Good morning. Anyone watching footage of Boris Johnson talking to his cabinet yesterday would have assumed the prime minister had won a resounding victory in the no-confidence vote against him on Monday night: “We are able now to draw a line under the issues that our opponents want to talk about,” he said. Everyone banged the table.
Outside of the cabinet room, the picture seemed a little less rosy. Even as Johnson prepares for a policy blitz aimed at proving that his government is still effective and weighs calls for tax cuts from across the Conservative party, rebel MPs are drawing up plans for “vote strikes” to stop him in his tracks, the Guardian reports this morning.
Rebels say they want to prove they are “not going away” – and believe that while he may be safe in the short-term, Johnson will ultimately “blow himself up”. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to a pollster, a Whitehall expert, and Theresa May’s former chief of staff about what it would take for that to happen. That’s right after the headlines.
Five big stories
Transport | Rail workers are to strike for three days in late June, in a move that is likely to halt much of the national rail network across Britain for a week. The strikes are planned in response to possible redundancies and a pay freeze.
Cigarettes | Plans to raise the legal smoking age to 21 and place new taxes on tobacco companies could be announced on Thursday, amid splits in government over the radical recommendations. The plan is likely to go out to consultation after details are released
Ukraine | A plan to combat a global food crisis by opening corridors for grain shipments out of Ukrainian ports has been dealt a blow as officials in Kyiv said it would take six months to clear the coast of Russian and Ukrainian mines.
Brazil | The wife of the British journalist who vanished in the Amazon with a celebrated Indigenous expert has asked Brazilian authorities to work harder to find “the love of my life”. Guardian contributor Dom Phillips and Bruno Araújo Pereira disappeared after Pereira received threats over his opposition to illegal fishing gangs.
Music | Music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards died from arrhythmia after taking recreational drugs, his mother has said. Brenda Edwards wrote in a social media post that she hoped to “encourage others to think wisely when faced with similar situations in the future.”
In depth: ‘The rules are a bit of a red herring’
However bad the result in Monday’s no-confidence vote appears to most observers, Boris Johnson isn’t going to acknowledge it – even if the Daily Telegraph (£) reports that some of his allies are so alarmed by the situation that they want him to install leading rebel Jeremy Hunt as his chancellor. No sign of that yet (or evidence that Hunt would accept) – but Johnson does have plans for the coming days and weeks to show that he can still lead his party, and the country.
Legislation allowing the UK to override the Northern Ireland protocol is expected within days, with an expansion of Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme slated to be announced on Thursday. Next week, he will make a joint speech with Rishi Sunak on the economy. The aim is: look busy.
But Johnson’s enemies plan to be busy too, and they’re not shy with the imagery: Aubrey Allegretti reports that one MP “likened the situation the prime minister faced to a scene from The Simpsons, in which the character Sideshow Bob is encircled by rakes and continually hit by them as he steps in different directions.” Can’t argue with that. Here are some of the key questions that will determine whether Johnson stays on his feet, and holds on to his job.
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Will the rebels get organised?
The rebellion against Johnson is very different to the one Gavin Barwell faced when chief of staff for Theresa May: whereas May was brought down by a faction of backbenchers hyper-focused on one issue – Brexit – Johnson’s enemies are “far more disparate”, Barwell pointed out. That means “there’s very little organising going on”.
The rebels’ major task if they want to get rid of Johnson, Barwell argues, is “to identify who the waverers are among the 211 who backed him”. But the nature of a secret ballot makes them hard to target and count.
“The most advanced operations have tended to come at this from multiple angles,” Barwell said. “You get someone who is an official canvasser for the campaign, and then someone who’s a mate of the MP to have a private conversation which isn’t, like, ‘I’m canvassing you’, but is more, like, ‘I don’t know what to do, what do you think?’ And then maybe you have someone who is a double-agent figure – who purportedly is a supporter of the PM – and you see how the answers you get line up.”
The May operation didn’t have exactly that scheme in place, Barwell said, but “you definitely had people who might not have been thought to be a May supporter canvassing for her, because they might get a different answer”.
