Category Archives: conservative party

Local Tory Party Sticks By Geoffrey Cox Despite Sleaze Accusations

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Geoffrey Cox’s local Conservative association has vowed to stand by him despite accusations he breached parliament’s anti-sleaze rules.

Cox, the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon, is under fire for earning £1million over the past 12 months to work as a lawyer for clients including the British Virgin Islands (BVI), which is subject to a corruption inquiry started by the Foreign Office.

The former attorney general has been criticised for travelling to the Caribbean to advise the BVI while being able to cast votes in the Commons by proxy during the coronavirus pandemic — leading to charges that he has not been focused on his constituents back home.

Further pressure has built on the high-profile barrister after The Times released a video of him appearing to use his office in Westminster to participate remotely in a legal hearing in September, in a possible breach of parliament’s rules.

Despite the backlash, John Gray, chair of the Torridge and West Devon Conservatives, told HuffPost UK that Cox had his “full support”.

He said Cox was a “superb constituency MP” with an “astonishing work ethic and valuable legal expertise”.

“The proof is in the pudding: when Geoffrey first came to this constituency it was a Liberal Democrat seat,” he said.

“Since winning the seat in 2005 Geoffrey has built an increased majority of 3,000 to almost 25,000 with a remarkable 60% vote share in 2019.

“This happened because of Geoffrey’s dogged commitment to serving his constituents. Time and again, constituents attending Geoffrey’s Saturday surgeries have found him a dedicated and powerful advocate.”

He continued: “His independent thinking, underpinned by his successful legal career, was very much to the country’s benefit during the challenging period surrounding the Brexit negotiations.

“I understand completely why people don’t want to see machine politicians and in Geoffrey Cox we have an MP who brings far wider expertise to the House.

“Sir Geoffrey has my full support.”

According to the code of conduct for MPs, members must use their taxpayer-funded offices and other resources “in support of their parliamentary duties”.

“It should not confer any undue personal or financial benefit on themselves or anyone else,” it states.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner has written to Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone asking her to investigate. Cox has said he will co-operate with any possible investigation.

In her letter, Rayner said: “This appears to be an egregious, brazen breach of the rules. A Conservative MP using a taxpayer funded office in Parliament to work for a tax haven facing allegations of corruption is a slap in the face and an insult to British taxpayers.

“You can be an MP serving your constituents or a barrister working for a tax haven – you can’t be both and Boris Johnson needs to make his mind up as to which one Geoffrey Cox will be.”

A statement on behalf of Cox said: “Sir Geoffrey’s view is that it is up to the electors of Torridge and West Devon whether or not they vote for someone who is a senior and distinguished professional in his field and who still practices that profession.

“That has been the consistent view of the local conservative association and although at every election his political opponents have sought to make a prominent issue of his professional practice, it has so far been the consistent view of the voters of Torridge and West Devon. Sir Geoffrey is very content to abide by their decision.

“As for the allegation that he breached the parliamentary code of conduct on one occasion, on 14 September 2021, by being in his office while participating in an online hearing in the public inquiry and voting in the House of Commons, he understands that the matter has been referred to the parliamentary commissioner and he will fully cooperate with her investigation.

“He does not believe that he breached the rules but will of course accept the judgment of the parliamentary commissioner or of the committee on the matter.”

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Boris Johnson Does Not Back ‘Outright Ban’ On MPs’ Second Jobs, Says No.10

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Nick Ansell via PA Media

Geoffrey Cox, the former attorney general, is under pressure over his second jobs.

Boris Johnson has rejected imposing a ban on MPs holding second jobs, despite the backlash over Westminster sleaze.

It was revealed on Tuesday that Tory MP Geoffrey Cox earned hundreds of thousands of pounds giving legal advice the British Virgin Islands.

He was hired to defend the islands in an inquiry launched by the UK Foreign Office.

According to the Daily Mail, the former attorney general took part in Commons votes by proxy while working from the Caribbean during the pandemic.

The ability of MPs to hold second jobs on top of their work in parliament came under scrutiny after Owen Paterson was found to have broken sleaze rules by lobbying ministers on behalf of two companies he worked for. 

But No.10 said the prime minister “doesn’t back an outright ban on second jobs”.

“A ban on second jobs will catch those who still work in roles such as doctors and nurses,” the PM’s spokesperson said.

Downing Street added parliament “can and historically has” benefited from MPs having second jobs but that parliamentary duties should “take priority”.

