Have the last few wobbly weeks seen a turning point for Johnson as PM?

Published

4 years ago

November 28, 2021

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Have the last few weeks seen a turning point in Boris Johnson’s premiership?

Dozens of Tories have refused to follow the prime minister’s orders in the voting lobbies on issues as diverse as sleaze and social care.

Meanwhile a handful of Tory MPs have gone public with demands for change, with many more complaining in Westminster’s cafes and bars. At times, it has felt like Mr Johnson was losing his political agility.

“There are too many issues at the moment in which the government is shooting itself in the foot with issues and problems which as I say colleagues are warning and warning and warning about and that are visible from Venus, Mars even maybe visible from Pluto,” northern Tory and ex minister Andrew Percy told Sky News.

“And that has got to stop because we owe the people of this country better than that.”

Mr Percy hasn’t always been a rebel, though he accepts that description now.

Not that long ago he occupied the high profile portfolio of Northern Powerhouse minister until 2017 and was an early backer of Mr Johnson’s leadership in the summer of 2019.

Nor can he just be dismissed as one of a small number of irreconcilables.

Almost one in seven Tory MPs – 52 of them – have rebelled more often than Mr Percy, according to the Public Whip website which provides a crude tally of how many times he and his colleagues have voted against their party.

Yet he is one of the few prepared to go on the record in a television interview quite so expansively with their concerns, and as he sits in his office next to a full size Yorkshire flag, he worries, the government’s political antennae is wonky.

“Those are questions that people around the prime minister and then the senior levels of government have to ask themselves.

“They have to look and see if the setup of this government is broad enough, if it is drawn wide enough from the party if it is reflective of our new voter base, if it’s reflective even of our new base on the back benches.”

Last week, he voted like many others against the government’s social care plans because they will mean the less well off having to pay more than affluent voters before the state steps in and picks up care home bills.

Tory rebels cut the government majority from 80 to 26, setting off alarm bells across the party.

Mr Percy blasts Rishi Sunak’s department, saying their focus on keeping control of public spending is getting in the way of the party meeting its promises.

He said: “The Treasury has to be cognizant of what we promised people, what we told people, and I understand absolutely, you know, public spending is at record levels, you know, the amount of debt we are facing following COVID and all the rest of it is really, really very challenging.

“And these same conversations are happening in governments all across the world. I totally appreciate the challenge, but commitments were made, be that on rail, they were made on social care, they were put into our manifesto, people voted for us on the basis of those and therefore, you know, we need to ensure that we are making good on those promises.”

Beneath the surface this argument, between Tories who want to spend whatever it takes to deliver for voters, and those who think strong public finances are the bedrock of the Tory claim to competence.

Not all promises cost money, however, and Tories across the party are worried one of their biggest weaknesses stems from making offers that never materialise.

Ex-minister Tim Loughton, now a Tory on the home affairs select committee, points the finger firmly at France for the migrant crisis.

However he worries that the government has talked up its ability to find a quick fix too often when it is unable to find an easy solution.

“There is a genuine concern that the government has talked tough,” he told me. “The government genuinely wants this trade to end, as we all do, but we haven’t been able to achieve that on our own because most of the cards are in the hands of French.

“And perhaps it wasn’t wise to overpromise when we couldn’t rely on the partnership we need to solve this.”

Soon there will be two opportunities for voters to pass their verdict, with two traditionally safe Tory seats heading to the polls for a byelection.

This Thursday will see the vote in Bexley and Old Sidcup where the south London voters will choose a successor to popular minister James Brokenshire, who died of cancer in October.

Two weeks later, voters in North Shropshire will elect a successor to disgraced ex-minister Owen Paterson. Few expect an upset in Bexley, although some Liberal Democrats say they are putting in a concerted effort in Shropshire.

On the streets of Bexley, however, there was little sign of danger for Mr Johnson, where at times voters appeared more forgiving than his own MPs.

Tory voters there talk of Mr Johnson going “off the boil” and “fumbling” and doing things that mean they “lack confidence”.

Asked if that means they will take their vote elsewhere, most said not, often arguing he had been dealt an unprecedented bad hand.

This could be dismissed as an outlier result in a safe Tory seat, but the national opinion polls suggest that even after the most recent few weeks, Mr Johnson’s party enjoys an advantage.

The most recent YouGov survey from last week puts the Tories on 36% and Labour on 35%.

Older voters in the 65 and above category are twice as likely to vote Tory than Labour, an advantage Labour has not yet begun to directly tackle.

Meanwhile there is little sign Keir Starmer’s Labour is winning over Tory votes directly. Amongst those who voted Tory in 2019, 6% would now choose to vote for Labour but twice as many, 11%, would go for the little known Brexit Party successor, Reform UK.

