UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[Torrain]

98 Tory rebels on one of the Covid votes tonight. That must be close to half the non-payroll votes. Haven't heard of any resignations yet.

Not sure who the rebels are, but believe Andrew Rosindell (Con, Romford) is one of them.

List here: https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/1182#noes

Seems like a mix of wings of the party.

Notable Tory No votes:
- David Davies
- Karen Bradley (NI Secretary under May)
- Ian Duncan Smith
- Liam Fox
- Chris Grayling
- Andrea Leadsom
- Esther McVey (DWP Secretary under May)
- Theresa Villiers (NI Secretary under Cameron, former DEFRA Secretary under Boris)

Other notable No votes:
- 6 (out of 8 total) DUP MPs
- 10 (out of 12 total) Lib Dem MPs
- Caroline Lucas (Green)
- Jeremy Corbyn
- Diane Abbott
- Rebecca Long-Bailey (Corbyn protege)

[Frodo]

How likely is it that this bill will become law?

UK's nationality bill could strip millions of Britons of their citizenship

[RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm]

98 Tory rebels on one of the Covid votes tonight. That must be close to half the non-payroll votes. Haven't heard of any resignations yet.

Not sure who the rebels are, but believe Andrew Rosindell (Con, Romford) is one of them.

List here: https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/1182#noes

Seems like a mix of wings of the party.

Notable Tory No votes:
- David Davies
- Karen Bradley (NI Secretary under May)
- Ian Duncan Smith
- Liam Fox
- Chris Grayling
- Andrea Leadsom
- Esther McVey (DWP Secretary under May)
- Theresa Villiers (NI Secretary under Cameron, former DEFRA Secretary under Boris)

Other notable No votes:
- 6 (out of 8 total) DUP MPs
- 10 (out of 12 total) Lib Dem MPs
- Caroline Lucas (Green)
- Jeremy Corbyn
- Diane Abbott
- Rebecca Long-Bailey (Corbyn protege)

Interesting (and rather disappointing) that the Lib Dems voted no.

[Blair]

How likely is it that this bill will become law?

UK's nationality bill could strip millions of Britons of their citizenship

It’s very likely to pass- the rather depressing reality is that the power to do this has existed since the 1980s under U.K. law.

[(no subject)]

Someone has been sitting on this evidence and waited for the opportune time to release it.  Johnson has got himself into a lot of trouble in recent months.

First, he tried to save a fellow Conservative MP who had been found guilty of braking lobbying rules by whipping his party to vote to change the rules.  He won the vote, narrowly, and then u-turned the next day as public opinion was so against his “one rule for him and his mates and another for everyone else” approach.  The MP resigned and there is a by-election tomorrow (17 December). The seat was extremely safe for the Conservatives and was won with a 23,000 majority.  It is now on a knife edge with many pundits expecting that the Lib Dems will win the seat.

Also, Johnson is in more trouble about how the refurbishment of the flat he lives in as PM.  He gets a £30K allowance but almost four times that was spent on it, initially paid for by his supporters which is against the rules. Johnson was initially cleared of wrongdoing having paid the money back claiming that he didn’t know who was funding it.  Last week, the Electoral Commission fined his party £18K for wrongly declaring this funding and presented evidence that Johnson had lobbied the person who paid for the refurbishment for more money in November 2020 by WhatsApp.  Johnson had told the investigator that he didn’t know who was funding it until February 2021.  Both claims cannot be true and the Electoral Commission has copies of the messages.

Those who described Johnson as Britain’s Trump were not wrong.

Sadly, with the Omicron Variant raging, the country needs a PM that is trustworthy. Johnson currently is distrusted by 64% with a net approval rating of negative 42%.  The only way some fairly minor restrictions were voted through the Commons last night was with support from the opposition parties who voted in the public interest. The measures included mandatory face masks, providing evidence of vaccination or a negative covid test to get into large venues and mandatory vaccination against covid for front line NHS staff (unless medically exempt) from next April.

Johnson is in a lot of trouble and it is likely that his party will vote that they have No Confidence in him in the next few weeks.  The likelihood increases if they lose tomorrow’s by-election or even if it is only narrowly retained.

