Rishi Sunak and the rout of Tory Eurosceptics

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Rishi Sunak and the rout of Tory Eurosceptics’

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George Parker
Boris Johnson and the truth. Hmm. It’s complicated.

Boris Johnson
I apologise. I apologise for inadvertently misleading this house. But to say that I did it recklessly or deliberately is completely untrue.

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George Parker
Welcome to the FT’s Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times, with me, George Parker. Coming up, the former prime minister testified for his political life this week. But is it enough to save his political career? The FT’s Stephen Bush and our Westminster correspondent Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe are on hand to discuss. Plus, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak easily won a vote on a new post-Brexit deal for Northern Ireland. But while the Tory rebels may have been crushed, the Democratic Unionist Party are still saying no to returning to Stormont. We’ll be looking at the fallout with our Ireland correspondent Jude Webber and the FT’s Brexit expert and public policy editor, Peter Foster.

So it was a resounding victory for Rishi Sunak. Five hundred fifteen MPs voted for his post-Brexit Windsor framework for Northern Ireland. Three former Tory leaders — Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith — voted against. But it felt like they were fighting old battles — generals in search of an army. Just 22 Tory MPs in total voted against Sunak’s deal. But among those unhappy with it are DUP MPs and without them on board, there won’t be a swift restoration of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government at Stormont. Here’s the DUP’s leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson.

Jeffrey Donaldson
Whilst undoubtedly improvements have been made, we have not yet fully addressed this fundamental problem, which is the continued application of EU law for the manufacturing of all goods in Northern Ireland.

George Parker
Joining me are the FT’s Ireland correspondent, Jude Webber, and our public policy editor, Peter Foster. So, Peter, it was a crushing victory for Sunak. Most Tory MPs, Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats supported this deal. Was it a watershed moment?

Peter Foster
I think it was, George. I think if we go back to 2018, 2019, where this rump of purist hardcore Brexiters ran everybody ragged and in fact drove us to the very hard Brexit that we ended up with, I think, you know, the tide went out and we really saw that actually you people are moving on, was the kind of general exhaustion. And Rishi Sunak, by patiently putting together a practical deal, it doesn’t magic the protocol away or the Windsor framework as we’re supposed to call it, but by getting a practical deal that the polls suggest satisfies the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, has shown what you can do when you put the dogma aside and you just focus on the pragmatics. And the scale of that rebellion, I think shows that a lot of Tory MPs have moved on as well.

George Parker
So it was a big moment to see, like in defeating the pro-Brexit European Research Group, which now looks like a shadow of its former self, as you are saying that, Peter. This was Steve Baker, a former ERG chair, urging Boris Johnson to come out of the forest and accept the war is over.

Steve Baker
You know, he’s got a choice. He can be remembered for the great acts of statecraft that he achieved or he can risk looking like a pound-shop Nigel Farage. I hope he chooses to be remembered as a statesman.

George Parker
Well, of course, that was before the vote where Boris Johnson voted against the deal at the head of a rebellion, including many members of the ERG. But Peter, did this feel like the beginning of the end for the ERG?

Peter Foster
I think it did, really. It’s hard to see where they’re gonna come back on issues where you’re prepared to put sovereignty control over and above practical considerations — which in this case was getting the Northern Ireland protocol to work, getting that Irish Sea border that’s created by the protocol to work — in order to unlock future deals with Europe on defence and security. The Horizon Europe Science Programme has been discussed. It just opens the door to a whole lot of practical and sensible advances to get Brexit working, which is what all Brexiters want. Of course, the big thing that’s still coming up is this retained EU law bill. This thing about let’s burn up all EU-derived law by the end of the year. That’s a real push to offer for industry, for investors, etc, and that one is gonna have to be addressed. But that’s another issue where if Sunak takes a pragmatic approach, focuses on where divergence can bring benefits, not doing it for its own sake, I think he can get that one over the line as well.

George Parker
Yeah, maybe see the bill quietly diluted in the House of Lords as it goes through its passage in the latter part of the year.

So Jude, the DUP, as we were saying, voted against the so-called Windsor framework. What are they saying about the deal?

Jude Webber
Well, they’re saying it just doesn’t go far enough. I think you have to realise that there’s some people in DUP who will never be satisfied. They set seven tests famously, and they’ve been using those as the yardstick to measure any deal by. But it almost feels like they become something different, each time to say no, this is the thing that we object to. This is the core of the issue. Basically, they’re saying that it’s still not unfettered access. People in Northern Ireland are not able to trade with Great Britain as easily. Access to the UK internal market isn’t fuss-free, it isn’t the same and there’s still EU laws in place and there’s still oversight of the European Court of Justice.

