Adam Boulton: Long Johnson is still plaguing the Tories – Sunak needs to take decisive action
Those worried about the health of British politics have diagnosed a new disease at Westminster.
Chris Patten, a grandee from the Conservative establishment, spotted what he called “Long Boris” last summer.
Weeks after Boris Johnson announced his resignation as prime minister, Lord Patten, a former party chairman and former BBC chairman, lamented the persistent “corrupting and debilitating impact of Johnson’s premiership on British politics and government.”
As with ‘SARS-Covid-19’ there was some debate as to how the condition should be named in general conversation.
Eventually, “Long Johnson” was settled on rather than the more familiar “Long Boris”.
The commentator Paul Waugh listed some of the symptoms of Long Johnson he saw in the bloodstream of the Conservative party: “A debilitating condition that led it to lose its sense of taste, decency and direction.”
Long Johnson hit fever pitch with the Conservative party’s short-lived collective decision to select Johnson’s preferred candidate, Liz Truss, as the next prime minister. That quickly burnt itself out.
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On taking office Rishi Sunak tried to shake off Long Johnson by promising that his government would be one of “integrity, professionalism and accountability” at all times. It is not proving so easy for the new prime minister to escape unwanted legacies from his predecessor-but-one.
Questions of probity over two men who were promoted by Johnson, Nadhim Zahawi and Richard Sharp, have combined to create the biggest political crisis of Sunak’s short premiership.
According to Raphael Behr, political columnist on The Guardian, the “Zahawi episode is a symptom of Long Johnson, the chronic, recurrent, debilitation of government by a pathogen that still circulates in the ruling party long after the original infection has been treated”.
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Analysis: Labour says PM ‘too weak’
The embarrassments Sunak is grappling with are debilitating hangovers from the Johnson era, so is the fumbling way the prime minister is dealing with them.
Nadhim Zahawi had the reputation at Westminster of a comparatively competent and personable minister, one of those credited with the successful roll-out of the vaccine programme. But as often with politicians who become conspicuously wealthy there was much gossip about his finances.
His wealth was generated as a co-founder of the polling company YouGov before he became an MP.
Scrutiny of Zahawi’s finances sharpened when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, the politician responsible for the nation’s finances and tax system. In seeking the truth, journalists received what they considered to be aggressive threats of libel from lawyers acting for Zahawi, designed to suppress allegations, some of which have been confirmed as accurate.
It is now known that while he was Chancellor, Zahawi quietly negotiated a tax settlement totalling some £5m, including a penalty of more than £1m, with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for which he was the minister responsible.
Zahawi says his mistake was “careless but not deliberate”. Jim Harra, the head of HMRC, told MPs this week: “There are no penalties for innocent errors in your tax affairs.”
There is no pressing reason why Boris Johnson should have made Zahawi chancellor. Nor does the haste with which the appointment was made suggest that the prime minister or his officials, led by the Cabinet Secretary, had sufficient time for due diligence looking into his suitability for this most sensitive financial post. Yet their green light then effectively gave him a free pass to prominent ministerial ranks under both Truss and Sunak.
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‘Questions need answering’ in Zahawi case
By late last year scrutiny by an honours committee elsewhere in Whitehall reportedly held up a proposed knighthood for Zahawi.
In the past, when serving prime ministers have announced their intention to resign, other ministers have stayed in post until the successor is chosen. He or she then assembles their own cabinet team. This has been so even when threatened ministerial resignations force out a prime minister, as happened to both Tony Blair and Boris Johnson.
Once he announced he was going, Johnson could have said that he was not accepting resignations and that all minsters would stay on in the interim. That is not the way Boris Johnson behaved. He used his dying powers of patronage to settle scores and to try to influence the outcome of the leadership election.
He fired Michael Gove and then he troubled the ailing Queen to appoint an entirely new temporary cabinet for the few weeks of the leadership contest. Johnson promoted Zahawi to the Treasury, thus crucially depriving Rishi Sunak of the status of high office during the leadership battle, while Truss luxuriated in the great office of state of foreign secretary.
