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.
A weekend of protests and counter-protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers began last night, with dozens expected today. It comes as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has vowed “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants if his party wins the next general election.
Saturday is set to see more demonstrations across major towns and cities in England, organised under the Abolish Asylum System slogan, with at least 33 planned over the bank holiday weekend.
The protests are expected in Bristol, Exeter, Tamworth, Cannock, Nuneaton, Liverpool, Wakefield, Newcastle, Horley, Canary Wharf, Aberdeen and Perth in Scotland, and Mold in Wales.
Counter-protests – organised by Stand Up To Racism – are also set to be held in Bristol, Cannock, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Wakefield, Horley and Long Eaton in Derbyshire.
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Govt to appeal migrant hotel ruling
It comes after Friday night saw the first demonstrations of the weekend, including one outside the TLK hotel in Orpington, south London.
Dozens of protesters could be heard shouting “get them out” and “save our children” next to the site, while counter protesters marched to the hotel carrying banners and placards which read: “Refugees welcome, stop the far right.”
The Metropolitan Police said a large cordon was formed between the two groups and the hotel, and later confirmed that no arrests were made.
Abolish Asylum System protests were also held in Altrincham, Bournemouth, Cheshunt, Chichester, Dudley, Leeds, Canary Wharf, Portsmouth, Rhoose, Rugby, Southampton and Wolverhampton.
Protesters outside the Holiday Inn Central, Ashford, Kent. Pic: PA
Tensions around the use of the hotels for asylum seekers are at a high after statistics showed there were more than 32,000 asylum seekers currently staying in hotels, marking a rise of 8% during Labour’s first year in office.
Regular protests had been held outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, which started after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl on 10 July.
In the wake of those protests, Epping Forest District Council sought and won an interim High Court injunction to stop migrants from being accommodated there – a decision which the government is seeking permission to appeal.
Read more:
Who says what on asylum hotels
18 councils pursuing or considering legal action to block asylum hotels
Migration stats going in the wrong direction
Labour may have walked into political trap over Epping hotel
Police officers separate people taking part in the Stand Up To Racism rally and counter protesters in Orpington. Pic: PA
Farage vows ‘mass deportations’ if elected
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has told The Times there would be “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants if Reform UK wins the next general election, vowing to remove the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights and other international agreements to facilitate five deportation flights a day.
When asked by the newspaper whether that would include Afghan nationals at risk of torture or death, he said: “I’m really sorry, but we can’t be responsible for everything that happens in the whole of the world.
“Who is our priority? Is it the safety and security of this country and its people? Or are we worrying about everybody else and foreign courts?”
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Asylum hotel closures ‘must be done in ordered way’
Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum Angela Eagle said in response that the Reform UK leader is “simply plucking numbers out of the air, another pie in the sky policy from a party that will say anything for a headline”.
She added: “This Labour government has substantially increased returns with 35,000 people removed from the country in the last year alone, a huge increase on the last government.
“We are getting a grip of the broken asylum system. Making sure those with no right to be here are removed or deported.”
Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament in 2029.
Conservative MP and shadow home secretary Chris Philp also accused Reform UK of recycling Tory ideas on immigration.
“Nigel Farage previously claimed mass deportations were impossible, and now he says it’s his policy,” he added. “Who knows what he’ll say next.”
Home Office stops Norfolk hotel
It comes after South Norfolk Council said it had been told that the Home Office intends to stop housing asylum seekers at the Park Hotel in the town of Diss – which has also seen demonstrations over the last month.
Protests broke out there after officials said they would send single men to the hotel rather than women and children. The hotel’s operator had warned it would close if the change was implemented.
A Home Office spokesperson said on Friday that “we are not planning to use this site beyond the end of the current contract”.
In response, Conservative council leader Daniel Elmer said: “The Home Office thought it could just impose this change and that we would accept it.
“But there is a right way of doing things and a wrong way, and the decision by the Home Office was just plain wrong.”
He added that while “I welcome the decision, in reality it does mean that the women and children who we fought so hard to protect will now be moved elsewhere, and that is a shame”.
Has the government just walked into a giant political elephant trap by attempting to reverse the Epping hotel ruling?
Already on the back foot after a judge ordered the Bell Hotel to be emptied of asylum seekers, the Home Office is now being attacked for trying to appeal that decision.
“The government isn’t listening to the public or to the courts,” said Tory shadow home secretary Chris Philp.
The politics is certainly difficult.
Government sources are alive to that fact, even accusing the Tory-led Epping Council of “playing politics” by launching the legal challenge in the first place.
The fact Labour councils are now also considering claims undermines that somewhat.
After all, the party did promise to shut every asylum hotel by the next election.
Figures out this week showed an increase in the number of migrants in hotels since the Tories left office.
And now, an attempt to keep people in a hotel that’s become a flashpoint for anger.
That’s why ministers are trying to emphasise that closing the Bell Hotel is a matter of when, not if.
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What do migration statistics tell us?
“We’ve made a commitment that we will close all of the asylum hotels by the end of this parliament, but we need to do that in a managed and ordered way”, said the security minister Dan Jarvis.
The immediate problem for the Home Office is the same one that caused hotels to be used in the first place.
There are vanishingly few accommodation options.