So what they’re asking for are things that the UK government just can’t deliver. The appetite clearly has moved on. The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said on Thursday that the ball’s in the DUP’s court about whether to accept this. They’d like additional negotiations. They won’t get that, but they’re hoping for some additional clarity. They’ve been promised a bill that will copper-fasten in Northern Ireland’s place as part of the union. That’s gonna be a game of semantics, really, because the Northern Ireland Act from 1998 already says that Northern Ireland’s place is it’s part of the union and its constitutional status can only change if a majority of the people in Northern Ireland decide. But, you know, they’re obviously looking for a few things to sort of stroke the egos in a way, you know, some things to sweeten the deal for them. But practical and substantive changes at this point are just not going to happen there.

George Parker
I’ll just run through the parties that voted for this deal in the House of Commons this week, including the SNP and the Liberal Democrats. The DUP look increasingly isolated. Do they actually mind?

Jude Webber
No. No, they don’t mind. They don’t mind at all, I think. For them this is a point of principle. But I think also it’s worth remembering that there’s a bit of a difference between the MPs, there’s eight DUP MPs, but they have legislators at Stormont who are generally believed to be a little bit more practically minded, in part because their salaries have been cut because Stormont’s not active at the moment. So these are people who are feeling the very practical brunt of Stormont not being up and running. So there are some hardliners in the party who don’t mind whether they’re seen as a minority. For them it’s the principle of the thing, but ultimately it’s going to be a battle over practicality versus principle. And I’m sure you’re going to ask me this, but I mean ultimately they will go back into Stormont.

George Parker
Hang on, hold that thought, Jude, ’cause I am gonna ask you that in a minute. That’s the $100mn question if and when they go back into Stormont. But before we get on to that piece of the Windsor deal, it’s gone through its main EU and UK legal processes now. Trust has been restored to a certain extent. What can the two sides do next?

Peter Foster
So I think the obvious thing that they can do is to start rebuilding the security partnership. You’ll remember Theresa May, before Boris Johnson came along, actually had a text. There was gonna be a partnership agreement and part of that was gonna be a security and defence chapter. The big myth really from the deal is that there are no talking shops. In every quarter they leave the European Union. They come to the European summit because of Brexit. The UK is not there. We need to create some architecture, some infrastructure outside the G7 that allows the UK to start rebuilding its relationships.

George Parker
And that’s very important. Can I just pick that up that because as you know, I used to work in Brussels and it was that thing where you had ministers in the room often kicking their heels, waiting for some side deal to be struck with the Italians on milk quotas, but just spending a lot of time together, sharing gossip, sharing fiscal concerns. That doesn’t exist at the moment, does it?

Peter Foster
No, and not just for ministers, but for sherpas, too, right? So when there’s a crisis in the bond markets or there’s a war in Ukraine, those officials, the sherpas, the people who keep the diplomatic plumbing running in the background, when they pick up the phone, they need to know who they’re talking to. And that comes from face time, from, as you say, sorting out the rows about Italian milk quotas, right? Being in those bureaucratic trenches, that’s where you build the relationship. And those relationships have half-lives, right? The longer you let them atrophy, the harder it is to rebuild them. And it’s particularly hard when you don’t have lots of excuses to be in the room because you’re not all shared on the paperwork in Brussels, etc. So you need to work doubly hard to build those relationships. And frankly, they’ve been on the go-slow under Frost and Johnson. It was a pretty much a don’t bother, we’re not engaging. And that’s really gotta change. And so the first thing they can do is start to put some architecture in place to do that and then we can talk about Horizon. I know Sunak’s worried that there’s a diminishing cost-benefit return on Horizon, but the thing about not doing that is that the science community wants that to keep their relationships going, but you’ve got to think about the long-term relationships. So I think that’s where you start before you get into discussions about how you deepen the Trade and Cooperation Agreement or whatever.

George Parker
OK. Now, Jude, do you think the spirit of compromise we’re starting to see emerge in UK-EU relations could start to extend to the DUP and the big question: if and when do you think they’ll return to Stormont?