[Cassius]

I think the chances of Johnson getting dislodged have, if anything, gone down in the last few days, as the scandals have been pushed off the front pages by ‘OMICRON REEEEEEE’. Whilst it’s true that a lot of Tory MP’s did rebel on vaccine passports, as has been noted above there was no real ideological consistency to those who did rebel (contrary to what is sometimes lazily assumed, plenty of people from the very Brexity right-wing of the party supported the measure, like Bill Cash), so there’s not really anything in this rebellion that provides a nucleus for a leadership challenge in the same way as, say, the rebellions against May’s Brexit deal did.

Of course, this could change if the party loses in tomorrow’s by-election, but as, I suspect, we’re now being put on track to go into a full lockdown some time in the new year, I really don’t see there being any good opportunities for MP’s to try and dislodge Johnson any time soon, and by the time that there are the wind will be well out of the sails of Partygate and all the other things that have dogged him for the last month.

[CumbrianLefty]

In practice a full lockdown will still need parliamentary approval (for all the talk that can be evaded by statutory instruments, it would be a pretty explosive move given how things are right now) which raises the question of whether Johnson would want to try that given the drubbing he has just had (yes he could likely get it through with opposition support again, but that is a humiliating position for any PM with a big majority to be in) So it may yet be a case of hoping the frantic booster campaign on the way, plus the tentative evidence from SA that Omicron may blow itself out quite fast, does the trick.

[EastAnglianLefty]

There's also the issue that a full lockdown is going to require at least some measure of financial support, and probably a reinstatement of furlough, which Johnson would struggle to get his Chancellor to agree to.

[beesley]

There's also the issue that a full lockdown is going to require at least some measure of financial support, and probably a reinstatement of furlough, which Johnson would struggle to get his Chancellor to agree to.

For what it's worth Sunak did confirm that this would happen in such a scenario the other day.

[beesley]

What I have also noticed is that there seems to be much more of an emphasis on the idea that it is the role of policy enacted by government to deal with a public health crisis, and there is little emphasis on individual vigilance, e.g. hygiene measures, mask wearing as something you can do to prevent transmission. Perhaps the stance is that Delta, Omicron etc. is so transmissible that the government don't want to create a false sense of security, or at least emphasise this part of their messaging. Or that the public have lost any social will as the government's apparent policy mistakes or repeated contemptible behaviour will mean that they won't see the benefits of it.

[Conservatopia]

I think the chances of Johnson getting dislodged have, if anything, gone down in the last few days, as the scandals have been pushed off the front pages by ‘OMICRON REEEEEEE’. Whilst it’s true that a lot of Tory MP’s did rebel on vaccine passports, as has been noted above there was no real ideological consistency to those who did rebel (contrary to what is sometimes lazily assumed, plenty of people from the very Brexity right-wing of the party supported the measure, like Bill Cash), so there’s not really anything in this rebellion that provides a nucleus for a leadership challenge in the same way as, say, the rebellions against May’s Brexit deal did.

Of course, this could change if the party loses in tomorrow’s by-election, but as, I suspect, we’re now being put on track to go into a full lockdown some time in the new year, I really don’t see there being any good opportunities for MP’s to try and dislodge Johnson any time soon, and by the time that there are the wind will be well out of the sails of Partygate and all the other things that have dogged him for the last month.

I think the point is more that he has reached a nadir in trust with his MPs that he is unlikely to properly bounce back from.  That means he will only continue to lose support from MPs and members from here out.  So the next scandal that comes up (because there will be one) could be the one that finally tips this over the edge.

An aside: the reports in some media that Geoffrey Clifton-Brown will pull a Meyer are obviously nonsense.  It's not happening.  Unfortunately.

[afleitch]

There won't be a lockdown.

The way 'out' is the vaccination programme. A pre-vaccine style lockdown is of no benefit. Delta hit early summer before the vaccine programme was extended to the under 40's and saw only marginal tiered restrictions. The new variant has hit at the same time in the rollout of the booster programme, therefore there's a need for marginal restrictions. The new variant is also hitting the same age groups, hence the far more accelerated booster rollout.