Earlier, after Sunak emerged as the person most likely to replace Johnson, he became the subject of damaging leaks about his US Green Card and his wife’s non-dom status. The Metropolitan Police coincidentally tarnished the teetotal Sunak’s reputation, and blunted the impact on Johnson, by issuing them both with fixed penalty notices for breaking COVID regulations at the “ambushed with a cake” Johnson birthday party in the cabinet room.
Sunak experienced the hard way the phenomenon, now hitting Zahawi and Sharp, that friendship with Johnson often has adverse consequences.
Richard Sharp insists that he was appointed the chairman of the BBC on merit after a rigorous selection process. There is no reason to doubt his perspective. When I knew him at university, more than 40 years ago, he was an exceptionally decent and considerate person. He went on to build a highly successful career in finance alongside generous voluntary contributions to public service and charity.
Men with known political affiliations such as Michael Grade, Gavyn Davies and Marmaduke Hussey have been appointed to the BBC chair by other prime ministers. But Boris Johnson made the final decision over Sharp, after he and his allies had previously broken with precedent by conjuring up culture wars and pre-endorsing friends and allies such as Paul Dacre and Charles Moore for top posts in the media, normally viewed as apolitical – unsuccessfully it turned out.
Johnson used his patronage to appoint Peter Cruddas to the House of Lords, someone who had helped him out with his personal finances. Richard Sharp says he “simply connected” people, who then facilitated an undeclared personal £800,000 overdraft guarantee for the prime minister.
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Zahawi should ‘stand aside’
Richard Sharp and cabinet secretary Simon Case may genuinely have decided this was immaterial to Sharp’s BBC application but is that the way Boris Johnson sees things? Several enquiries into Sharp’s appointment are now under way. Johnson’s benefactor Sam Blyth is an old friend of Sharp.
The inquiries will doubtless ascertain whether Boris Johnson knew of this obliging distant cousin’s existence before Sharp introduced him to the cabinet secretary.
Long Johnson is also evident in the way the government is handling these potential scandals.
Quick resignations and moving on are things of the past. Following a pattern which became familiar during the Johnson era, Sunak has presided over, and sometimes joined in, denials that have turned out to be inaccurate, playing for time by calling for further inquiries after awkward facts are established.
Sir Keir Starmer had a two-pronged attack at PMQs: “We all know why the prime minister was reluctant to ask his party chair questions about family finances and tax avoidance, but his failure to sack him, when the whole country can see what is going on, shows how hopelessly weak he is.”
Sizeable minorities in parliament and perhaps even more in the Tory membership are not loyal to Sunak and hanker for a return of Johnson. This limits Sunak’s ability to lead firmly.
With his oblique reference to the great wealth of Sunak’s family, the leader of the opposition went further, implying that the prime minister is really just one of them – sharing similar values, or the absence of them, to Johnson and Zahawi and the same acquisitiveness.
Only urgent decisive action by Sunak can demonstrate that he has beaten the plague of Long Johnson.
The threat of deportation to Rwanda is causing migrants to head for Ireland instead of the UK, Ireland’s deputy prime minister has said.
The Rwanda Bill, which will see asylum seekers “entering the UK illegally” sent to the central African nation – regardless of the outcome of their application – was passed on Tuesday, despite human rights concerns.
Micheal Martin told The Daily Telegraph that the policy was already affecting Ireland, as people were “fearful” of staying in the UK.
The former Taoiseach said: “Maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have.”
Mr Martin, who is also Ireland’s foreign secretary, said asylum seekers were seeking “to get sanctuary here and within the European Union as opposed to the potential of being deported to Rwanda”.
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His words follow those of justice minister Helen McEntee, who told a scrutiny committee in the Irish parliament earlier this week that migrants and refugees were crossing the border with Northern Ireland.
Ms McEntee said “higher than 80%” of people seeking asylum in Ireland entered the country through Northern Ireland, a border crossing that is open as guaranteed under a UK-EU Brexit treaty.