The last three weeks have seen doubts about Mr Johnson in Westminster unthinkable even during Tory conference in early October, as well as calls for him to shake up his team and signs of fissures in government.

It is not yet clear those doubts in Westminster have filtered through and changed the voting habits in the country.

Politics

How record-breaking Reform UK donor Christopher Harborne made his millions

Published

4 hours ago

December 4, 2025

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How record-breaking Reform UK donor Christopher Harborne made his millions

Who is the man behind the record-breaking multi-million pound donation to Reform UK?

Christopher Harborne gave Nigel Farage‘s party £9m in August, according to new data published by the Electoral Commission. The contribution ranks as the largest ever single donation from a living person in UK political history.

Born in Britain, Mr Harborne is a businessman who owns several companies, employing more than 600 people worldwide, according to a court filing dated last year.

Yet he’s not resident in the UK, and is also a citizen of Thailand, where he is known as Chakrit Sakunkrit, and has lived and worked there for 20 years.

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Nonetheless, he has a long history of political donations to British parties.

Electoral Commission data shows he has previously donated to the Conservatives, gifting them £10,000 in May 2001, and continuing to support them with close to £2m in donations by October 2022.

But there was been some overlap with his backing of Reform, which first received a donation from him in April 2019, for £200,000.

He’s also donated to Mr Farage personally, giving £27,616.76 in January so the Reform leader could attend the second inauguration of Donald Trump.

He paid another £32,836 for the Reform and a member of staff to fly to the US following the attempted assassination of Trump in July last year.

And he gave one of the biggest donations ever made to an individual UK politician when he backed Boris Johnson to the tune of £1m in 2022.

He served as an advisor to Mr Johnson during the former PM’s trip to Kyiv in 2023.

His latest cash injection to Reform UK breaks the previous record for a donation from a living person, which was £8m from supermarket tycoon Lord David Sainsbury to the Liberal Democrats in 2019.

The largest ever single donation to a UK political party was from his cousin, Lord John Sainsbury, who left more than £10.2m to the Conservatives in 2022 in his will.

Electoral Commission records show Mr Harborne has made at least £24.5m in UK political donations since 2001.

But where is his money from?

Several of his businesses come under the banner of AML Global, including one registered in the UK, which has a London address listed with Companies House.

AML Global is described in a court filing as an international jet fuel broker that works with oil companies, and which has been awarded $39m (£29m) worth of contracts by the US Department of Defense.

Harborne was also an early investor in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

On his LinkedIn page, the businessman further describes himself as chair of Sherriff Global Group.

His profile shows he was educated at INSEAD business school, Cambridge University, and Westminster School.

Figures from the Electoral Commission released this week show Reform UK reported the most donations of any party in the third quarter of 2025, a total of £10,526,846.

By contrast, the Conservatives reported £7,038,861 in the same period, Labour £2,564,786, and the Liberal Democrats £2,174,712.

Politics

Reeves between a rook and a hard place after claims she ‘made up’ chess championship

Published

4 hours ago

December 4, 2025

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Reeves between a rook and a hard place after claims she 'made up' chess championship

As an opening gambit at PMQs, Kemi Badenoch attacked Labour’s knight, the prime minister, over his Treasury queen, Rachel Reeves.

“We now know the black hole was fake, the chancellor’s book was fake, her CV was fake – even her chess claims are made up,” said the Tory leader.

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“She doesn’t belong in the Treasury; she belongs in la-la land.”

Chess claims made up? Where did that attacking move from Kemi come from? Hasn’t the chancellor told us for years that she was a national chess champion in 1993?

Indeed she has. “I am – I was – a geek. I played chess. I was the British girls’ under-14 champion,” she declared proudly in a 2023 interview with The Guardian.

She posted a video showing her playing chess in parliament and before last week’s budget posed for photos with a chessboard.

But her chess champion claim has been disputed by a former junior champion, Alex Edmans, who has accused her of misrepresenting her credentials.

“Her claim was quite specific,” Edmans, now a professor of finance at the London Business School, told Ali Fortescue on the Politics Hub on Sky News.

“She said she was the British girls’ under-14 champion. There was one event that can go on that title, which is the British Championship. And in the year that she claimed, it was Emily Howard who won that title instead.

“She did indeed win a quite different title. There was a British Women’s Chess Association championship, but that’s a more minor title. I’ve won titles like the British squad title, but that’s not the same.

“Just like running a marathon in London is not the same as the London Marathon, there was one event which is very prestigious, which is the British Championship.

“So the dispute is not whether she was a good or bad chess player. That shouldn’t be the criterion for a chancellor. But if you weren’t the British champion, you shouldn’t make that statement.”