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Asylum hotel closures ‘must be done in ordered way
Labour has moved away from using old military sites.
That’s despite one RAF base in Essex – which Sir Keir Starmer had promised to close – seeing an increase in the number of migrants being housed.
Back in June, the immigration minister told MPs that medium-sized sites like disused tower blocks, old teacher training colleges or redundant student accommodation could all be used.
Until 2023, regular residential accommodation was relied on.
Read more from Sky News:
Rise in migrants staying in hotels
Town ‘changed’ by immigration
Explainer: Where can migrants stay?
But getting hold of more flats and houses could be practically and politically difficult, given shortages of homes and long council waiting lists.
All of this is why previous legal challenges made by councils have ultimately failed.
The government has a legal duty to house asylum seekers at risk of destitution, so judges have tended to decide that blocking off the hotel option runs the risk of causing ministers to act unlawfully.
So to return to the previous question.
Yes, the government may well have walked into a political trap here.
But it probably had no choice.
UK
Family of mother killed at Notting Hill Carnival say it’s an ‘unmanageable event’ and is ‘unsafe’
Over a million people are descending on west London this week for an event like no other.
Colourful, celebratory and culturally significant, but it has become increasingly contentious.
For the family of Cher Maximen it’s an event they can no longer be excited about.
In their eyes, carnival has been tainted by the memories of last year when 32-year-old Cher was killed in front of her young daughter in an unexpected, unprovoked attack in the middle of carnival’s ‘family day’.
Cher Maximen was fatally stabbed at last year’s carnival
Cher’s family say she would not want the event to stop, but that its “current format” is unsafe.
“Where some people say, wrong place, wrong time. She was in the right place, at the right time, where she should have been, and still she wasn’t safe,” says Lawrence Hoo, Cher’s cousin.
Mr Hoo says the event is not set up to protect carnival-goers: “She was in the safest location possible on family day with her daughter and she was murdered directly in front of police officers, so if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere, in all honesty, it’s an unmanageable event.”
Last year, the number of carnival-related crimes were down on the year before, and the majority were related to drug offences.
Cher was one of two people murdered at last year’s event.
Lawrence Hoo, Cher Maximen’s cousin, thinks the current format of the carnival is unsafe
Mr Hoo says the threat of violence hasn’t gone away: “Really, one murder is a murder too many. I believe that has become too dangerous.
“Could it happen again? Of course it could happen again. Of course, it could happen again. You could turn up the day before, you could be there, you can step out of the front door, you’re in the site. I think it’s an unmanageable location.”
Cher’s grandmother, Vyleen Maximen, wants the international three-day event to be moved.
Vyleen Maximen, Cher’s grandmother, wants the carnival to be moved
“When I had the meeting with them, I said ‘why can’t you move it to a different place? ie Hyde Park – that’s a big enough park’. I was told ‘well, it wouldn’t be called Notting Hill Carnival’.”
For the family it comes down to concerns around who attends the street parade. The perceived lack of screening for individuals with weapons worries them.
“This is why I would like it moved,” Ms Maximen said.
“I mean, it’s not up to me. This is just my personal opinion. Have it structured, this is the way in, then the way out, but on the streets you can do whatever and just escape through the streets.”
Vyleen Maximen proudly wears a T-shirt showing images of her granddaughter
This weekend, carnival organisers say 7,000 officers and staff will be on site each day with live facial recognition cameras and screening arches used at the busiest entry points.
The option of moving the event however is not up for discussion, says Matthew Phillip, Notting Hill Carnival’s chief executive.
“Carnival should remain on the streets of Notting Hill. It’s where it started, it’s a community event. Unfortunately, it has been marred by incidents.
“Our hearts are very much with the family, but carnival should remain on in the streets of Notting Hill. What we need to do is actually tackle the root causes of the issues of violence that we have in the capital that happen 365 days of the year.”
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Travel disruption over bank holiday
David Lammy avoids fishing fine
Asylum housing is political trap
In the run-up to the event, the Metropolitan Police have arrested more than 100 people who had planned to attend and seized dozens of knives and firearms.
Commander Charmain Brenyah from the force explains that while the event “creates unique challenges” due to its size and scale, the security operation has been months in the planning.
“All of that work doesn’t just start at carnival. It started in the weeks and months previous to that, where we’ve been taking people off the streets to make sure they don’t come to carnival to cause harm.
“We’ve made 100 arrests of people for various offences. We’ve recalled 21 people to prison. We’ve taken 11 firearms off the street and 40 knives. This is all about making sure that people come to the event and have a safe and secure carnival.”
Carnival CEO Matthew Phillip has rejected calls for the event to be moved
Mr Phillip, the carnival’s chief executive, is adamant, the event is safe.
“We’ve put a lot of measures in place, as we always do, but even more so this year, to keep people safe,” says Mr Phillip.
“Carnival is a safe space, it’s no more unsafe than the rest of London. So I would say come and, you know, be respectful. We want everybody to come and be respectful and care for each other. But carnival it’s a safe space.”
Cher’s family say she would not want the event stopped, the young mother adored music and dancing, especially at carnival.
But moving it, her cousin Mr Hoo says, could keep everyone safe.
“They can’t put enough precautions in place to make it safe. That’s the reality. It’s absolutely unmanageable in its current format.”
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