Close allies of Rishi Sunak on Saturday night dismissed Boris Johnson in contemptuous terms as “just an ex-MP” of no particular importance, as the former prime minister’s political power base appeared to collapse at Westminster.
In a clear attempt to move on from the Johnson era after last week’s devastating privileges committee report on Partygate, Sunak supporters made it clear the prime minister now regarded Johnson as a political irrelevance who no longer posed a real threat.
The portrayal of Johnson risks infuriating supporters of the former prime minister, who say Sunak was complicit in many of the Covid-related controversies and rule-breaking investigated by the committee. Like Johnson, Sunak was fined by police over an event at Downing Street.
Speaking to the Observer, a senior source said that although the committee found Johnson had deliberately misled parliament and directed abuse at its members, Sunak had not found the time to read its full report.
The source added that Downing Street would not be thrown off course by the antics of a predecessor: “Ultimately, this is someone who is just an ex-MP. There are times when you have to cancel business, but last week was not such a time.”
The comments came after Johnson called on his own tiny band of remaining MP followers not to vote against the recommendations of the privileges committee when they are put to the House of Commons, apparently because he does not want to expose how little remaining support he has on the backbenches.
With Labour well ahead in the opinion polls, Sunak and his strategists believe they can now draw a positive from the Johnson-related dramas and episodes of late, by contrasting the former prime minister’s rule-breaking and chaos with the more studious and thorough style of the current one.
It now seems probable that the report, which would have led to Johnson being suspended for 90 days and having his right to an ex-MP’s pass for life rescinded, had he not already quit as an MP in fury, will be approved without a vote.
Sources close to Johnson said the privileges committee report “has no practical effect” and that his supporters would speak in the debate but would not be told to vote against it.
Nadine Dorries, Simon Clarke, Jake Berry and Brendan Clarke-Smith are among a tiny group of remaining Johnson supporters who had previously said they would vote against the motion. They suggested there would be fury across the party at the way the former prime minister had been treated by the committee, which has not turned out to be the case.
A Sunak loyalist on the backbenches said the vast majority of the party was “fed up” with the “Boris Johnson saga” and wanted it to end.
The senior MP said: “I was speaking to my people and they said they just want this all to be over. They said they had enough of Boris Johnson, that we had to move on. There are a few diehards who still think he is the best electoral asset we have ever had. But if they analysed things more thoroughly they would discover that that person was in fact Jeremy Corbyn.”
Some Tory MPs are still worried, however, that opposition parties could force a vote, a move that may in turn flush out those in their ranks who would abstain because they fear a backlash from pro-Johnson members of their local associations.
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One Tory MP said: “There’s a lot of people, and this applies to me as well, who just don’t want to mess with our local association, so we’re not going to vote against Boris [if there is a vote].” They added: “If I went in and voted against Boris, half my association would be up in arms.”
The Liberal Democrats have already prepared digital ads to be deployed against Conservative MPs in marginal seats who fail to back the motion to support the privileges committee findings.
“We’ll be reminding voters every day from now until polling day that their local MP voted to defend a serial liar and lawbreaker,” said a Lib Dem source. “Lifelong Conservative voters across the ‘blue wall’ are telling us they are sick of this endless sleaze and scandal.”
Johnson’s remaining allies claim, however, that the manner of his exit from parliament has created more sympathy among the Tory grassroots, giving him a stronger chance of engineering a return to the party’s helm after the next election. “In terms of internal Tory dynamics at the membership level, all they’ve done is martyred him,” said an ally. “They’ve now given the Tories a reason to bring him back.”
The next big electoral tests for Sunak will come in two perilous byelections in Conservative-held seats next month: one in Johnson’s former Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency and the other in Selby, the seat held by Johnson ally Nigel Adams, who also quit last weekend.
The prime minister has been left frustrated by Dorries’s refusal to carry out a promise to step down immediately as MP for the seat of Mid Bedfordshire. Sunak wanted to hold all three byelections on the same day to minimise the negative publicity from potentially bad results.
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