It comes amid increasing tension over immigration levels in Ireland, which is grappling with a housing crisis that has affected its own people as well as asylum seekers.
Overnight, six people were arrested during a protest at a site earmarked to house asylum seekers in Newtownmountkennedy in Co Wicklow.
Gardai said officers came under attack after workers were brought onto the site, suffering “verbal and physical abuse throughout the day, which escalated into rocks and other missiles being thrown this evening”.
Fires were lit, an axe was found and officers were “forced to defend themselves” with incapacitant spray, helmets and shields.
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Three patrol cars were also damaged.
Irish broadcaster RTE said protesters accused gardaí of using unnecessary force, and intimidating and aggressive tactics against a legitimate and peaceful protest.
According to RTE, there have been protests during the past six weeks at the site, known as Trudder House or River Lodge.
It is reportedly being considered as a site for 20 eight-person tents housing asylum seekers but some locals have said it is unsuitable and the village’s resources are already over-stretched.
Ms McEntee said there was “a lot of misinformation about migration at the moment”.
She tweeted late on Thursday to promote the EU Migration and Asylum Pact, which she described as “a real game changer” and “something we must opt into”.
Call it the Rishi Sunak reset week or, to borrow from The Spectator’s Katy Balls, the shore-up Sunak week – the prime minister will be going into this weekend feeling the past few days have been a job well done.
He has got his flagship Rwanda bill through parliament and is promising a “regular rhythm” of flights will be getting off the ground from July.
He has also got off the ground himself, with a dash to Poland and then Germany, in a show of strength with European allies in the face of Russian aggression.
As the US finally approved a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine, our prime minister announced he’d lift the UK’s defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.
That would amount to £87bn a year by the start of the 2030s, with the UK spending a cumulative extra £75bn on the military over the next six years.
That of course all hinges on winning an election, which I’ll come to soon, but it is a commitment that throws a challenge to Labour and will delight those in his party who have been calling for increased defence spending for months in the face of growing global threats from Russia, China and Iran.
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‘Fully funded’ defence plan
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In Electoral Dysfunction this week, we discuss whether Rishi Sunak, having been battered for much of his premiership, is finally having a week on top?
There is after all a longstanding tradition in this country that when the chips are down, you jump on a plane to try to go somewhere where you’re more appreciated.
And Ruth agrees this week that this has been “one of the better weeks that he’s had in his premiership” and is fully behind his defence spending pledge, while Jess points out that Labour is committed to the “exact same plan for upping defence spending”.
The difference between the two parties is that Rishi Sunak set out in some detail how he plans to get to that point over the course of the next parliament, while Sir Keir Starmer has said only he wants to get to 2.5% “when resources allow”.
Keir Starmer only wants to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence ‘when resources allow’. Pic: PA
And that matters because, as it stands, it’s very likely that it will be Sir Keir who is having to decide whether to increase defence spending levels in the next parliament rather than the incumbent.
Cue an election debate on which leader really cares more about defence and, if Sir Keir really does want go toe-to-toe with Mr Sunak on the 2.5%, how does he pay for it?
That will be a discussion for many other days (Labour’s line on this is that the party will hit the 2.5% “when circumstances allow” rather than setting a firm date) as we head into the general election.
But I had to ask Ruth and Jess, why was he on a publicity blitz announcing it now? Was it something to do with the rather large matter of the local elections?
‘Sunak needs to look big’
At this, both furiously shook their heads and looked at me with a touch of derision. “When it comes to the local elections, I want my bins done, I want my schools to be good, and I want my potholes done. That’s what I care about,” says Ruth.
“The people in Birmingham Yardley speak of nothing else but the 2.5% defence spending,” jokes Jess.
“I see why [he’s doing it this week] but actually I don’t think he’s doing for just another example of doing it this week. He needs to look big in front of his party.”
And there are a couple of things to explore in that.
First, the party management issue of a PM very likely to get completely battered in the local elections throwing his party some red meat ahead of that slaughter to perhaps try to protect himself.
Mr Sunak met German Chancellor Olaf Scholz this week
Because the local elections could be bad, very very bad. And that throws up questions about Rishi Sunak’s future and also the date of the next general election.