“MP’s primary job is and must be to serve their constituents and to represent their interests in parliament”.

“If they’re not doing that, they’re not doing their job and will rightly be judged on that by their constituents.”

Labour meanwhile has called on Johnson to launch an urgent investigation into Cox’s activities.

 In a letter to the prime minister, Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s chair, said: “It appears that your former attorney general is profiting from advising an administration accused of corruption and tax avoidance.

“The people of Torridge and West Devon must be wondering if Geoffrey Cox is a Caribbean-based barrister or a Conservative MP.”

Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab told BBC Breakfast that were “very strict rules” surrounding MPs’ second jobs and that it is “respectable and legitimate” for them to carry them out.

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Tory MP Seems To Forget The Facts And Calls His Own Government Weak On Brexit

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Hannah Mckay via Reuters

Tory MP Bernard Jenkin

Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin claimed the Brexit deal was signed with the government was in a “constitutional crisis” – even though Tories actually had an 80-seat majority at the time.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight on Monday, Jenkin addressed the growing scrutiny facing the Brexit deal which has been blamed for the ongoing supply and distribution issues in the UK.

Suggesting the deal should be altered, the Tory backbencher claimed: “The Brexit deal was signed at a time when government was weak and gripped by a political and constitutional crisis, the EU took advantage.”

The deal, signed in December 2020, came just a year after prime minister Boris Johnson had secured a huge landmark majority of 80 seats in the Commons.

While there was some tension within the Tory party over how closely aligned post-Brexit Britain should be to the EU, the Conservatives all won on a manifesto to “get Brexit done”.

BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis probed: “So you think it’s a terrible deal?”

Jenkin replied: “I personally would have been happy to vote against it. The only reason I voted for it is because there didn’t seem to be an alternative.”

He then cut Maitlis off and said: “We can go on talking about the past, but the point is about the future. Is this agreement working? 

“I think even now the EU agrees that there are aspects of this deal which are not working.

“That’s a big shift. That’s a big change.”

The BBC presenter interjected: “So when the prime minister came back and he hailed it as a great deal, a breakthrough, and it was all signed by Christmas, were you sitting there and thinking, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, this is a terrible deal’?

“Were you thinking that all along?”

He replied: “I thought I suppose he’s got to sell the deal, but it’s not a great deal, but you know, we could live with it.”

He added that the Tories have tried to make it “work”.

Irish senator Lisa Chambers then criticised Jenkin on Newsnight and said the EU did not take advantage of the UK during the negotiations.

She continued: “It’s not unreasonable to suggest that we would expect that deal to be honoured – to the letter.

“It was signed eyes wide open, everyone knew what they were signing. I don’t think anyone could suggest we didn’t talk about it enough or that we didn’t understand all elements of it.”

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More Schools ‘Should Be Able To Run Targeted Asian-Style Isolation Systems’

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More schools should be able to run Asian-style isolation systems for Covid contacts to ensure fewer people are sent home, a senior Tory has said.

Rob Halfon, who chairs the Commons education committee, suggested that official guidance for schools could be cleared up to allow targeted approaches, rather than forcing whole school “bubbles” to go into isolation if there is a virus case.

With around 385,000 pupils in England absent from school as a result of Covid, Halfon stressed: “We are damaging their mental health”.

The government has suggested it will scrap so-called “bubbles” of schoolchildren, who often all have to isolate if one catches Covid, from autumn.

But Boris Johnson is resisting pressure to move quicker, insisting summer holidays would act as a “natural firebreak” to infections.

Halfon spoke to HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast during a visit to the Ashcroft Technology Academy in south London, which he said was running a much more targeted Asian style model of isolation.

“When they have a Covid outbreak they do not send the whole school year groups or whole bubbles home,” Halfon said.

“They microtarget the students who have been affected, so they only send a few [home] at a time, a bit like the Asian model in some ways, what goes on in South Korea and so on.

“When I asked them how come you do this, they said they speak to Public Health England, they speak to the Department for Education every time there is such an outbreak and they are advised that they are able to do this.

“So if they are, why are 385,000 kids being sent home?

“I appreciate of course it is very difficult for teachers and support staff absolutely and they are doing a remarkable job considering.

“But clearly the guidance is confusing and schools may be being told different things by different arms of PHE or the DfE.”

House of Commons/PA

Rob Halfon, Conservative chair of the Commons education committee

Halfon acknowledged that it would be difficult to roll out a similar system across the whole country. 