With both variants, it spreads because it circulates in the most mobile population who happen to be the last to be offered the vaccine. While better 'optics' than 'granny dying in a hospital corridor', hitting young people with wave after wave, particularly as it can reinfect those who had an earlier variant isn't ideal, which I think even the worst worm brained boomer politicians accept. Full lockdown is equally as damaging.

[YL]

I think the chances of Johnson getting dislodged have, if anything, gone down in the last few days, as the scandals have been pushed off the front pages by ‘OMICRON REEEEEEE’. Whilst it’s true that a lot of Tory MP’s did rebel on vaccine passports, as has been noted above there was no real ideological consistency to those who did rebel (contrary to what is sometimes lazily assumed, plenty of people from the very Brexity right-wing of the party supported the measure, like Bill Cash), so there’s not really anything in this rebellion that provides a nucleus for a leadership challenge in the same way as, say, the rebellions against May’s Brexit deal did.

Of course, this could change if the party loses in tomorrow’s by-election, but as, I suspect, we’re now being put on track to go into a full lockdown some time in the new year, I really don’t see there being any good opportunities for MP’s to try and dislodge Johnson any time soon, and by the time that there are the wind will be well out of the sails of Partygate and all the other things that have dogged him for the last month.

I think the point is more that he has reached a nadir in trust with his MPs that he is unlikely to properly bounce back from.  That means he will only continue to lose support from MPs and members from here out.  So the next scandal that comes up (because there will be one) could be the one that finally tips this over the edge.

An aside: the reports in some media that Geoffrey Clifton-Brown will pull a Meyer are obviously nonsense.  It's not happening.  Unfortunately.

The Meyer "stalking horse" role doesn't exist under the current rules anyway.

[(no subject)]

I think that, despite a very hubristic performance at today's PMQs, there are a lot of problems still ahead for Johnson. If this Omicron variant spreads the way that doctors and scientists believe it will then that alone will add further pressure on any PM in this position. It could be enough for him to lose a No Confidence vote. This may still be unlikely at this stage but it is a possibility.

We are still waiting for the outcome of the Cabinet Secretary's investigation into the multiple parties at No 10 and even in the PM's flat. As well as that, there is the outcome of Lord Geidt's new look at whether Johnson mislead him over the funding for the flat's refurbishment. If he is found to have done so, then he will have broken the Ministerial Code which requires him to resign. If he refused to do so then his own party would take action to remove him.

You rightly mention tomorrow's by-election: if The Tories retain the seat with a small majority, Johnson will still be in trouble. We are talking about a seat that has always been Tory and is so safe that you could put a blue rosette on a pig and it would be elected, to use a cliche. To lose one of the safest seats because of the PM's own behviour would be very serious.

The only thing that may save Johnson for a bit longer is if his own MPs don't want to do it just now. Some said last night that voting against him last night was to send him a message to change his ways. His record is always doing what he wants to so it is unlikely that he will change. the most likely outcome is probably that he limps on as a severely wounded PM and he is replaced as leader by his party about a year before the next election. The Tories are incredibly ruthless about holding on to power and remove leaders that they view as being a liability. They got rid of Thatcher - still the hero of many of them - when her Poll Tax proved incredibly unpopular; David Cameron walked after losing the EU referendum and they got rid of Theresa May when she couldn't get her EU leaving bill through the house. Currently, Labour has a nine point lead (depending on which opinion poll you use but all sow a Labour lead of six to nine points). Opinion polls are starting to show that Sire Kier Starmer is being viewed as the better PM so those figures put any Tory leader in trouble.

In case people outside the UK are not aware, there is no mechanism currently to remove a PM. Only their own party can do that by 20% of them writing letters of No Confidence to their own 1922 committee. The leader may, I think, still try to win a reprieve but most likely a new leader would be elected. This is what happened in 2019 when Theresa May was forced to stand down.

