The Paterson scandal is toxic to Boris Johnson's brand
The PM's handling of the Owen Paterson fiasco provides Labour with the opportunity to tie him to the worst of his party
Yesterday in Parliament was a dangerous day for the Tory party. With it, the opposition has a new tool to help solve one of its bigger strategic questions – how to overcome Boris Johnson’s efforts to brand his government as a new one, rather than the continuation of Tory rule lasting more than ten years.
By voting to let off one of their own - Owen Paterson - after he was found to have broken lobbying rules, Tory MPs have been deluged with anger. Many of them appear now to be very worried by the backlash. Their party’s worst mistakes and most heinous examples of entitlement are all back out in the open: ‘the Govt that lied to the Queen to prorogue Parliament, was willing to break international law in a “limited & specific” way, forced PM’s own standards chief to quit by overruling him, breached lockdown rules while expecting others to follow them...’ as the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar put it.
In the same week as the Paterson vote the party also readmitted Rob Roberts into their ranks, the Tory MP who had abused his power through sexual misconduct.
Kwasi Kwarteng overreached himself by opening a front with the standards commissioner but he gave us an insight into the unaccountable mindset of the Cabinet in the process. And after all the political capital that has been expended, Owen Paterson is to resign from Parliament in any case.
So severe has been the kick-back that the Tories are now seeking to ways to wriggle out of the worst of it, in the process underlining their shameless venality and belief that the rules did not apply to them.
Events such as these always pose a question of how far the damage will go. Stephen Bush for the New Statesman has set out the possible reasons why the lasting impact may be more limited than this morning’s headlines might suggest. And Boris Johnson clearly had calculated that the risk was worth taking. He had at least two reasons to do so: one is the length of time between this row and the next general election: there’s an argument to be made that governments can afford a certain number of skirmishes mid-term. Plus, two, Johnson may well have hoped that the public will see his actions as representative of politicians in general, rather than the Tories specifically.
But for the Labour Party the Paterson scandal demonstrates the value of combativity and hammering away when the opportunity presents itself. It has to do this to avoid the very problem of the public shrugging their shoulders and seeing the Paterson vote as representative of all political parties. Only a very proactive approach will ensure the blame sits where it should. The party’s response in the last twenty-four hours has certainly seen sharper attack on the Tories: Angela Rayner at PMQs was highly confident and assertive; Keir Starmer has now moved the party’s language clearly from cronyism to corruption.
Jeremy Deller was right, by the way.
It is well-rehearsed that the pandemic saw Labour faced with a debate about how far public opinion would tolerate conventional party political conflict. Even in ordinary circumstances opposition parties are always being told by polls and focus groups that the electors do not like negative campaigning. But, unfortunately, while people will naturally say they want positive campaigning, attack messages do very often work. Not having a sustained attack mechanism actually leaves you vulnerable to being pushed off course by the other side’s operation and unable to create space for your positive messages.
To advance in politics it is necessary to have a big encompassing story to tell but also to accumulate every single possible incremental advantage. The more you can connect the two the better, but sometimes that isn’t possible. On this occasion it is possible, because the scandal tells a wider story about what is wrong with the Conservatives.
Boris Johnson wants the voters to see him as a new PM – the PM that got Brexit done and is now turning to the task of levelling up. One big obstacle for that Boris Johnson brand position is the Tory Party itself. Conservative Prime Ministers have been in power now for eleven years. The longer they are in power the more the Tories’ sense of entitlement and complacency grows. Money, business and the pressure for access are all attracted to power, and the Tories simply cannot help themselves – in that well-financed, powerful position they are just going to make mistakes. A key part of the opposition’s purpose is to ruthlessly go after them when they do.
Re-toxifying the Tory party is one part of Labour’s job but the other is to simultaneously tie Johnson firmly to his own party. Johnson’s political persona has always contained a tension between occupying the optimistic go-getting sunny uplands and openly indulging the Tory party’s base. He is happiest when he can combine the two but this week is not one of those occasions. Johnson’s indulgence of some of his own MPs has dragged him into a classic instance of unaccountable Tory privilege.
For Labour to deplete Boris Johnson’s brand, every single example of the Tories’ cronyism and corruption has to be drawn out and connected to Johnson, to disrupt his positioning as a shiny new PM. In turn that would chip away at the positioning of the Johnson government as a new administration, and reinforce the sense that it is more of the same.
Boris Johnson has to be Tory-ised - glued to his own party and its worse faults. The Paterson debacle can be an important development in carrying out that task, even with the u-turns and concessions he is forced to make.
Some other reading
This on green jobs and just transition is a really interesting read from Conrad Landin.
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