But he said it would be beneficial if more pupils could benefit from the approach.

“Obviously there’s very different circumstances in some schools, the outbreaks may be greater, they may have many staff off sick for Covid or for Covid-related reasons or shielding, so I get that it’s not possible to replicate it.

“But if one school can do it, there must be others who can do it.

“It doesn’t mean every school can do it, but just because every school can’t do it doesn’t mean that… even if five more schools did it.

“It’s got to stop, sending kids home.

“We are damaging their mental health.”

Halfon added: “We are damaging these children by [them] being at home because inevitably they are not learning as much as they would do at school.

“But their wellbeing and mental health is really suffering and it’s putting huge pressure on the parents.

“This has just got to stop, we need our kids back into school.

“People have been vaccinated now, I’m not a lockdown-sceptic, I’m a ‘schooldown-sceptic’.”

Asked why the government did not just scrap the bubble system now, the prime minister told reporters on Thursday: “I understand people’s frustration when whole classes, whole bubbles, are sent home and people are asked to isolate.

“So what’s happening now is Public Health England and the scientists are looking at the advantages, the possibilities, of going to testing rather than isolation.

“They haven’t concluded yet so what I want to do is just to be cautious as we go forward to that natural firebreak of the summer holidays when the risk in schools will greatly diminish and just ask people to be a little bit patient.”

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Tory MP Charged With Sexually Assaulting 15 Year-Old Boy

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Richard Townshend/UK Parliament

Imran Ahmad Khan, Conservative MP for Wakefield

A Tory MP has been charged with sexually assaulting a 15 year-old boy in 2008.

Imran Ahmad Khan, 47, the Conservative MP for Wakefield, West Yorkshire, is alleged to have groped the teenager in Staffordshire.

He was named on Friday after reporting restrictions were lifted and is now facing trial on a single count of sexual assault against the teenager, who cannot be identified because he is an alleged victim of a sexual offence in 2008.

Khan, who was elected at the 2019 general election, pleaded not guilty while appearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court via video link from his lawyers’ office.

He now faces trial at the Old Bailey on July 15 at 9.30am, and was granted unconditional bail.

Khan was stripped of the Tory whip.

It is understood that he has not visited the parliamentary estate since the charge.

A Tory whips spokesperson said: “Imran Ahmed Khan has had the whip suspended.

“As there is an ongoing court case we will not be commenting further.” 

The Crown Prosecution Service said it made the decision to charge after reviewing a file of evidence from Staffordshire Police.

Stressing the need for a fair trial, Rosemary Ainslie of the CPS said: “It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

Khan’s lawyer David Janes said in a statement: “The requisition against our client Imran Khan MP relates to a sole allegation of touching which was allegedly sexual, on a single occasion, said to have taken place in… 2008.

“Our client is shocked that he has been requisitioned with this alleged offence. He strenuously denies the accusation and it will be vigorously defended.”

In a statement released on Friday, Khan said: “It is true that an accusation has been made against me.

“May I make it clear from the outset that the allegation, which is from over 13 years ago, is denied in the strongest terms.

“This matter is deeply distressing to me and I, of course, take it extremely seriously.

“To be accused of doing something I did not do is shocking, destabilising and traumatic. I am innocent.

“Those, like me, who are falsely accused of such actions are in the difficult position of having to endure damaging and painful speculation until the case is concluded.

“I ask for privacy as I work to clear my name.”

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PM’s Planning Reforms In ‘Tatters’ After By-Election Defeat, Tory Rebel Says

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Boris Johnson’s planning reforms have been left in “tatters” following the Tories’ humiliating by-election defeat in Chesham and Amersham, a veteran MP has said.

Sir Roger Gale told HuffPost UK the defeat was a “wake up call” for the prime minister amid a significant backbench rebellion over the plans, which MPs fear would concentrate house building in the party’s southern heartlands.

The Liberal Democrats took the Buckinghamshire seat for the first time in its history, winning a majority of 8,028 over the Tories on a stunning 25% swing.

The party focused heavily on the planning reforms in leaflets the seat, quoting Tory rebels including Theresa May attacking the policy.

The defeat has now intensified the rebellion, as MPs fear the pattern could be repeated across so-called “blue wall” southern traditional Tory seats.

Gale said that on Tory WhatsApp groups on Friday “the only thing anybody is talking about is planning”.

“The common theme is ‘me too, me too, me too’ – right across the south of England,” he told HuffPost UK.

