Source Daily Telegraph 26/01/23
Afternoon!
If Boris Johnson is going to make a comeback later this summer to save the Tory party after last May’s disastrous local elections, he might find that a lot of his supporters have disappeared.
The knives are certainly out for them, with the futures of party chairman Nadhim Zahawi and BBC chairman Richard Sharp in the balance.
Zahawi was one of the most senior backers of Johnson’s return to the top of the party last October when he was considering standing again for the leadership.
And Sharp was a friend of Johnson who helped to arrange a £800,000 loan for the cash-strapped ex-PM when he was in office. Both are now under investigation.
Today, it was the turn of former Tory MP David Gauke to tur Daily Yelegran up the heat in the row over Zahawi’s tax affairs.
“I think it is going to be very uncomfortable for Rishi Sunak at 12 o’clock today if Nadhim Zahawi is still in place,” he told BBC Radio 4 this morning.
“There are just too many impossible questions for him and the longer this drags on, the more difficult it is for the Prime Minister.”
Shortly after Gauke’s noon deadline, Sunak admitted at Prime Minister’s Questions that it would have been “politically expedient” to have dealt with the Zahawi issue by midday today, but he was determined to follow “proper due process”.
Gauke is a former Tory MP who was justice secretary for a brief spell, before he quit the party over Brexit to fight the last election as an independent.
He was no fan of Johnson, repeatedly attacking him online, notably last October urging “all MPs who put the national interest first to come together and force a general election” if Johnson were elected as leader.
The other voice so far calling for Zahawi to be sacked is Caroline Nokes, the arch-Johnson critic who is no fan of the ex-PM.
There are big questions about Zahawi’s £5 million tax settlement with HM Revenue & Customs.
He should have recognised that while a tug-of-war battle with HMRC is quite common for millionaires such as Zahawi, front-line politicians like him are held to a higher standard.
He was wrong to fight questions about his tax affairs using lawyers. And he should have set out as much detail as soon as details of the seven-figure settlement first emerged in The Sun on Sunday 10 days ago.
Zahawi is still in office only because of the tremendous amount of political capital built up for him over his successful handling of the vaccine rollout during the Covid-19 pandemic. A less respected minister would have gone by now.
Any decision about his future has now been handed to Sir Laurie Magnus, Zahawi’s adviser on ministerial interests. Sunak will have to sack his chairman if Sir Laurie finds anything wrong.
Is a purge of the Johnsonites under way? Many of his former lieutenants – Sir Jake Berry, Nigel Adams, Simon Clarke and others – have long ago stepped back from the Tory front line.
Conservative politics used to be defined as Left vs Right. Then it became Remain vs Leave after the 2016 EU referendum. Now a new Tory dividing line is emerging: Johnsonites vs Everyone Else.
With Johnson politically incapacitated by the glacially slow MPs’ inquiry into whether he lied to Parliament over partygate, his supporters are being picked off one by one.
If Johnson makes his comeback later this year, his old pals might not be around to welcome him.
Cheerio!
Chopper
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