A final point: a lot of those who refused to vote for people to provide proof of Covid vaccination or a negative Lateral Flow Test did so because they oppose the idea of people having to carry 'papers'. Yet these are the same people who are in favour of people having to carry ID in order to vote in an election or referendum to counter a none existent problem of voter fraud. I think in an electorate of around 45 million, there was possibly a dozen instances of voter fraud in 2019 and each was discovered.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Conservative Party is a strange, opaque organisation that even people deeply embedded within it and right at the top often struggle to understand. The Men in Grey Suits* still matter, as does the collective Will of the Tearoom, and neither of these things can be understood by outsiders. So there's little point in making predictions about Johnson's future. All we can say is that he is in trouble and what happened last night was a clear demonstration of this: a massive rebellion on a critical matter, far larger than the whips were able to pick up (which is alarming for several reasons), with the rebels distributed quite evenly amongst known factional and other groupings and all of this after Johnson made a personal appeal to the parliamentary party at the 1922 Committee and had also done the rounds in the Tearooms. Not good. Not good at all.

Will the by-election matter? Well a loss would be catastrophic (this is, under normal circumstances, amongst the 'safest' Conservative seats in the entire country and there are no local issues on anything like the scale seen at Chesham & Amersham where 'vote LibDem to say 'f*** you' to Big Train Go Choo Choo and to put pressure on the government over proposed planning legislation proved so utterly tempting in the end - the electorate can be more rational than given credit for), but anyone who thinks that a hold would make things go away is deluding themselves: that there are even wobbles about the seat is a very, very bad sign and a hold on a greatly reduced vote share and/or narrow majority would be, as pointed out before, a clear moral loss. Against all that, disastrous by-elections rarely matter except as a final straw. The other thing is opinion polling: most firms are now routinely showing the Conservatives dropping more than ten points on the last General Election. That's very bad, particularly as swings are not uniform and as the unusual circumstances of the last election mean that there's a hefty chunk of constituencies where the Conservative vote is unlikely to fall that much further. This might not be a particularly bright parliamentary Conservative Party, but they'll all understand what that would mean for their personal political prospects. So long as this remains the case, then, at the very least, trouble will not cease.
 
_{*Actually they rarely wear grey suits, but it sounds better than, say, 'The Men in Dark Pinstriped Suits'. Another coinage of the late Alan Watkins.}

[CumbrianLefty]

I think that, despite a very hubristic performance at today's PMQs

That is one way of putting it, the consensus here seems to be that Starmer flattened him again.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think that, despite a very hubristic performance at today's PMQs

That is one way of putting it, the consensus here seems to be that Starmer flattened him again.

Well as even a bad Classics graduate like Johnson will know, Hubris is classically always followed by Nemesis

[afleitch]

Labour's poll advance is more pronounced given that they haven't advanced proportionally in Scotland or (subsample caveats) London, where they are maxed out. The Greens have also not taken a huge hit with Labour's advance and without a huge advance by BrexformKIP. It suggests a genuine movement to Labour, rather than that being a 'shared spoils' movement away from the Tories.

That means voters are thinking about Labour 'seriously.'

Also, Red Wall aside, the Tories biggest advance was amongst the 'ten years from retirement' cohort who have not had the best of times in terms of policy, despite efforts to play up the culture wars. Polls are showing a sizable swing back to Labour here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the pandemic and the fact that some people are muttering about lockdowns because the case numbers are now extremely high, well, you have to be coldly rational about these things. Vulnerable people* are protected about as well as they can be and this is a huge shift from previous Covid waves. The rest of the population has little to worry about. Once we hit the Christmas period proper, then most people are not at work, educational institutions are closed and there is relatively little social mixing outside family groups. There will certainly be extra pressure on hospitals, but this occurs in bad flu years which come around often enough. The Xi variant also spreads at the speed of a bad flu strain, which renders a lot of the logic of lockdowns (to buy time and so on) completely irrelevant. There is a strong case for moderate public health measures, such as those passed last night (which I support), but I cannot see a defensible argument for lockdowns or similar extreme measures on public health grounds as it is genuinely hard to see any benefit that they might bring. I apologise if any of this sounds harsh, but sometimes things are the way they are and we have to make the best of them. Canute was right and his courtiers were not.