“They are worried about the policy.

“But of course they’ve got an eye on their reelection chances.”

Johnson on Friday stressed that there has been “misunderstanding” about the reforms, insisting the government would not build on green belt land.

“What we want is sensible plans to allow development on brownfield sites,” he said. 

“We’re not going to build on green belt sites, we’re not going to build all over the countryside.”

But Gale said the rebels were concerned about building on greenfield sites like agricultural land, stressing: “We’re not talking about green belt.”

He backed calls for the government to instead focus on building houses on brownfield sites, empty commercial properties, and forcing developers to build on around a million unused planning consents.

On the upcoming planning bill, he said: “My personal view is: the policy is in tatters.

“They’ve got to wake up and smell the coffee.”

It came as leading rebel Bob Seely said the by-election result was “the start of a significant push-back from communities on planning”.

“Relentless housing targets – very often the wrong housing in the wrong areas – just feeds the hamster wheel of planning doom,” he told the BBC.

“We need a better way of doing things. 

“We want to work with government to make this a success.  

“But more of them same will be political suicide, and, as Winston Churchill said, the problem with political suicides is that you live to regret them.”

Johnson is facing fresh rebellion over planning after MPs on his own side last year effectively killed off a so-called “mutant algorithm”, which would have dramatically increased house-building in southern Tory cities and shires.

But the PM is believed to think home ownership is key to cementing the party’s gains in the so-called “red wall” in the north and Midlands and returned with fresh proposals to overhaul planning in last month’s Queen’s Speech.

The government has said it wants to speed up the planning process to deliver new homes and infrastructure more quickly, at the same time as protecting the environment, as part of efforts to hit Johnson’s target of building 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.

But Tory rebels and countryside campaigners have warned that the bill will divide places into areas earmarked for either growth or protection, and that growth areas would undermine local democracy and give developers a green light to build on rural land.

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Theresa May Attacks Boris Johnson’s £4bn Cut To Overseas Aid

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Theresa May has attacked Boris Johnson’s cut to overseas aid spending. 

The Tory former PM said the spending cut would damage the UK’s global reputation and make it more difficult to achieve a deal at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow this year.

Johnson is refusing to give MPs a vote on his decision to slash aid spending from the legally mandated 0.7% of national income to 0.5%, with Tory rebels believing they have a clear majority to reverse the cut.

The prime minister has also rejected pleas from Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to allow MPs to vote on the decision.

In an emergency debate on Tuesday just two days before the G7 summit of world leaders, Tory rebels criticised the government over the cut and how it has handled the row.

May said the global fund to end modern slavery, an issue key to her prime ministerial legacy, was having its funding cut by 80% as a result of the government’s policy.

She also argued that slashing spending would run counter to Britain’s interests and “have a devastating impact on the poorest in the world and it will damage the UK”.

On the impact on the UK’s world standing, she said: “They (people) listen to us because of what we do, they listen to us because of how we put our values into practice.

“The damage it does to our reputation means that it will be far harder for us as a country to argue for change that we want internationally, that is across the board, including at Cop26 and also including setting out and putting into place the ambitions of the integrated review.

“I only hope that modern slavery is still there on the G7 agenda as it has been in the past.”

Former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell, who is leading the rebellion, told MPs the aid spending cut was an “unethical and unlawful betrayal”.

He said: “The way the government is behaving strikes at the heart of our parliament. 

“It is precisely because the government fears they would lose that they are not calling one (a vote). That is not democracy. 

“I want to argue to the House this afternoon that what the government is doing is unethical, possibly illegal, and certainly breaks our promise. 

“It’s not proper and it’s fundamentally un-British and we shouldn’t behave in this way.” 

Mitchell also repeated his insistence that trying to win favour in so-called “red wall” working class areas by cutting overseas aid spending was “very patronising” to those voters. 

The cut also breaks a pledge to keep the 0.7% target in the 2019 Tory general election manifesto, which helped propel Johnson to an 80-seat parliamentary majority.

“All 650 of us in this House elected at the last election promised to stand by the 0.7%,” Mitchell said.

Responding for the government, Treasury minister Steve Barclay said the cuts were needed given the huge scale of government borrowing to pay for Covid support measures such as the furlough scheme.

He questioned how the rebels proposed raising the £4.3bn required to reverse the cut.

“Leaving the next generation vulnerable to the degree of fiscal threat that would be entailed with a high debt level is not itself morally sound,” Barclay said.

