiss it out of hand.

Labour’s Peter Kyle was furious, telling Johnson: “When you live behind a wall of armed police officers you can be as irresponsible as you like with your language because you will never have to live with the consequences”.

Johnson's response? “Believe me the best way to ensure that every parliamentarian is properly safe and we dial down the current anxiety in this country is to get Brexit done.”

What?

Tracy Brabin, the Labour MP who replaced Jo Cox, said: “We are hearing from the prime minister words such as the 'humiliation' act, the 'surrender' act, and the 'capitulation' act. All of these words suggest that we, because we disagree with him, are traitors, that we are not patriots, but nothing could be further from the truth.

"Now this may be a strategy to set the people against the establishment, but I would like to gently suggest that he is the establishment and we are still people. As the woman who has taken over the seat that was left by our dear friend Jo Cox, may I ask him, in all honesty, as a human being, that, going forward, will he please, please moderate his language so that we will all feel secure when we are going about our jobs?"

Johnson’s response? To repeatedly refer to “the capitulation act, the surrender act or whatever you want to call it“, and then to add: "What I will say is that the best way to honour the memory of Jo Cox, and indeed to bring this country together, would be, I think, to get Brexit done."

What?

Brendan Cox, Jo's widower, later said that he felt sick at his wife's memory being used in such a way.

Jess Phillips, the Labour MP, later published a threat she had received which read: “It was rather prophetic that Boris Johnson should say ‘I would rather be found dead in a ditch’. That is what will happen to those who do not deliver Brexit.” She added: “I’m not scared of an election, I am scared I might be killed.”

Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader, told the Commons: "Today I have reported to the police a threat against my child. That was dismissed as humbug. This is a disgraceful state of affairs, and we must be able to find a way to conduct ourselves better.” She's not wrong.

This is not just party politics, either. Nicky Morgan, the culture secretary in Johnson’s own cabinet, took him to task on Twitter: "I know the PM is aware of & sympathetic about the threats far too many of us have received, because I shared with him recently the threats I am getting. But at a time of strong feelings we all need to remind ourselves of the effect of everything we say on those watching us.”

And even civil servants are speaking out. Julian King, the UK's European Commissioner in Brussels, tweeted of Johnson's outbursts: “Crass and dangerous. If you think extreme language doesn’t fuel political violence across Europe, incl UK, then you’re not paying attention."

Jeremy Corbyn asked John Bercow, the Speaker, “to call together the leaders of all parties in this House to issue a joint declaration opposing any form of abusive language or threats”.

Which is a noble thing to do, although admittedly it came less than five hours after Emily Thornberry, Labour's shadow foreign secretary, had to apologise to the Lib Dems for calling them the “Taliban”. And five years after John McDonnell repeated a comment that Tory Esther McVey should be “lynched”, for which he has refused to apologise.

James Cleverly, the Tory chairman, was sent out on to the Today programme to defend his boss. He struggled. At one point he insisted that Johnson “did not use word betrayal". Spoiler: Johnson said: "We will not betray the people who sent us here; we will not. That is what the Opposition want to do."

Johnson knows what he is doing, whipping up a storm to mobilise his base and distract from the total mess of his first weeks as PM.

Even so, right now everyone just needs to calm the f*** down. Every single MP in the House of Commons will have gone into politics with at least the intention of serving their country and doing what they think is right. It is entirely possible to think they are wrong, misguided or foolish without implying that their safety is at stake because they won't do what you want.

And citing a dead woman's murder to help you out of a political mess almost entirely of your own making is beyond the pale.

A new YouGov poll, taken this week but before last night’s performance, shows that for the first time since he became prime minister more people think Johnson is dislikeable (45 per cent) than likeable (40 per cent). That will hurt him. It should.

There will be plenty of decent people who question, even fear, the idea of a Corbyn government who will be utterly appalled by Johnson’s behaviour and tone.

So much for the Heineken politician who could reach parts of the electorate others could not. No longer a refreshing change, no longer full of fizz. He is now just bitter.

Red Box: Comment

Geoffrey Cox’s ‘joke’ about domestic violence shows how far we have to go

Nicki Norman – Women's Aid

Poll of the day

Boris Johnson’s personal ratings have suffered after the Supreme Court ruling that his suspension of parliament was unlawful.

A third of voters — 33 per cent — now believe that the prime minister is competent, according to the latest YouGov survey for The Times. That is down from 41 per cent three weeks ago. At that time 52 per cent also believed that he was strong but that figure, too, has fallen, to 46 per cent.

Read the full story

Red Box: Comment

Boris Johnson’s competency takes a hit but Tories hold their polling lead

Chris Curtis – YouGov

General election tracker

The latest YouGov election tracker suggests Labour has not enjoyed much of a bounce from its conference, up just one point to 22 per cent, and still neck and neck with the Lib Dems.