After the David Cameron-David Davis leadership campaign in 2005, the respective campaign managers George Osborne and Andrew Mitchell “shared their data once it was over – and it didn’t matter to the race – to identify who the lying bastards were,” Barwell said. The question is whether a rebellion drawn from across the party can manage the same degree of co-ordination – something which may become clearer when we see how those proposed “vote strikes” play out.
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Will the 1922 committee change its rules?
In theory, Johnson is now safe for a year. But the 1922 committee, whose rulebook governs the party’s internal electoral processes, “may change the rules and allow another challenge”, Barwell said, noting that such a change would have been inevitable if May had not preempted it by resigning. “The rules are a bit of a red herring, because they can be changed.”
How, exactly, is a bit of a mystery. The 1922 rulebook is not publicised, but last year, Christopher Howarth, director of the European Research Group, claimed in an article for the Critic to have got hold of “the only copy in existence outside Sir Graham Brady’s desk”.
What it said was “dynamite”: “The ’22 executive could change the rules in an afternoon to give us another leadership election”. Whatever the process, the consensus in Westminster appears to be that Brady would consider a rule change if it became clear that a majority of MPs wanted Johnson gone.
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Will a cabinet minister waver – or a strong leadership candidate emerge?
The single biggest thing that could change the terms of the debate over Johnson’s future, said Barwell, is a cabinet minister deciding to resign. “They probably have to do the work now,” he said. “It will take somebody on the payroll to tip things over. If you’re the chancellor or the foreign secretary and you have ambitions to lead the party, I don’t understand why you would wait until he’s left you facing opposition.”
Chris Curtis, head of political polling at Opinium, noted that Johnson’s polling is now at a level that “it’s historically been very difficult to come back from” – but that public opinion research “can tell us incredibly little about his possible successors. There’s nobody well known and popular enough for it to be meaningful at the moment.”
But as things stand, he said, “voters don’t make a division between Johnson and the party – he is the ticket … so with a new leader, there will be that opportunity in the first week to reset the narrative and start a new one.”
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Can government function effectively in the throes of a leadership crisis?
Dr Catherine Haddon, senior fellow at the Institute for Government, warned that while a great deal of policy-making will continue, “a lot of government business has to go through No 10, and if the prime minister is in a crisis and rethinking lots of things, that creates a real bottleneck. And with a deeply divided party, they are going to have to take backbench opinion much more seriously.”
For civil servants, “when staff are asked to change tack to a new policy which wasn’t a priority a few days ago” – like a sudden passion for imperial measurements, to pluck an example from the ether – “when it isn’t in keeping with the wider strategy, that is massively disruptive.”
Curtis said recently on Twitter that he “would be willing to put my career on the line” to argue that it’s unwise to focus on policies like the imperial measurements wheeze, or sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda. “People are getting poorer!” he told me. “It’s true that socially conservative voters have shifted towards the Conservatives and socially liberal voters have shifted towards Labour, but people have become too obsessed with that. If you look like you’re neglecting cost of living issues to pick culture war fights, you end up looking very stupid.”
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Will Johnson and his team face up to the situation?
On the night of the no-confidence vote on Theresa May, in which she prevailed but lost the support of more than a third of her MPs, Barwell was elated. “It wasn’t really until the next morning, when Theresa and I were in a room together privately, that we were, like, actually, we have a third of the parliamentary party against us. This probably isn’t a triumph.”
“I suspect there are people in No 10 with that problem now,” he said. “It’s probably a relief to them that the ballot is over, they’ve got it done and they won. So you can get a slightly misplaced confidence about how significant what you’ve achieved is. It’s very hard, when you’re in the bunker, to see the reality.”
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Read more on the no-confidence vote
Katy Balls’ analysis is full of insight into the thinking of Tory MPs in the aftermath of Monday’s vote.
Jessica Elgot explains the dilemma for Labour: should they focus attacks on Johnson or the wider Tory brand?
Marina Hyde on Johnson wanting to ‘get on with the job’: “like Fred West pleading to be allowed to get on with finishing someone’s loft extension”.