_{*And without giving away too much personal information (though some of you are aware of the issue), I am one.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Going back to politics, to illustrate the present issues let us consider the following hypothetical. Imagine that you are a Conservative MP who either gained or held a seat at the last election by a margin slightly over the national average. Let's say the percentages were Con 50%, Lab 35%. Something like that. You would have spent most of this parliament feeling good about your re-election prospects. But taking uniform movement from recent polls and you're now on about 38% or so. This puts you deep into the danger zone on its own. Consider, though, the likelihood that your present theoretical number is a bit lower than that, because Conservative totals simply aren't going to be dropping that far in absolute terms in the inner cities, the Scottish Central Belt  or university constituencies. So about 36%. This puts you at a point where you would almost certainly lose if there were an election tomorrow. While things may well improve and you might be an optimist at heart, you would probably not be feeling very happy about this situation. The fact that this has happened so quickly would likely only make that feeling worse as there's an element of shock.

[afleitch]

Going back to politics, to illustrate the present issues let us consider the following hypothetical. Imagine that you are a Conservative MP who either gained or held a seat at the last election by a margin slightly over the national average. Let's say the percentages were Con 50%, Lab 35%. Something like that. You would have spent most of this parliament feeling good about your re-election prospects. But taking uniform movement from recent polls and you're now on about 38% or so. This puts you deep into the danger zone on its own. Consider, though, the likelihood that your present theoretical number is a bit lower than that, because Conservative totals simply aren't going to be dropping that far in absolute terms in the inner cities, the Scottish Central Belt  or university constituencies. So about 36%. This puts you at a point where you would almost certainly lose if there were an election tomorrow. While things may well improve and you might be an optimist at heart, you would probably not be feeling very happy about this situation. The fact that this has happened so quickly would likely only make that feeling worse as there's an element of shock.

I agree.

And worse still, you can't rely on tried and tested assumptions about swingback, or incumbency because the electorate is extremely volatile. And underneath the surface of the huge Tory win in 2019 was a subtle drift away from them, relatively, in formerly impenetrably blue seats west of London. There's as much a shift in attitudes in the...'monied' towards a degree of social permissiveness alternate to that in the Pennsylvanian diners 'Red Wall'. If they revolt, against Boris, against the culture war/civil rights assault, or against the rash spending the Tories are in serious trouble.

Something, and no one has really figured out what, got Labour a very good result in 2017 (and it wasn't Corbyn) yet mass defections a two years later (which also probably wasn't as much to do with Corbyn in retrospect) These voters aren't completely lost to Labour as they are, and I don't think I'm speaking too soon here, in Scotland. Brexit has been realised. Sindy has not.

Indeed many of these voters probably reverted, at least privately, back to Labour they day after the election or the day after Brexit. Covid has just kicked up some dust.

In short, every election outcome, from another Tory landslide to a relative Labour landslide is equally as probable right now.

And MP's will hate that.

[LAB-LIB]

It really seems like the Lib Dems are moving to the right, which could mean that they start doing better in Tory areas and recede a bit in London. Their share of the vote may not go up very much but they may gain ground from Labour and lose ground to the Conservatives, sort of a reverse of the trend that has taken place since 2001. I don't know if it means they start winning seats in the West Country like Torbay again, many of those seats are probably too far gone but they're probably the odds-on favorite to win back seats like St. Ives.

[Blair]

Going back to politics, to illustrate the present issues let us consider the following hypothetical. Imagine that you are a Conservative MP who either gained or held a seat at the last election by a margin slightly over the national average. Let's say the percentages were Con 50%, Lab 35%. Something like that. You would have spent most of this parliament feeling good about your re-election prospects. But taking uniform movement from recent polls and you're now on about 38% or so. This puts you deep into the danger zone on its own. Consider, though, the likelihood that your present theoretical number is a bit lower than that, because Conservative totals simply aren't going to be dropping that far in absolute terms in the inner cities, the Scottish Central Belt  or university constituencies. So about 36%. This puts you at a point where you would almost certainly lose if there were an election tomorrow. While things may well improve and you might be an optimist at heart, you would probably not be feeling very happy about this situation. The fact that this has happened so quickly would likely only make that feeling worse as there's an element of shock.