Jude Webber
Well, (sigh) I mean, it’s not gonna be swift, I think. But the general consensus seems to be that the DUP ultimately have nowhere else to go, so they will end up having to go back into Stormont. It’s more a question of when and not if. And Jeffrey Donaldson — the DUP leader — is a moderate within the party and he’s seen as something of a pragmatist and he keeps on saying how much of a committed devolutionist he is and how much of a devolutionist party the DUP is. So he’s signposting everything that, you know, there’s certain things coming up in the calendar. We’ve got local elections on May the 18th. I think it’s quite unlikely that they will go in before then. Before the May 18th elections, we’ll have the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement from 1998, which is what set up power-sharing in the first place and ended the Troubles. That’s on April the 10th. Sometime around this period, we’re gonna have a visit by Joe Biden. It probably won’t be for the April the 10th anniversary, but it could be the following week. Unionists don’t particularly care, I mean, especially because Biden is very proud of his roots in the Republic of Ireland. So that’s not something that they’re setting their clocks by.

George Parker
Mmm . . . 

Jude Webber
Not long after that, we have the marching season in July the 12th being the highlight of the unionist calendar. So they might want to wait until that is passed, which would bring us to the autumn. That sounds like an awfully long time, but I think there will be pressure on the DUP to go back in before then. Maybe the feeling had been that Sunak would not put pressure on them until after the May elections. We’ll have to see. But the first real indication of what will happen next we should get next week because Jeffrey Donaldson — the DUP leader — has appointed an eight-person panel to canvass unionists’ views on the Windsor framework, and they have to report that by the end of next week. So that’ll be our first indication.

George Parker
OK, Pete, you’ve written a lot about how this will improve things on the ground in Northern Ireland, which ultimately, I suppose is what this is trying to achieve. Does it make Northern Ireland the best place to do business in Europe?

Peter Foster
Mm-hmm . . .

George Parker
As Rishi Sunak suggested?

Peter Foster
Listen, I think if you get the DUP back into Stormont, you’re gonna see a flood of investment from America, particularly, to try and get this thing moving. Remember, there’s a consent vote in 2024 where there has to be a majority of the MLAs, or the Members of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland. They need to vote to continue to trade portions. What you don’t want is that when that vote happens, it becomes another boycott moment for the DUP. What you want is for the Windsor framework to have made that Irish Sea border work effectively and create investment, create a sense of wellbeing, create a sense of political prize here, that they are the entrepot, the hinge between the US and the UK market in EU in a way of course that GB is no longer. And then I think it will get harder and harder for the facts on the ground to be gainsaid by the unionist community. Because of course, the longer this goes on, the more the kind of moderate middle in Northern Ireland are disenfranchised, the more the moderate middle are ignored. If you look at the polls, they care about the cost of living. They care about the NHS’s ridiculous waiting lists in Northern Ireland.

George Parker
Mmm . . . 

Peter Foster
The longer the DUP stay out, the more those people are alienated. And remember now, post-Brexit, a vote for unification is a vote to rejoin the EU.

George Parker
Yeah.

Peter Foster
Right? And so English nationalism, if it delivered a very hard Brexit, has a corollary in Irish nationalism. And so this is why I think the DUP are gonna get short shrift in Westminster.

George Parker
Peter, Jude, thanks very much.

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So is Boris Johnson’s political career toast? As we just heard, he ended up on the losing side in a heavy parliamentary drubbing on Brexit. But that was just the start of his problems. The former prime minister was forced to give evidence under oath on the King James Bible to the Commons privileges committee this week. And if the committee concludes he deliberately misled parliament over the “partygate” scandal during the Covid pandemic, Mr Johnson could lose his parliamentary seat. Sir Bernard Jenkin was among those on the committee to voice scepticism on the former prime minister’s justifications, asking him at one point to explain a photo that showed Mr Johnson, drink in hand, at a leaving party for a staff member in 10 Downing Street.

Bernard Jenkin
Can we move on to examine the compliance with the Covid rules of this gathering? You told the House the rules were followed at all times, so you must have thought the gathering was reasonably necessary for work purposes. We know that the gathering attracted fixed penalty notices. So in fact, the police have judged that it broke the rules. Why did you think it was within the rules?

Boris Johnson
I thought it was essential for work purposes or reason . . . at least reasonably necessary for work purposes because for the reason I’ve given, Sir Bernard. It was necessary to show that the business of the government was being carried on. That’s what we had to do. That’s what I had to do.

Bernard Jenkin
I know that but it’s what you said about it to the House of Commons is what matters.

George Parker
Yes. So with me are the FT’s political commentator Stephen Bush and our political correspondent Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe. So, Stephen, how did Boris Johnson do?