There is a reason why the prime minister will not be drawn on the timing of the election beyond the “second half of the year”.
While it’s true he doesn’t want to have to “indulge in a guessing game”, as one of his allies put it to me, it’s also true that he can’t rule out a summer election given the unpredictability of next week’s local elections and what could follow.
The Armageddon scenario of losing 500-plus seats, alongside the West Midlands and Teeside mayors, could propel his party into fever pitch panic and possibly trigger a vote of confidence in Rishi Sunak.
Does he then decide to call a general election instead of allowing his party to try to force him out?
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‘A man enjoying himself’
For what it’s worth, he did not appear, in any way to me, as a prime minister on that plane over to Berlin from Warsaw, who wanted to give up the job. He seemed, for the first time in a long time, a man enjoying it and getting on with the stuff he wants to get done.
There is also the small matter of being 20 points behind in the polls. I suspect his instinct is very much to hold on in the hope that things begin to turn in his favour.
Because, despite what the critics say, he does seem a man who genuinely believes his Rwanda plan, welfare reforms, defence spending and economic management are all stepping stones on his path to perhaps winning back some support in the country.
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“June [or July] is just party management,” says one former cabinet minister. “They are not ready for it and the polling doesn’t work obviously.”
Jess sees the flurry as a “his last ditch attempt” of another reset, and says “the Labour party is not worrying” as the PM tries to pin them on Rwanda or defence spending: “Whatever he goes on is absolutely pilloried within seconds,” she says.
But Ruth argues the defence spending was “actually authentic and a real thing”, and says of the expectations for the local elections that “it’s not just going to be a rout, but an apocalypse, that actually at this point in the cycle it works quite well for Sunak in terms of keeping his job at the back end”.
Observing his various grip and grins this week as I trailed after him meeting the Polish PM, the German chancellor and the NATO secretary general, he is a man that really does want to hold on to that job.
The local elections then are probably going to come as a horrible reality check in just a week’s time as this prime minister, riding high from his European tours, is reminded that his time in office looks like it will be coming to an end – and perhaps even sooner than he might have initially planned.
The Italian government sent an ambulance in a military plane to remove a newborn baby from a hospital in Bristol in a highly unusual move after the boy’s parents said doctors were unable to do anything more for the child.
The infant, less than a month old, has not been named. Sky News understands his parents are from mixed Italian and Nigerian backgrounds but are UK residents.
The Italian government says the child has a “very serious cardiac malformation” and that it intervened after the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children was unable to offer further treatment.
Italian lawyer and former senator Simone Pillon told Sky News the hospital was at the cusp of legal proceedings with the parents over ending treatment but halted before any High Court hearing could take place, in favour of cooperating with the Italian offer.
Mr Pillon, who has previously intervened to help other parents take their children to Italy for treatment, called this a significant case in paediatric care.
He said it paves the way for children to be offered treatment abroad without parents being taken to court, as we have seen in previous high-profile cases.
“I believe that if we find a way to cooperate in the best interests of the children we are all winning; there are no losers,” he told Sky News. “We thank the hospital and the British doctors. The family want to say thank you too.”
He added: “The decision is important to guarantee the security of the baby. I believe today we have written a good page in the relationship between Italy and the UK and between Italian and UK doctors in the best interest of children.”
A spokesperson for University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust said: “We worked with Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital to support the safe transfer of a newborn patient to Rome. Due to patient confidentiality, it would not be appropriate to go into specific details regarding a patient’s care.”
The baby was flown out of the UK and Italian doctors began operating on Wednesday
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Mr Pillon said Italian doctors began operating on the baby on Wednesday and that surgery was due to continue on Thursday.
The Italian Prime Minister’s Office said an Air Force flight C130 landed in Ciampino Airport just outside of Rome at 6.30pm on Tuesday 23 April with “a newborn of Italian citizenship, born a few days ago in the United Kingdom”.
The baby has been transferred to the Bambino Gesu Paediatric Hospital in Rome.
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