“At the same time, loading ourselves with more debt now might well damage our ability to spend on aid later.”

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Cabinet Reshuffle? Here’s Who Could Be In Or Out

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Like the rain this May, rumours about a Cabinet reshuffle never really go away, but they do at times intensify.

This appears to be one of those times, as HuffPost UK understands that officials are on alert for Boris Johnson changing his top team as early as next week.

The BBC and Sky News heard similar on Friday morning, prompting No.10 to strongly play down suggestions of a reshuffle to distract from Dominic Cummings’ appearance before a committee of MPs next Wednesday.

Johnson’s former top aide is threatening to steal the headlines with some bombshell revelations on the government’s handling of the pandemic.

But the prime minister’s press secretary has stressed: “There are no plans for a reshuffle”.

However, like outdoor drinkers caught out without a brolly, Westminster hacks cannot avoid the sudden storm of speculation.

So at the risk of looking like a pedestrian drenched by a car speeding through a puddle, i.e. silly, here’s what might happen when Johnson does decide to rejig his team.

Aaron Chown – PA Images via Getty Images

While there may be “no plans” for a reshuffle next week, Times Radio’s Tom Newton Dunn reported this week that environment secretary George Eustice was digging in so hard against tariff-free meat imports from Australia that it risked becoming a resignation matter for him.

That said, the PM appears to be leaning towards Eustice’s opponent in the Cabinet row, trade secretary Liz Truss, and Eustice has not yet quit.

However, if he does, that could be the catalyst for a wider shake-up of Johnson’s team.

And even if Eustice does not resign, he is seen as “quite an easy person to get rid of” and “not on the green agenda” the government is now pushing, according to one source.

If the reshuffle does go ahead, it appears that the great offices of state will not change with chancellor Rishi Sunak, foreign secretary Dominic Raab and home secretary Priti Patel all widely seen as safe in their positions.

Patel seems likely to keep her job despite becoming embroiled in a scandal over her alleged bullying of officials, as she is a useful figure to shore up the Tories’ right wing.

As one insider puts it: “That woman has staying power and she knows what her brand is, and do you want to piss off Iain Duncan Smith and all that crowd?

“Who else is Boris going to put there, if it’s all about the red wall?”

That is likely to make the central figures of any upcoming reshuffle Michael Gove and Matt Hancock.

Not the most popular in No.10 or among Tory lockdown-sceptics, Hancock has long been seen as under threat, although backbench MPs tell me they appreciate how much he makes himself available to answer their questions, or record video messages for their constituents.

But if the health secretary is moved, many insiders are tipping Gove to take over, believing his problem-solving policy brain is perfectly suited to finally tackling the thorny issue of social care reform.

One Tory source also insists that Gove has moved on from the education secretary who battled “the blob” alongside Cummings to become a more consensual figure who got onside with lawyers as justice secretary and farmers as environment secretary – a skill that will be vital if he is given the task of driving through huge changes to social care.

Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Education secretary Gavin Williamson is likely to be moved

Gavin Williamson meanwhile is almost certain to be moved from his education secretary job following the exams fiasco and other mis-steps.

But Johnson is still said to be “pretty loyal to Gavin” due to the key role he played in his Tory leadership campaign and has been telling people inside No.10 that “Gavin is not leaving Cabinet”.

“This implication of that is: even the PM seems to be saying he’s probably leaving his post,” a source said.

“I just don’t know how you do a reshuffle that seems to anyone fair unless Gavin is gone.”

He could go back to chief whip, a role he performed successfully in the past, replacing Mark Spencer who could be in line for a promotion.

Controversial communities secretary Robert Jenrick could be saved by virtue of being an ally of Sunak.

But Scotland secretary Alister Jack is thought to be at risk, with Andrew Bowie potentially in line for the job as a younger, more dynamic figure to take the independence fight to the SNP.

Sajid Javid is meanwhile tipped for a comeback, although Johnson may struggle to find a role senior enough for the former chancellor, who quit the government last year in a row with Downing Street over sharing a team of special advisers.

Kit Malthouse, a long-time ally of Johnson who worked under him at London City Hall, is also being widely tipped for a promotion.

And Anne-Marie Trevelyan could return to the Cabinet after she was effectively made redundant when her department for international development was subsumed by the Foreign Office, with Johnson thought to be keen to boost the number of women in Cabinet.

The reshuffle could be most interesting in the junior roles where Johnson will be looking to improve and diversify the pipeline of talent to the Cabinet.