Stephen Bush
I think, not well, to be honest. He went into this hearing with a situation where public opinion is basically decided that they think he did mislead the House of Commons and MPs of all parties would rather give him a nine-days-or-less suspension because that doesn’t trigger any of the possible path to a by-election. And broadly speaking, I think most MPs think it’s in no one’s interests for there to be a by-election. If you’re the Labour party, you would prefer the Conservative psychodrama to continue. Essentially, there is no good scenario for Rishi Sunak. If Boris Johnson were to somehow win, then yeah, that would obviously reopen all the “oh never write him off, he’s their biggest asset”, you know, all of the stuff that you want closed down. If you lose the by-election, that opens up all of that “oh, the Tory party is doomed”, stuff that he doesn’t want aired. Well, I think in terms of giving particularly Conservative members of that committee some pretext to go “OK, that was a problem but it should be nine days, not ten or 14”, I think they probably will still find some form of work which allows him to do that. But he didn’t really give them the thing they were looking for, and he was incredibly bad-tempered with those Conservative members who kind of all his lifeline here.

George Parker
Yeah. Jasmine, what do you think of his performance?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
It was quite interesting. So, it was a great bit of parliamentary theatre. You had Johnson swearing on the Bible. It felt very American. You had Harriet Harman looking incredibly stern. But I don’t think we really learned anything new, but we did get an insight into Johnson’s thinking around that time and how he mentally justified it to himself. I do think what was striking are the moments where he lost his temper, because I feel like Johnson’s actually very good when he’s in front of a loyal crowd, where he can sort of joke his way out of a tight spot. I think he’s quite bad when he’s pressed on the detail and there’s nowhere for him to hide. And I think, his sort of snapping at some of the MPs reflected the fact that it really looked like he was pushed up against the corner. And what was quite striking as well was this overall tone of exceptionalism in his answers to MPs. I think it’s very easy to forget that during the pandemic, the rules are actually made very clear-cut to the public. People didn’t see sick family members. People missed out on huge milestones in their life because we thought that we all had to stay at home and protect the NHS. And so, to sit there and tell the public and tell MPs that actually, well, we followed the guidance as best as we could. It all felt a little bit flimsy and arrogant because actually the rules were very clear-cut and he was in front of a podium and in front of MPs often several times a week explaining those rules to the public. So the fact that there seem to be so many exceptions at Number 10, I don’t think will go very well with the public or MPs.

George Parker
Well, yeah, not many leading parties attended by most people during that period, it’s true. Stephen, do you think it was clear from the evidence you heard either in written form or oral form from the former prime minister Boris Johnson either intentionally or recklessly misled parliament?

Stephen Bush
I think so. The thing which is still the funniest to me is citing in evidence in his defence, someone saying “can I say” . . . I can’t think of any situation which anyone has been talking about what they ought to say publicly, or if you’re having a sort of meeting before a meeting, “can I say”, when you are not kind of admitting that what you’re about to say is not the truth. So I think, were I kidnapped, end up in the unfortunate position of being an MP on this committee and see how I would be able to escape concluding he hadn’t recklessly or wilfully misled.

George Parker
Well, my sense was it wasn’t very likely to change anyone’s minds, frankly, what happened this week. Jasmine, big question I suppose now is, what does the committee do? We expect them to produce their verdicts sometime after the Easter holidays. Stephen’s just set out the fact that the 10-day suspension in the House of Commons is the nuclear option that can trigger a series of events which leads to a parliamentary by-election and Boris Johnson probably losing his seat. What do you think the committee is going to do?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
I think the wording is quite significant, this idea of knowingly having misled parliament. I thought the defences that he put forward were quite interesting. So first of all, he argued that he was given assurances by his team, nice few people like Jack Doyle and James Slack, who were his director of comms. At some instances, they were actually at the events, so he was given assurances by them before he went to the House of Commons. I mean the counter to that is, he didn’t need to be so categorical in his statements to the Commons. But I do think he’s been advised quite well by his legal team and I think pinning him down on what exactly he knew before he went to the House is actually gonna be quite difficult. The thing he’s got lots of different things he can point to and say, well, you can’t say I knowingly did this.

George Parker
Yeah. But they’re also applying a test of whether you recklessly misled parliament, of course, which is, could he have actually found out what was going on inside his own house (chuckle) a bit more vigorously. But Stephen, let’s assume for a moment that he is suspended but for less than 10 days so he doesn’t end up being kicked out of parliament, at least for now. Do you think he’s basically finished as a frontline politician?

