Afternoon summary
Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary and Johnson ally, has suggested that the diary information that has been submitted to the police, on the grounds that it purports to show that Johnson hosted events at Chequers and No 10 that may have broken Covid rules, may have been inaccurate. (See 2.45pm.)
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Nadine Dorries suggests records implying Boris Johnson broke Covid rules at Chequers might have wrong names and dates
TalkTV has just sent out a news release, quoting Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, that is headlined: “A return to politics is the ‘last thing’ on Boris Johnson’s mind.” This is an odd thing to say because Johnson has not actually left politics; he continues to be MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, for which he is paid £86,584 a year.
To be fair to Dorries, the former culture secretary and leading Johnson supporter, she does not say herself he is out of politics. In an extract from the opening spiel for her TalkTV show tonight quoted in the news release, she says:
Long after Oliver Cromwell had been dead and been buried, possessed, fearful and irrational men dug up his body and publicly executed him. Let’s face it – some in Westminster what they fear more than anything, is the return of Boris Johnson and they will go to any lengths to ensure that they prevent that from happening as they let their imaginations run riot and lead them down the paths of devious intent.
Well I’ve got news for them: Boris Johnson has gone. When I spoke to him at 4am yesterday morning US time, I got the strong impression that making a return is the last thing on his mind.
Dorries also suggests that the diary information that has been submitted to the police, on the grounds that it purports to show that Johnson hosted events at Chequers and No 10 that may have broken Covid rules, may have been inaccurate.
A few days ago just as he was about to leave for his trip to the US he was informed, without prior warning, that diaries compiled by civil servants which he had not written in or had ever even seen, had been sent to the police by a high-handed civil servant who also wrote to the privileges committee and suggested in his covering letter that Boris may have breached Covid laws.
Let me just tell you about the official diary and record-keeping process which takes place within government. They are in effect official state records – a minute by minute, line by line account of a prime minister’s every single movement. In the case of Boris, they are over 10,000 pages long and even Sue Gray who had access to those diaries failed to think there was anything significant in there to include in her report or even to discuss with the Met. I am very sure that if there was anything in there, she would’ve found it. They are completed by junior civil servants in the private office and they are frequently wrong! The detail the wrong people, the wrong places, the wrong times, and the wrong dates even.
If this sounds familiar, it is because Dorries has some experience of how written records can be misleading. During the MPs’ expenses scandal the parliamentary commissioner for allegations investigated a complaint from a BNP activist alleging that Dorries was claiming second home expenses for her house in her Mid Bedfordshire constituency when this was in fact her main home, not her second home. Dorries said her main home was in fact in the Cotswolds.
At the time Dorries wrote a blog that implied she spent most of her time at weekends in her constituency. In evidence to the commissioner, Dorries said the blog was “70% fiction”. He accepted this argument, and that her main home was in the Cotswolds, and he concluded that she had not broken expenses rules.
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UK government created poor conditions that led to Cardiff riots, says Mark Drakeford
Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, has accused the UK government of creating the poor social conditions that formed the backdrop to the Cardiff riots by systematically eroding community life, public services and citizens’ incomes, Severin Carrell and Steven Morris report.
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The government has announced that £7m is now available for grants to fund “policy-relevant research on how the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity can help address climate change and improve livelihoods of some of the world’s most vulnerable populations”. The money is available from the Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate, set up by the UK government with £40m funding at the Cop26 climate summit.
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Railway catering workers have voted to strike in a dispute over pay, PA Media reports. PA says:
Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) employed by DHL, which provides catering services for Avanti trains, backed industrial action by 97% on a 66% turnout.
The union said the workers had not been offered a pay rise despite the cost of living crisis.
Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, said:
This is a fantastic ballot result for our members, and it is now time for DHL and Avanti to make an offer on pay.
It is insulting that our members have not been offered anything despite the fact both DHL and Avanti are highly profitable.
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Here is a question from a reader sent to me yesterday. I was going to reply yesterday afternoon, but then some bloke drove a car into the gates of Downing Street, which upset the afternoon schedule. So I’ll address it today.
Hi Andrew, I have a question relating to a comment which you made yesterday in your snap verdict on PMQs. You said that although Labour do have a lot of ideas, these aren’t (generally speaking) “cutting through” to the general public. Which is clearly a problem. Why do you think this is the case? And what do you think Keir Starmer should be doing to address this?
First, let’s be clear what the problem is. Anyone with experience of campaigning will tell you that it is always best if you can go into an election with a very clear, simple message that resonates with the public. People should be able to say, in a sentence, “I’m voting X because ….”.
