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| Thursday November 4 2021 |
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By Patrick Maguire
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Good morning,
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Well, it was a close-run thing. But, whatever your politics, it was heartening to see MPs vote to express their heartfelt concern for food safety yesterday. Well done everyone! Makes you proud to be British.
Trivia question: Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister, turns 64 today. He won an Oxford blue for which sport? Answer at the bottom of today's email.
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The briefing
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- Boris Johnson has been accused of a “colossal misjudgment” after 51 Tory MPs rebelled over his decision to block the suspension of Owen Paterson, the senior Tory MP who broke lobbying rules.
- Ministers are scrambling to defend the government's decision to back an overhaul of the Commons standard regime, which Labour chairwoman Anneliese Dodds denounced as "corruption" on the broadcast round this morning.
- Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, told ITV last night that it was "difficult to see a future" for Commons standards commissioner Kathryn Stone, who faces calls to resign.
- This morning Kwarteng told Good Morning Britain that the government did not look "sleazy" but admitted that he thought Paterson had been "wrong" to have taken money from firms he was later found to have lobbied for. He admitted Paterson could still be sanctioned by a new process.
- Lord Hayward, the Tory peer, told Times Radio he agreed with the front page of the Daily Mail, which dubbed MPs "shameless" for yesterday's vote. He said: “I think it is damaging to the Tory Party but sadly, it’s also damaging to MPs.”
- In the House: Transport questions at 9.30am followed by business questions to Jacob Rees-Mogg and two backbench debates on proposals for an inquiry into the UK's involvement in Afghanistan and medicinal cannabis.
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Times Earth Hub at COP26 in association with Greenlit
Join us for our final day at Cop26 at 08.30 this morning for our breakfast briefing hosted by Times Radio's Luke Jones with Ben Spencer, science editor of The Sunday Times and Constance Kampfner, reporter at The Times Scotland.
That's not all: this evening from 17.30 for our Times Earth Hub Greenlit discussions sessions which today will include Dr Sylvia Earle, legendary oceanographer and explorer in residence with National Geographic and Chris Stark, CEO Climate Change Committee, the UK government's independent advisory body on climate change.
Find us at the Jacques Finnieston, 1146 Argyle Street, Finnieston, Glasgow G3 8TF; a 10-minute walk from the SEC until Thursday, November 4. For more information visit mytimesplus.co.uk/events
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Five things you need to know this morning
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During a heated session in parliament yesterday, Labour MP Toby Perkins waved £10 notes in a reference to Tory “sleaze”
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1. A scandal by numbers
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What more is there to say this morning?
Well, if you're Owen Paterson, quite a lot: the Commons standards commissioner ought to be sacked, not me, je ne regrette rien.
If you're a Tory who rebelled: varying degrees of invective against No 10, on or more likely off the record. If you're a Tory who didn't: er, very little...
If you're a minister, like Kwasi Karteng: something about reform of this rotten system being long overdue and very little, if anything, about the man at the centre of the case and whatever "rights and wrongs" he may have committed.
Cliche abounds this morning. So let's examine the facts instead.
244 MPs voted to spare Paterson, who strenuously denies breaking any rules... a 30-day suspension for lobbying ministers on behalf of two companies that together paid him more than £100,000 after an investigation whose finding were endorsed unanimously by a panel including 7 MPs, 3 of them Tories...
...sparing him a recall petition and likely by-election in North Shropshire...
...242 of whom were Conservatives...1 was a member of the DUP... 1 was an independent who lost the Tory whip for propositioning a member of his staff and a parliamentary intern...
...0 were from Labour, the Liberal Democrats or SNP, despite suggestions from government whips that they were willing to support the abolition of parliament's standards regime...
...the same number of opposition MPs – 0 – will sit on the special select committee set up to oversee the establishment of an independent appeals system for MPs found guilty of wrongdoing...
...109 Tories did not vote, of whom only 38 made a conscious decision to break a three-line whip and abstain in one of the biggest rebellions of Boris Johnson's premiership... yet the fact that was still not enough to defeat the government is a reminder of the PM's political authority...
...of the 59 Conservative MPs who put their name to the Leadsom amendment that passed and let Paterson off the hook yesterday, 10 have had allegations upheld against them...
...and despite claims that the government merely wanted to bring parliament in line with "any normal workplace", 39 had previously voted against an independent grievance system that would allow parliamentary staff to make bullying and harassment complaints against MPs without fear of political interference...
...of the 242 who voted to gut the standards committee of its power, 19 have had allegations upheld against them... 3 are currently subject to investigations by the standards commissioner – or at least they were yesterday...
...1 of whom is a prime minister who has been rebuked by that same standards commissioner 3 times... something backbenchers increasingly suspect explains yesterday's kamikaze mission from No 10...
...despite widespread unease on the government benches, only 13 Tory MPs broke the whip to vote against the government... of whom 4, remarkably, are in their first term as MPs...
...2 members of the government payroll did not vote, one of whom, Angela Richardson, has already been sacked...
...and countless unanswered questions. Now the opposition has boycotted John Whittingdale's "sham" committee, what happens to parliament's disciplinary regime now? What will the public make of this? And where do we go now?
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Read the full story
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2. What the rebels say
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Those Tory MPs who did rebel have answers to those questions.
