Owen Paterson: Boris Johnson ‘weakened’ by sleaze storm warn senior Tories

Party figures say PM’s authority damaged amid backbench fury
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Boris Johnson’s authority has been damaged by the Owen Paterson sleaze storm, senior Tories warned on Friday, as backbench MPs vented their “fury” at being ordered to vote to block his suspension from the Commons.

Former Commons Leader Sir David Lidington told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If you ask your troops to march through the lobby on something like this, and which they don’t think is right, and then you U-turn on it, it’s going to be more difficult next time around.”

He added: “The damage to his [Mr Johnson’s] authority and the Government’s does not need to be serious or permanent.” Sir David suggested that if it could focus fully now on levelling-up and other policy priorities it could recover. Lord Barwell, who was Theresa May’s chief-of-staff, emphasised that the decision to whip MPs to vote for an amendment which axed the current parliamentary disciplinary rules had been a “terrible mistake”.

He told LBC Radio: “The Prime Minister...will have significantly dented his reputation with Conservative MPs who will be livid that they were whipped to vote for something, took a huge amount of flak understandably from their constituents, and then saw a U-turn in less than 24 hours.

“It remains to be seen how much damage is done to the standing of the Conservative Party with the general public.”

Lord Hayward, a Tory polling expert, said Mr Johnson, Mr Rees-Mogg and Mr Spencer had all been damaged by the events of the last few days. He added: “At this stage it’s unclear how long that damage will last. Time is a healer as long as there are not other similar problems.”

One senior Tory added: “We are furious about this. There should never be a ‘next time’.” Another Tory MP said: “The buck has to stop with the Prime Minister. It has hurt him with the backbenches. People see this as another poor piece of judgment.

“People are really angry and fed up. It was bad politics to begin with and once you go down that route to not even stick with it was ridiculous. It was rank incompetence.”

Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi on Friday morning rejected the suggestion that the episode represented a return to Tory sleaze, which damaged John Major’s government in the mid-Nineties.

“I don’t recognise that,” Mr Zahawi told LBC, adding that the decision to link Mr Paterson’s case with a broader review of the watchdog had been a “mistake”.

“When you make a mistake, I’d much rather have a Government and a Prime Minister and the chief whip who says ‘hold on a second, let’s go back, because I think we’ve made a mistake here’,” he added. “That makes me much more confident of the character of the people leading this country than people who would have just ploughed on ahead regardless.”

As the sleaze storm rocked Westminster:

* Former Cabinet minister Mr Paterson — who denies any wrongdoing —officially resigned from Parliament, the Treasury confirmed. It said: “The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed the Rt Hon Owen William Paterson to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.”

There is no official process for an MP to stand down from the Commons and this mechanism is used instead.

* Labour was calling for an inquiry into Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng after he suggested yesterday that the parliamentary commissioner should consider her position. The party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, claimed in a tweet: “It is absolutely disgusting that @KwasiKwarteng tried to use this corrupt process to bully the independent parliamentary commissioner out of her job.”

* Labour could also be facing a by-election in Leicester East after the MP Claudia Webbe was handed a suspended 10-week sentence for harassment on Thursday. Although Ms Webbe has been expelled from the party and could face a recall by her constituents, triggering a vote, the MP has said she intends to appeal her conviction.

* Last month, the standards commissioner concluded Mr Paterson’s work for the two firms was an “egregious” breach of lobbying rules. She recommended he be suspended for 30 days. Tories rallied around the ex-minister, whose wife, Rose, committed suicide last year.

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