MPs in marginal seats, or those who think their seats are becoming marginal also, well, act completely irrational and make decisions which do not benefit the herd at large. You saw this post 2013 among the Lib-Dem parliamentary party and also in the late years of the Brown Government. A number of very loyal 2019 intake MPs are starting to display this

Labour MPs in the summer of 2019 were an example of that- there was a lot of polling suggesting the Lib Dems were going to sweep Labour safe seats in London because of Brexit and this caused parts of the PLP to panic and push for a 2nd referendum policy- there's a reason it was finally accepted after the 2019 EU elections too.

Going back to politics, to illustrate the present issues let us consider the following hypothetical. Imagine that you are a Conservative MP who either gained or held a seat at the last election by a margin slightly over the national average. Let's say the percentages were Con 50%, Lab 35%. Something like that. You would have spent most of this parliament feeling good about your re-election prospects. But taking uniform movement from recent polls and you're now on about 38% or so. This puts you deep into the danger zone on its own. Consider, though, the likelihood that your present theoretical number is a bit lower than that, because Conservative totals simply aren't going to be dropping that far in absolute terms in the inner cities, the Scottish Central Belt  or university constituencies. So about 36%. This puts you at a point where you would almost certainly lose if there were an election tomorrow. While things may well improve and you might be an optimist at heart, you would probably not be feeling very happy about this situation. The fact that this has happened so quickly would likely only make that feeling worse as there's an element of shock.

I agree.

And worse still, you can't rely on tried and tested assumptions about swingback, or incumbency because the electorate is extremely volatile. And underneath the surface of the huge Tory win in 2019 was a subtle drift away from them, relatively, in formerly impenetrably blue seats west of London. There's as much a shift in attitudes in the...'monied' towards a degree of social permissiveness alternate to that in the Pennsylvanian diners 'Red Wall'. If they revolt, against Boris, against the culture war/civil rights assault, or against the rash spending the Tories are in serious trouble.

Something, and no one has really figured out what, got Labour a very good result in 2017 (and it wasn't Corbyn) yet mass defections a two years later (which also probably wasn't as much to do with Corbyn in retrospect) These voters aren't completely lost to Labour as they are, and I don't think I'm speaking too soon here, in Scotland. Brexit has been realised. Sindy has not.

Indeed many of these voters probably reverted, at least privately, back to Labour they day after the election or the day after Brexit. Covid has just kicked up some dust.

In short, every election outcome, from another Tory landslide to a relative Labour landslide is equally as probable right now.

And MP's will hate that.

To add to this there are a small number of seats that Labour retained in 2019 which they should have lost if you based it on the top-line numbers in the election- there were also a number of seats they almost won in 2017 where the numbers didn't exactly crash. To paint a very broad brush they are largely urban remain voting seats; but not in areas of any historic Labour strength.

It's been overlooked because of just how big the shock was in the infamous 'red wall' but there's been a lack of coverage of the fact that for seats that were once traditional Lab-Con marginals are no-longer- to give one example the two classic West London marginals (Brentford & Isleworth + Ealing & Acton) are now ultra safe Labour seats- and actually look safer than the 'traditional' Labour seats to their margins.

[Blair]

In terms of restrictions & party management the big error was the language and tone around 'freedom day'- the worry that some had at the time was that it made it much harder even to impose relatively light touch lockdowns in the future, as it presented the lifting as well irreversible.

It's of course worth noting before his promotion the current Health Secretary 'the Saj' was someone pushing for a lifting of restrictions & I'm old enough to remember when he was seen as a 'true believer'. I wonder if the Health Secretary is like the FCO of old in that backbenchers insists it drives its Ministers native[/].

I do think however last night was the biggest covid rebellion we'll see; it happened at such a perfect point (when hospitalisations & deaths were lower) and on an issue that was harder to link to a lack of action hospitalisations.

My current guess is that we'll see Parliament recalled around the New Year with some further restrictions around social mixing & a package of support for hospitality; there will be a high number of rebels but not in those numbers. It was essentially a free hit last night. 

[CumbrianLefty]

More than that, vaccines were explicitly advocated as our "passport to freedom".