Also worth noting, and a trend worth keeping an on eye on in the coming weeks, is that the Brexit Party seems to have stabilised. Any Tory hopes of securing a decent majority requires squeezing Nigel Farage's party down into single figures.

I asked if Boris Johnson should resign and two thirds said that he should. Full result here

Have your say

Yesterday I asked what Boris Johnson should do now.

Guy Clapperton said: "If the prime minister wants to buy himself some time he could use his usual technique of bewildering people — perhaps by reminding them that only a fortnight ago he, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Raab and others were assuring everyone that prorogation had nothing to do with Brexit, so everyone accusing the Supreme Court of being partisan must logically be getting their knickers in a twist over nothing. Unless of course they were knowingly lying through their teeth and treating the electorate as fools and we all know that could never happen, don't we?"

Sue Vagg said: "Spill red wine on the Queen’s sofa, arrange sponsorship grants and trade missions for Love Island contestants and get Carrie a spider brooch."

David Cheddie said: "I'm guessing you can't print what I think Boris Johnson should do now, so I will say he should withdraw his own whip (not a euphemism) and go back to being a terrible journalist."

Jeremy White said: "Since parliament, encouraged by John Bercow, seems determined to usurp the functions of the executive, he should subcontract the whole Brexit negotiations to them; get them to form a small cross-party negotiating team (Dominic Grieve, Stephen Kinnock, Joanna Cherry, Emily Thornberry, Caroline Lucas, Anna Soubry etc), led by Ken Clarke, and send them off to Brussels to see if they can do any better."

Tess Wright said: "He should confound everyone and salvage a modicum of respect by apologising for his arrogance and calling a second referendum on the same basis as the last one, to establish the true will of the people now. We would all have to abide by that whatever the outcome."

Alastair Gordon said: "Given BJ is content to conduct himself according to standards unfamiliar or unacceptable to many of us, unfettered until now by adult supervision, perhaps he should legislate to introduce the Johnsonian Calendar in which the 31st October was yesterday. That would be no less inappropriate than many other tricks he has tried."

TODAY: How can calm things down in politics? Email redbox@thetimes.co.uk and we'll use some of the best tomorrow.

The best comment

The disturbing spectacle of Greta the Great

David Aaronovitch – The Times

MPs must accept nobody can win on Brexit

Jenni Russell – The Times

Labour gets a shot in the arm from Lady Hale

Janice Turner – The Times

Boris Johnson knows exactly what he's doing when he talks about Jo Cox

Stephen Bush - The New Statesman

September 24, 2019 was a momentous day for the rule of law

James Zirin - Prospect

The cartoon

Today's cartoon from The Times by Peter Brookes

Need to know

WEATHER WARNING: Extreme weather of the sort that used to ravage coastlines once a century will happen every year by 2050, according to a United Nations report on the likely effects of global warming. (The Times)

OPEN DOOR: Labour will campaign to extend free movement to more countries and give foreign nationals living in the UK the right to vote, under plans endorsed by the party’s conference yesterday. (The Times)

CHANGING PRIORITIES: SNP ministers instructed civil servants to work on a plan for a second independence referendum despite warnings that it would affect key domestic policies, previously secret documents have revealed. (The Times)

REMAINER LEAVES: Labour's Matthew Pennycook last night quit as shadow Brexit minister so he can campaign for Remain. (Daily Mirror)

SLOP BUCKETS: Prisoners are being forced to use buckets as toilets in their cells and slop them out in the morning despite pledges by ministers to phase out the "Victorian"practice 18 years ago. (The Daily Telegraph)

Red Box: Comment

The new climate movement is excluding Conservatives

Jason Reed – British Conservation Association

Women are still being asked to fit into antiquated working hours

Victoria Jones – FDA union

Now read this

President Trump pressed Ukraine’s leader to help him to substantiate corruption allegations against Joe Biden and his son while repeatedly reminding him of his reliance on American military aid, according to a transcript of their conversation that has triggered an impeachment inquiry.

The release of the document yesterday was the latest grenade to be tossed into the accelerating story of impeachment proceedings launched by the Democrats after a whistleblower’s allegation that the president had used his office to try to dig up dirt on a leading political opponent.

Read the full story

TMS

From the diary

By Patrick Kidd

Gaukward but not impossible

Thumbing to the back of David Cameron’s book to see if he got a mention, David Gauke was surprised to read that the former PM had considered making him chancellor after the referendum. Gauke was then merely financial secretary to the Treasury and it would have been quite a leap. People would have assumed, he writes in the New Statesman, that George Osborne (who was lined up for the Foreign Office) was still running the show. “I would do all the grunt work and have to defend all the unpopular measures, while George would make the big decisions and do lots of glamorous travel,” Gauke says. “I could have withstood such an attack. It was an arrangement with which I had been perfectly content for years.”