Stephen Bush
I think, for two reasons, the last week has been catastrophic for him. There’s been this vote, in which he made a big song and dance about voting against it, and if you look at the names of the 22 people who joined him in those division lobby, actually most of them were hardcore Brexiters who he has always had a difficult relationship with. And then the only other people in the kind of axis of people who hate Rishi Sunak and want to put one over him were himself, Jake Berry, Liz Truss and Simon Clarke. You know, Alec Shelbrooke, someone who basically was sacked for no fault of his own, for the kind of offence of not ticking any diversity boxes and having backed Liz Truss, didn’t vote against. So he can’t even command the support of all of the dispossessed and the never-possessed. And an MP who was in the key group of people to think about why people who want Boris Johnson to go late last year, voted for Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak but then backed Rishi Sunak. So the people who support changes, whether or not Rishi Sunak’s project is viable, said to me, God, I’d forgotten how much I love having a normal prime minister again. And I think then one of the things which has been really damaging this week is for Conservative MPs in the middle of the party to be reminded how much they really hated it by the end. It wasn’t just partygate; it was the sense that there would always be another “gate”, it would always be another story about money, another story about the people who shouldn’t have been appointed to things. And I think then what they’ve really once again been reminded of is just how much actually even the ones who don’t necessarily align with Rishi Sunak, just like that the prime minister does prime-ministery things.

George Parker
Yeah. So I think that, Jasmine, we’ve had quite a few conversations like that this week. And just listening to Boris Johnson relaying as a matter of fact that people were drinking at their desks on a Friday and the fact that he appointed Dominic Cummings essentially to run the government and now accuses him of being a mendacious character and so on. Stephen, you mentioned the fact that support amongst the Tory MP seems to be dwindling. It was fascinating, I thought, Jasmine, that the Daily Telegraph, on their front page, they had a big headline saying the cults of Boris and Brexit are simultaneously imploding. So how it feels to you?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
Yeah, I think so. One of the MPs I spoke to when I asked for their verdict, they described Johnson as yesterday’s man talking about yesterday’s news. There was a feeling that actually, yes, he had a couple of supporters in the room and there’s always gonna be those diehard pro-Johnsonites. But that support is dwindling and I think Stephen is right. But I think towards the end of Johnson’s premiership and leading into the Truss era, there was a real sense of chaos and it really felt as though the Conservatives couldn’t govern on key bits of legislation and white papers like none of that got done. And actually in recent weeks we’ve seen Sunak make real progress on some quite tricky issues. Be that on Brexit via the Windsor framework or the Rwanda deal. And I think Johnson is such a divisive figure. There are some people who will forever be loyal to him and some people who will forever hate him. That isn’t healthy or constructive in politics. There is a sense of weariness for MPs that won’t be fighting over Brexit, over partygate. They just want to be governing and looking forward to the next election, hopefully holding on to their seats.

George Parker
OK, you write Boris Johnson off at your peril, as we all know. Is there a scenario, Jasmine, that the Conservative party lose the next election and then thrashing around and deciding what to do next, they turn back to the man that’s proven himself an unparalleled election winner for the Conservatives?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
I mean, maybe? I think what’s interesting about Johnson is that he’s always in the background. He’s always lurking, ready to pounce, ready to launch some leadership bid. I think that would really depend on how badly the Conservatives lost. If they lost, if Labour were left with quite a small majority, there might be a coalescing behind Sunak. If it was a complete wipeout there may be a feeling of OK, maybe the party needs to start from scratch and then maybe Johnson comes in. But I don’t know. I do just think he’s such a discredited and divisive figure and I question why he’d even want to when he could make so much money in the private sector doing lots of speeches?

George Parker
Well, I suppose Churchill, his hero, spent a bit of time in opposition of the second world war. Stephen?

Stephen Bush
He did. I think Jasmine’s absolutely right that it’s a bit mystifying why he wants to do this thing. it’s not like he did anything meaningful with his time and he clearly hated it. But I think that in some ways, the tragedy of him is he’s doomed to always want this job that he was very bad at, didn’t particularly try and do. I guess my instinct isn’t if they do lose the next election, I still think he’ll be coming back and they’ll want to turn to someone who is fresh and new. But I think then, just as with Margaret Thatcher, where the fact she wasn’t able to lead them into the 1992 election kind of haunted the Tory party for some time afterwards. You can see this myth of “if only it would stop with Boris” is still powerful in parts of the conservative right and in his supporters club in the Mail in particular. And that will continue to disfigure Conservative politics unless, of course, Rishi Sunak is able to pull off a surprise win in 2024.

George Parker
Indeed. Stephen Bush, Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, thank you very much.

And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. If you like the podcast, we recommend subscribing. You’ll find us through all the usual channels to receive episodes as soon as they’re released. And we also appreciate positive reviews and ratings.

FT’s Political Fix was presented by me, George Parker, and produced by Anna Dedhar and Manuela Saragosa. Sound engineer is Breen Turner. Until next time. Thanks for listening.

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