Oh dear! So now, along with allegations of plagiarism, a dodgy CV and “lying” – according to Ms Badenoch – about the nation’s finances, the chancellor is between a rook and a hard place.

Or is she? “This story is absolute nonsense,” a Treasury mate told Sky News. No word from the No.10 knight, Sir Keir Starmer, or his Downing Street ranks, however.

Emily Howard, as it happens, is now an accomplished composer, having graduated from the chessboard to the keyboard.

The chancellor’s opponents, meanwhile, claim her budget blunders means the Treasury queen has now become a pawn, there for the taking.

But since Rachel Reeves did indeed win a chess title, just not the one she claimed, her supporters insist she can justifiably claim to have been a champion.

So it’s too soon for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives to claim checkmate. The dispute remains a stalemate. For now.

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Reform UK gets record £9m donation from ex-Tory donor

Published

4 hours ago

December 4, 2025

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Reform UK gets record £9m donation from ex-Tory donor

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK have received its largest ever donation, with former Conservative donor Christopher Harborne handing the party £9m.

The donation – one of the largest in British political history – was made in August this year, according to filings from the Electoral Commission.

Mr Harborne, a British businessman based in Thailand, previously donated millions to Reform in 2019, when it was known as the Brexit Party, and has continued to give the party and Mr Farage cash.

Politics latest: Reform gets its largest ever donation

Between 2001 and 2022, he donated close to £2m to the Conservatives, according to Companies House.

The £9m handed to Reform UK on 1 August this year is the largest political donation on record from a living person, after Lord Sainsbury left £10m to the Conservatives in his will in 2023.

Educated in the UK, Mr Harbone is now based in Thailand, where he chairs the investment company Sherriff Global Group.

He also paid around £28,000 for Mr Farage to travel to the US for Donald Trump’s inauguration this year, and roughly £33,000 for the Reform leader to visit the president after the failed assassination attempt in the run-up to the election.

Responding to a question at a news conference from Sky News deputy political editor Sam Coates, Mr Farage said Mr Harborne has business interests all around the world, but his “natural home” was the UK.

He says the donation is “nothing out of the blue”, pointing to Mr Harbone donating significant sums to the Brexit Party.

“I think what he wants to do, really, is to try and help us get onto a level playing field with the trade union funded Labour Party, and a Conservative Party where there seems to be a remarkable correlation, I can’t think why, between donations and membership of the House of Lords,” Mr Farage said.

He added that “hand on heart” he has not promised anything to Mr Harborne in exchange for the money, adding that speaks to the Bangkok-based businessman “maybe once a month, maybe once every six weeks”.

Professor Justin Fisher of Brunel University, an expert in political donations, told Sky News: “It exposes the fact that this is a person who is a British citizen but is able to influence British politics without being subject to the laws that any Reform government might bring in, any tax arrangements that a Reform might bring in.

“This is foreign money by any other name.”

The professor pointed to the fact that in the 2022 Election Act under the Conservatives, the law was changed so that British citizens could live abroad their whole lives and stay on the electoral roll, allowing them to donate.

Previously, the cap had been set at 15 years of living overseas.

He added that it was not surprising to see a person with an interest in a particular policy area – like cryptocurrencies – give money to a political advocating for this cause.

According to the Electoral Commission, political parties raised £24m in the third quarter of this year – up from £10m over the same time period last year, and £11m last quarter.

With the local and national assembly elections coming up in May next year, parties are building their war chests for the campaign.

Reform reported taking a total of £10,526,846, more than the Tories (£7,038,861), Labour (£2,564,786), and the Lib Dems (£2,174,712).

This means Mr Farage’s party raised almost as much as the three main parties combined (£11,778,359).

While the Green Party has reported an increase in donations since Zack Polanski became leader, these figures mostly cover the time before he took office, with the party only accepting £371,753.

Professor Jonathan Hopkin of the London School of Economics told Sky News the donation “shows the power of money in politics if one individual can make such a big difference to the resources available to a political party”.

He added that big donors giving to Reform who also have links to the Tories could separately “pressurise the Conservatives to step aside their candidates in seats that Reform are better placed to win”.

The fact that Reform has received large volumes of cash from a former Tory donor will do nothing to extinguish reports that the two parties are considering an electoral pact in time for the next general election.

The Financial Times reported that such an agreement was spoken about by Mr Farage in a discussion with party donors.

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Both the Conservatives and Reform have denied they will do a deal.

Reform currently lead voting intention polls, with the Conservatives and Labour together in joint second place, followed by the Greens.

A spokesperson for the Reform Party said: “This quarter’s figures show the incredible progress Reform UK is making. This is further evidence that we have all the momentum in British politics.”