One of the main complaints about Labour at the moment is that it doesn’t have a compelling answer to this question. If it does, I don’t know what it is, and I write about the Labour party every day. A colleague once asked Keir Starmer this question in an interview (“summarise in a sentence why people should vote Labour”). His answer was so bland I can’t remember what it was.
Is it fatal if you don’t have a compelling message you can sum up on a poster? Probably not. Labour is in a very strong position in lots of respects. It has some popular policies. Crucially, it is ahead on economic credibility (in most polling), and has a leader who outperforms the PM on most metrics. In terms of identity alignment, people like the Labour party now a lot more than they like the Conservative party. It is perfectly possible to win an election primarily because the other lot are more unpopular; in 1979, “Labour isn’t Working” did more for Margaret Thatcher than any positive vision she had. But a positive, compelling message would help Labour a lot; in the jargon, it would “seal the deal”.
To return to the question, what can Labour (or any other party in the same position) do to come up with a message that will “cut through”? Here are three answers.
1) Prioritise. Labour has lots of policies (and parties need lots of policies to be credible – during an election campaign, they have to be able to answer questions about niche concerns). But campaigning is like advertising, and it is invaluable to have one simple message – or a handful of pledges – that will stick because people will remember them. Labour has five missons. But most of them are general, not specific, and they are all sprouting subordinate mini-missions. Prioritising is risky, because the message that is most compelling now might not be the best one at the time of the election. But prioritising would bring clarity.
2) Make it memorable and compelling. In 1997 Labour published a pledge card with five policy pledges that were memorable because they were very specific. Starmer has many policies that are a lot more ambitious than anything on the pledge card, but most of them, like the £28bn climate investment pledge, are too generalised. The ideal headline policy pledge has to be: a) popular; b) memorable and easy to understand; c) durable (not likely to look out of date if circumstances change, or the economy turns) and d) theft-proof – incapable of being stolen by the other side. Given that Rishi Sunak has ruled out building on the green belt, a more specific version of the housing policy announced by Starmer last week might work.
In the absence of policy, a decent slogan that sounds like a policy can suffice. In the run-up to the 2015 general election, David Cameron and George Osborne repeatedly boasted about their “long-term economic plan”. In fact, there was no real plan (at least, nothing beyond what they were doing anyway, also known as austerity), but it sounded reassuring, and people liked the concept. Instead of talking about “securonomics”, Rachel Reeves would be better off just lifting this slogan.
“Get Brexit done” was another brilliant campaign slogan, although it was also policy too, in the sense that in 2019 it reflected Boris Johnson’s determination to make Brexit happen at all cost. Starmer’s “make Brexit work” slogan has potential, although it antagonises remainers who think this is impossible.
3) Repeat, ad nauseam. You only really drive home a political message when you repeat it so often that politicians and journalists can stand it no more. Think Sadiq Khan and his dad being a bus driver, or Boris Johnson and “Get Brexit done”. I covered the Tony Blair campaign in 1997, and by the end of that journalists on the bus would recite his slogans as he was delivering them, because they had become so predictable. We thought we were being satirical; but Alastair Campbell was delighted, because he knew it meant the messages had landed. Johnson could be good at script discipline when he wanted to be, and Rishi Sunak is first-rate too. (Every interview comes back to delivering on his five pledges.) Starmer gets criticised for being boring; but he needs to find a message, and then become much, much more boring as he drives it home.
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The SNP has claimed that it is the only party defending democracy in Scotland. In response to Keir Starmer’s visit to Rutherglen today, Mhairi Black, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, said:
Under Sir Keir Starmer, the pro-Brexit Labour party has become indistinguishable from the Tories on so many key issues - including denying Scotland’s democratic right to choose our own future in an independence referendum.
On his flying visit, Starmer must outline the exact terms under which the people of Scotland can decide their own future. Voters deserve a straight answer.
If all we get is more waffle from the Labour party leader on this issue, it will be clear he’s just as bad as the Tories when it comes to disrespecting Scottish democracy.
The SNP is the only party standing up to protect Scotland’s democracy and offering a real alternative to Westminster control with independence. Voting SNP is the only way for Scotland to get rid of unelected Tory governments for good - and a strong team of SNP MPs will force Westminster to take real action on the cost of living.
Keir Starmer is campaigning this morning in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, where a byelection is likely to take place after it was confirmed that Margaret Ferrier will be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. In a statement released overnight, Starmer said:
For too long, the people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West have been failed by two bad governments and have been unrepresented by a missing-in-action MP.
The people of this area are crying out for change and for a new politics that offers hope, partners with their ambition for their area, and focuses on their priorities.