Yesterday I was passed a message Jill Mortimer, the newest Conservative MP – whose victory in Hartlepool will go down in history as a reminder of Boris Johnson's ability to rewrite the rules of British politics to suit him – sent to colleagues in the hours after the vote.
She said: “This was a colossal misjudgment; it should not have been whipped. You should have been allowed to vote with your conscience on this." That is pretty forthright – perhaps self-defeatingly so – from an MP elected for the first time last May.
Meanwhile Jackie Doyle-Price, the former minister, writes in Red Box this morning: "Whipping should be only for the management of government business. It reflects badly that it was used in this context, however well intentioned and whatever the party considers its duty of care.
"It is entirely understandable that colleagues did not wish to vote for the penalties that were proposed for Owen Paterson. There is every sympathy for him. Sympathy I share.
"But... the vote totally undermined the deliberations of a committee of the house appointed for the purpose. That is totally regrettable and unfair on the colleagues who acted in good faith."
Kevin Hollinrake, another rebel, told The Times: “It just looks wrong for the powerful to be able to change the system when they get a judgment they don’t like. That looks like one rule for us, another rule for everyone else.”
Or as the Liberal Democrats put it in one of the countless viral ads doing the rounds from the opposition this morning: no rules for them. Labour, meanwhile, go as far as to use the word corruption – a charge some Tories fear will stick.
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Read the full story
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3. What Paterson says
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Paterson – who has always denied wrongdoing, says the strain of the investigation contributed to his wife's decision to take her life, and stresses he contacted ministers on behalf of his employers after their products detected defects in milk and ham products – is in defiant form in this morning's papers.
He said yesterday: “All I have ever asked is to have the opportunity to make my case through fair process. The decision today in parliament means that I will now have that opportunity. After two years of hell, I now have the opportunity to clear my name.”
He goes further in the Telegraph this morning, and says of Commons standards commissioner Kathryn Stone and standards committee chairman Chris Bryant: “Sadly they have not done a good job and come up with a rotten report which is full of inaccuracies. As far as I’m concerned, they all have to go."
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, gave a strong hint that the government were of the same view on ITV's Peston last night: "It's difficult to see what the future of the commissioner is, given the fact we are overturning and trying to reform the process."
Stone, for what it's worth, is not heeding that advice: she will instead see out the rest of her term, which ends in 2022. Sources close to her say she has had to introduce "significant additional security measures" at her home.
What Paterson has not done is apologised. Quite the opposite. Last night he told Sky News: "I wouldn't hesitate to do it again tomorrow, absolutely no question."
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Read the full story
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4. Rishing to judgement
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First his popularity plummeted among the the public. Now even the Conservative Party faithful are turning their back on Rishi Sunak in the wake of his tax-hiking budget.
Having been a comfortable second in ConservativeHome's monthly ranking of cabinet ministers with an approval rating of 74.5 per cent – just behind Liz Truss – he has tumbled to twelfth, on 45.4 per cent.
No wonder the chancellor has been so keen to stress his free-market credentials if this is the verdict of the grassroots. Truss remains top on 85.5 per cent, with Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, second. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, is third.
Still, he's doing better than Boris Johnson – sandwiched at 27th between Simon Hart and Michelle Donelan (me neither).
The least popular cabinet minister with Tory members, by the way? Cop26 president Alok Sharma. It's all going really well.
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5. WTF?
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No starker illustration of Sir Keir Starmer's luck (or lack of it) that Covid denied him the opportunity to lead the charge against Owen Paterson yesterday – a wound Boris Johnson wasted no time in salting with praise for Angela Rayner at PMQs.
But it was just as striking to see Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, give an extended interview in which she did not deny her own leadership ambitions to the Evening Standard yesterday.
More striking still: her uncharacteristic use of what you might call Old Labour demotic to explain inflation. "You don't have to be a f***ing economist," she said, "to work out that if less stuff is coming onto shelves, prices will go up."
Speaking human? On this opposition front bench? It'll never catch on.
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The cartoon
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Today's Times cartoon is by Peter Brookes
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Worth your time
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- Scathing stuff from Robert Shrimsley on a "shameful day for British politics" in the FT.
- In The Guardian, Sir Keir Starmer dares to throw the C-word at the Tories: corruption.
- On Times Radio with Matt Chorley from 10am: Scottish Energy Secretary Michael Matheson (10.10am); Good COP/Bad COP with Luke Jones (10.20am); Knight at the Marriott (India Knight and James Marriott) pick over the news (10.30am); Covering the Hong King protests with Luwei Rose Luqiu (10.50am) The Big Thing: Africa’s population boom, with Roger Boyes, Paul Morland, Parag Khanna and Yvonne Ndege (11am); coffee break with Mariella Frostrup (11.35am); CBI director-general Tony Danker (11.40am); Times Radio Election Service: Falklands (11.50am); Midday Update - your indispensable half hour bulletin; One year since Trump lost, with Alistair Dawber (12.35pm); Quiz: Can You Get To Number 10? (12.50pm)
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88 per cent of you said MPs should vote to suspend Owen Paterson in yesterday's poll. Er...
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Today's trivia answer
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Trivia question: Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister, turns 64 today. He won an Oxford blue for which sport?
Answer: Boxing.
Send your trivia to redbox@thetimes.co.uk
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