Paul Goodman at Conservative Home, an influential voice on the right, despairs of the Tory party’s big beasts: “The Cabinet should act. (Though doubtless it won’t.)”
The academic who predicted the outcome of the vote with uncanny accuracy tells Matthew Weaver: “I’d be surprised that if he was still prime minister in the autumn.” He wishes he’d had a bet on it.
What else we’ve been reading
Lobby Akinnola lost his father in April 2020, a few weeks into the first lockdown. He wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to him. In this heartfelt piece, Akinnola writes of his disappointment and indignation at the lack of accountability for the prime minister who was attending parties days after his fathers death. Nimo
If, like me, you watched the platinum jubilee with a grudging sense that it had been very well executed, you’ll be interested by this piece from Stephen Bates, who used to cover the royal family for the Guardian. “There was humour and irony” and “a defiant national pride”, he writes. “Until republicans can come up with something similarly joyous … they are going to struggle.” Archie
Getting your running gear on or heading to the gym is painful enough – but keeping it up can feel nigh on impossible. In this handy beginner’s guide, Emma Beddington sets out how to create a healthy routine that works for you. Nimo
If yesterday’s TV picks of the year so far aren’t keeping you sufficiently busy, get your teeth into the best albums of 2022, with everything from “a melodically stunning series of genre pastiches” to “R&B so liquid you could swim in it”. Archie
In this brilliant read, Tracy McVeigh goes through the stories of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Tawakkol Karman, two remarkable women who took on dictators and led uprisings in Belarus and Yemen. Nimo
Sport
Football | Harry Kane scored his 50th goal for England to salvage a 1-1 draw with Germany in the Nations League. Kane’s equalising penalty in the 88th minute came after a 50th minute opener for Jonas Hofmann.
Tennis | Emma Raducanu’s preparations for Wimbledon were thrown into chaos on Tuesday as she was forced to retire injured only 35 minutes into her first-round match against Viktorija Golubic in the Rothesay Open. Raducanu has suffered several injury issues since her remarkable victory at the US Open last year.
Football | Serious concerns were raised about Uefa’s safety and security department earlier this year when an English safety expert quit his role as a consultant. Steve Frosdick quite after becoming unhappy with the direction of the department, headed by a close friend of Uefa president Aleksandr Ceferin since last year.
The front pages
The Guardian leads today with “Tory MPs plot ‘vote strikes’ to keep Johnson on ropes” while the i says “Johnson faces Tory rebel war of attrition”. The Times brings a suggestion: “Cut tax if you want to survive, PM urged”. The Express thinks it could work: “Fighting back! Boris’ tax blitz to silence rebels”. A different tack is outlined in the Telegraph: “Johnson urged to make Hunt chancellor”, which, it is said, would “nullify” the latter as a leadership rival. There are other priorities in the Daily Mail: “Hard-left rail union strike to paralyse Britain” – dates of 21, 23 and 25 June are shown. “Total rail shutdown” is the Metro’s treatment. “The back garden’s nice this time of year, Bob” – the Sun poses two people, a barbecue and a wheelie bin up against a pebbledash wall, as it suggests that fuel prices, air travel chaos and rail strikes mean we’ll be holidaying at home. The top story in the Financial Times is on Ukraine: “Stalemate with Russia ‘not an option,’ Zelenskiy tells west”.
Today in Focus
England’s new strangulation law – and why it is needed
A new law specifically targeting non-fatal strangulation comes into effect this week in England and Wales. Yvonne Roberts explains why it is necessary
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
US president Joe Biden has triggered a cold war-era security law to increase production of solar panels, building insulation, transformers for power grids and heat pumps. The move, which has been welcomed by environmental activists, is aimed at helping people more efficiently heat and cool their homes – an important part of the move towards clean energy and a way to help offset rising energy bills. This is of a piece with other Biden decisions: he previously signed executive orders that were supposed to increase offshore wind-produced energy in the next decade and freeze new oil and gas leases on public lands.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