The Commons motion to suspend Ferrier for 30 days was meant to be passed yesterday. But, as Ben Quinn reports, the motion was not put to a vote – apparently because government whips feared that Boris Johnson’s supporters would vote against (because they are worried about setting a precedent).
The vote is now expected to take place after the Whitsun recess.
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The number of patients forced to sleep alongside the opposite sex on NHS wards in England has soared, PA Media reports. PA says:
In the six months to March – the most recent period for which there is official data – the rule preventing patients of different sexes from being treated on the same wards has been broken more than 25,000 times.
Hospitals broke the mixed-sex rule thousands of times in March alone, with a trebling of cases since before the pandemic, according to NHS figures analysed by the PA news agency’s Radar service.
Despite the government banning mixed-sex wards in 2010, NHS England data shows the rule was broken 4,475 times in March – the second-highest single month since 2011-12 and more than triple the 1,400 instances recorded in March 2019.
NHS organisations regularly submit data on the number of occurrences of “unjustified mixing” in relation to their sleeping accommodation.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have been clear patients should not have to share sleeping accommodation with others of the opposite sex and should have access to segregated bathroom and toilet facilities, and we expect NHS trusts to comply with these measures.”
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In 2015 the Conservatives successfully argued during the general election campaign that a Labour government would probably be a minority administration in league with the SNP and that this would be bad for the country (England in particular – there was a trace of Scot-ophobia running through the messaging). This ended up with David Cameron tweeting about the threat of “chaos with Ed Miliband”. In the light of what happened after Brexit, this turned out to be one of the most ill-judged claims in British political history – but at the time it was effective political messaging.
But it won’t work next time, according to a report with new polling from More in Common. It has been investigating what voters feel about the prospect of various election outcomes and it finds that people are not worried about the prospect of a Labour/Lib Dem coalition. (The prospect of a Labour/SNP coalition is still unpopular, but Starmer has explicitly ruled this out, and the SNP is expected to lose seats at the elections. When the Tories have been talking about Starmer leading a coalition government, they have been talking more recently about the Lib Dems, as Oliver Dowden did when he stood in for Rishi Sunak at PMQs.)
The report says Labour supporters are not worried about the prospect of their party being in coalition with the Lib Dems. It says:
In fact, not only were those currently intending to vote Labour overwhelmingly likely to say that Labour making a deal with the Liberal Democrats would either make no difference or make them more likely to vote Labour, when we asked what they thought of the Liberal Democrats the words they used most were ‘sensible’ and ‘centrist’. The worst thing Labour voters had to say about them was to call them ‘boring’ and ‘irrelevant’, hardly the hallmarks of a bogeyman.
And Liberal Democrat supporters are also comfortable with the idea of Labour winning an outright majority, the research shows. This is from Luke Tryl, More in Common’s director.
Good news for those advocates of tactical voting. While Liberal Democrat voters would prefer a Lib/Lab Coalition the prospect of a Labour majority isn’t far behind. But ratings for another coalition with the Conservatives is far lower. pic.twitter.com/SEKhHfCM7o
— Luke Tryl (@LukeTryl) May 26, 2023
But the report says what is unpopular is the prospect of the Tories being in coalition with the DUP. It says:
In contrast, the least popular outcome from our latest polling was a Tory minority government supported by a party like the DUP - something which currently appears to be the only outcome the Conservatives could feasibly hope for. Perversely then, it could even be that this time around, it is the Tories who are hurt most by the prospect of a ‘coalition of chaos’.
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Boris Johnson's allies claim he is victim of false, hostile briefing, and threaten to retaliate
It has not been a great week for Boris Johnson. First, we learned that the police are investigating fresh allegations that he broke lockdown rules when he was PM. Then it emerged that the Covid inquiry is determined to get hold of his unredacted WhatsApp messages and diary entries, and has rejected a legal submission from the Cabinet Office saying this material should be held back.
As a consequence of being shopped to the police as a result of information uncovered by the Cabinet Office lawyers, Johnson has now in effect sacked the government lawyers working for him and is looking for new ones. In litigation, falling out with your own solicitor is not generally a good development.
As if that was not enough, in the Commons yesterday, his headline “40 new hospitals” pledge got scaled back. And then, less than an hour later, the government announced it was dropping the kept animals bill, which was introduced when he was PM and to which his wife, Carrie, a passionate environmentalist, was very committed.
