Labour must have the confidence to keep punching the Tory corruption bruise
Vested interests, Tory commentators, ennui and our own inability to concentrate on a narrative will tempt Labour away from hitting the Tories where it hurts. They shouldn't listen.
If Owen Paterson had the sense he was born with, he would have taken his lumps, accepted his 30-day suspension and moved on. Given the personal sympathy for him after the tragic suicide of his wife, it is not at all clear there would have even been a recall petition. But even if there had been, his majority was pretty unassailable. If he’d shown contrition I firmly believe his constituents would have backed him. This would have been a mere blip on the radar. Paterson would have been known only as the ‘Badgers moving the goalposts’ guy.
If Boris Johnson had the sense he was born with, he would have insisted on Owen Paterson taking his lumps and never got involved beyond putting pressure on him to apologise rather than continue to protest his innocence.
Instead, we saw this week a Tory PM over-reaching to try to help out a corrupt mate, denigrating the democratic process and parliament, seriously pissing off his own backbenchers. We saw a Tory party row in behind him including a minister making not very oblique threats to the job of the independent parliamentary standards commissioner.
At PMQs on Wednesday, the PM accused Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Raynor of “Playing politics” with the issue. If that was the case, then by Thursday it was clear that Labour had unequivocally won. The government performed a screeching U-turn leading Owen Paterson to resign and the government to look at once corrupt, weak and foolish.
This was just one week. But it was a week that could mark a sea change in the narrative of untouchability around Boris Johnson. His reputation as a ‘shopping trolley’ was seen as Westminster tattle and Dom Cummings blog fodder - even part of his charm. But these things can turn on a dime and if Labour are confident enough to keep punching the bruise they will be able to define the Tories as permanently on the take and in it for themselves.
There will be those in British public life who will try to help them out of the hole they are in. But the quality of responses to the scandal from Tory-supporting commentators has, so far, shown as much of a tin ear as the government’s response itself.
Arguments such as Colvile’s here show so little understanding not just that the public is upset and angry but at what they are angry at.
It is not simply Owen Paterson’s corrupt behaviour that has hit home here. If it were, it would have had no greater impact on the Tories standing than the Greensill scandal, Robert Jenrick’s donor scandal or multiple cases of emergency Covid contracts going to useless companies who just happened to be mates with a senior tory.
What has mattered here is that where the government previously largely ignored the scandal in its own ranks - making a story harder to maintain - this time they poured fuel on the fire. The government’s attempt to change the rule to protect their own may have failed. But they have changed the ongoing level of interest in Tory corruption and the sense that Johnson is not only partaking with his holidays and wallpaper, but that he doesn’t just want to bend the rules, but break democratic oversight of them.
In their arrogance the whole Tory establishment - from the PM to commentators like Colvile - have lost sight of the difference between the PM as swashbuckling Brexiteer maverick, breaking the rules on behalf of the people who voted for him, and the PM as the rotting head of a shambolically, corrupt and vastly overentitled elite - the kind the voters thought they were rejecting in electing him.
Usually, in this space I am arguing about the need for Labour to be focused on a positive alternative - and not just bashing the Tories. And this is still true (sorry guys, you are going to have to walk and chew gum at the same time). But wooing voters away from the Tories will require both a push and a pull factor, and Labour are both politically and morally right to keep up the pressure over the wider issue of government corruption.
They will need to do so cleverly.
Please God stop calling for everyone to resign. If all the Tories we wanted to resign did so, there would be no one left to run the government. If our argument is - as it should be - that this corruption is systematic and symptomatic of the Tories in power, it is not about the individuals or their resignations. The government are who they are. We should expose them as such.
Please also can absolutely nobody call for a ‘judge-led inquiry’. This just makes us all look like insiders marking each other’s homework. Inquiries like this should be rare - so should calls for them.
I like the approach of Keir Starmer writing to the Lords Appointment Committee to “clarify” that no one found guilty of corruption should be made a peer. This is a sensible way to get ahead of the story and make it a running sore for the government.
(I mean, hands up if you don’t think the government offered Paterson something like this to go away)
But in the main part, the opposition should keep asking what Tories are going to do to clean up their own house. Becuase this puts the government into one of two uncomfortable positions. Either they accept they have a problem, which is highly damaging in the first place and will have fall out as many of their own fall foul of any rules they try to put in place, or they deny it, in which case they look callous and blase in the face of public opprobrium.
The truth is that the government don’t know what to do and in their arrogance they are affronted that they are expected to do anything. This has been an exposing week. They are not very good at politics when it shifts even slightly out of easy mode. That should give Labour heart.
Labour have had a good week because the Tories have had a bad week. They have - for once - capitalised well on that. They will need more, but this should be a moment of optimism and learning. The government isn’t made of Teflon and the opposition can land significant blows on them.
Keep it up.
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What I’ve been up to
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