There is more negative news about him in the Times today. Steven Swinford says that Johnson was all set yesterday to release a photograph of a family event at Chequers that he thought might help to quash claims he broke Covid rules there – only for Johnson to realise it might be interpreted otherwise. Swinford says:
Johnson was prepared on Thursday to release a photograph of one of the visits on June 14, 2020, when he met his elderly mother and sister for lunch in the Downing Street garden. At the time outdoor meetings in groups of six or fewer were permitted and Johnson believed that the image exonerated him as there were five people in the garden.
Social distancing guidance stated that people from different households should stay more than two metres apart. The Times has been told that Johnson, his sister, Rachel, his late mother, Charlotte, and his son, Wilfred, are close to one another in the picture. Rachel is holding the baby and Charlotte is holding the baby’s foot.
The former prime minister subsequently chose not to release the image.
Johnson insists that Covid rules were not broken on this occasion, or any other.
The Times story may help to explain why Johnson’s allies have given an extraordinary statement to Politico’s London Playbook claiming that former aides are telling lies about him and threatening to retaliate. The statement, attributed to “Johnson’s team”, says:
We are aware of a briefing campaign that is trying to deliberately manufacture false claims about events at Chequers and Downing Street. This is being run by former advisers who are now willing to say anything about Boris in an attempt to discredit him, even if it is a total lie. These individuals should watch themselves carefully as there are revelations about their own conduct to be made.
In similar vein, the Express has a story claiming that Johnson’s allies say they might report the Cabinet Office officials to the police themselves, arguing that they are wasting police time. This, obviously, is ludicrous.
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Labour’s economic mission for highest growth in G7 not ambitious enough, says leading economist
Good morning. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has given an interview to Sky News in which he said that he would be comfortable with interest rate rises pushing the economy into recession if that had to happen to bring down inflation. Asked if he was “comfortable with the Bank of England doing whatever it takes to bring down inflation, even if that potentially would precipitate a recession”, Hunt told Sky’s economics editor, Ed Conway:
Yes, because in the end, inflation is a source of instability.
And if we want to have prosperity, to grow the economy, to reduce the risk of recession, we have to support the Bank of England in the difficult decisions that they take.
I have to do something else, which is to make sure the decisions that I take as chancellor, very difficult decisions, to balance the books so that the markets, the world can see that Britain is a country that pays its way - all these things mean that monetary policy at the Bank of England (and) fiscal policy by the chancellor are aligned.
Hunt’s willingness to actually answer the question is commendable. But in the Treasury right now there are probably communications advisers who, in between pulling their hair out, are reminding the chancellor that there are reasons why politicians dodge questions in interviews.
Graeme Wearden has more on this on his business live blog.
The Hunt comments are a gift to Labour, but the opposition is also being criticised on economic policy this morning. Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs chief economist and a former Treasury minister, has described Labour’s economic mission, to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7, as “daft”.
In an interview with the Power Test, a political podcast hosted by Ayesha Hazarika and Sam Freedman, O’Neill explained:
It [Labour’s economic mission] is kind of daft really. I like a lot of what’s behind it. But it’s a bit silly. I’m somebody that spent the best part of 40 years looking at global growth and, obviously, there’s another six countries you can’t do anything about how they grow directly. But, much more importantly than that, it’s not a really credible sign of ambition because part of the problematical broader world we’re living in is that most of those G7 countries don’t grow very well either.
O’Neill was a Treasury minister in David Cameron’s government for about a year and a half, and so you could try to dismiss this as just a Tory attack. But O’Neill was given a Treasury job on the grounds that he was an expert, not a Tory, he sits in the Lords as a crossbencher, and last year Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, proudly announced that he was advising Labour on start-ups policy. He is not a Tory stooge.
In other parts of the interview, O’Neill was more sympathetic to Labour thinking. He said borrowing could be beneficial.
We have to get out of the conventional way of thinking that, frankly, has taken hold across the whole of the world because otherwise we haven’t got the slightest chance of getting out of the situation we’re in.
At the heart of conventional economic thought is that debt is bad and so you have got to avoid it. A lot of that actually is pretty sensible. But it doesn’t distinguish between government spending to create more wealth and assets, and government spending to consume or maintain our nice little cosy lives. And there’s a huge difference.
And he called for more investment in infrastructure, arguing that bodies like the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Infrastructure Commission should get more authority. He explained:
You basically think of it as a parallel for fiscal policy of what we did with the monetary policy council when it came into existence. And you ask these guys who’ve got independence to say, what are the areas of investment spending that are going to create? What economists would call very strong positive multipliers … to create very significant growth and wealth for the future.
There is not a lot in the diary today. Parliament is in recess, and we’ve got a bank holiday weekend coming up. But Keir Starmer is campaigning in Scotland, and due to do broadcast interviews.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a PC or a laptop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line, privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate), or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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