Tory figures mention new MPs Laura Trott, Clare Coutinho and Saqib Bhatti as “the shining stars” of the 2019 intake who could be brought on the payroll.

But several sources question the wisdom of carrying out a reshuffle next week, with July seen as a more likely date, while the traditional wargaming whiteboard has not yet been erected on the walls inside Downing Street.

“If you do it at the beginning of holidays then you send everyone away and they’ve got the chance to feel better in Tuscany don’t they?’ one MP says.
“I don’t get why you’d do it before the end of July, I can’t see an incentive.” 

Whatever happens next week, at some point sooner rather than later Johnson is going to have to decide which of his ministers to leave high and dry.

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Tories Should ‘Manage Expectations’ On ‘Levelling Up’, MP Says

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Boris Johnson should “manage expectations” on how long it will take to complete his plan to “level up” left behind communities across the UK, a Tory MP has said.

Kevin Hollinrake, who is Michael Gove’s parliamentary private secretary, said the economic gap between the north and the south-east was comparable to the disparity between East and West Germany before reunification.

He told HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast that, as in Germany, it would take 30 years to complete the levelling up agenda, which was front and centre in the Queen’s Speech this week but is still posing questions about how the prime minister sees it progressing and how its success can be measured.

Hollinrake suggested that average wages in different regions could be a reasonable measure of the success of levelling up, but warned that it was “dangerous measuring outcomes rather than opportunities”.

The Thirsk and Malton MP also stressed that levelling up was a “huge task” that could take decades to be completed.

Ian Forsyth via Getty Images

Johnson visits Hartlepool, where the Tories toppled Labour in a by-election last week and a target area for ‘levelling up’ policies

He told Commons People: “Levelling up is really exciting, it’s a big ambition, it’s a huge task.

“The economy disparity between London and the south-east and the north-east in relative terms is as big as it was between East and West Germany prior to reunification – two-and-a-half times – a phenomenally big gap.

“So this is going to take three decades to resolve it, that’s what it took Germany and they haven’t narrowed it completely yet.

“It’s going to take three decades and – two trillion dollars Germany spent on narrowing that gap, we’ve got to be in it for the long haul.”

Hollinrake went on: “I think it’s important to manage expectations, that this isn’t going to happen overnight.

“There are some things you can do really quickly – so yes building a road, a railway or a railway station takes a while to have an economic effect.

“But other things can happen more quickly, such as relocation of civil service jobs – Treasury north coming to Darlington, Cabinet Office going to Glasgow, Michael Gove was there this week, you’ve got the UK Investment Bank coming to Leeds.

“So things can happen pretty quickly and that’s all there now, or just about being put in place now.

“Freeports as well, these tax-free zones will attract a lot of private sector investment.”

One of the quickest ways to deliver on levelling up would be reform of the tax system, Hollinrake suggested.

“There’s some things in-built in the tax system that aren’t particularly fair, council tax is one of them for example. There’s a proportionately higher burden on parts of the country,” he said.

“Very expensive properties in London for example pay a fraction of the council tax we pay in a much smaller house in the north, it just can’t be fair.

“There’s ways you can do things like that, I’m not going to pre-empt what the chancellor might do.

“Business rates I think again are due for reform.

“There are lots of different things we could do to make it a fair and more level playing field, which would then encourage investment in different parts of the country.”

Hollinrake suggested there may be value in measuring the success of levelling up by looking at average wages across regions.

But he stressed that ultimately the agenda’s success should be judged by how much it creates equality of opportunity across regions.

Asked how the success of levelling up should be measured, he said: “Average wages, for example, would be a good measure that we should use.

“But it’s very dangerous measuring outcomes rather than opportunities because clearly not everybody makes the best of their opportunities and it’s got to be about the individual as well as the state.

“In fact, it’s much more about the individual than the state.

“For me, you create a fair and level playing field, a stable framework that encourages investment, and things like infrastructure are really important to do that as well as the tax breaks, and then let people get on with it.”

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5 Key Takeaways From The Local Election Results

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Most of the results are now in and the parties are now conducting their post-mortems of the “super Thursday” local elections.

The Tories were the big winners in England, gaining control of 13 councils and adding 240 councillors, at the time of writing when 140 of 143 councils had declared.

Labour meanwhile had a terrible election, losing control of eight councils as the party shed 318 councillors, prompting Keir Starmer to embark on a shadow cabinet reshuffle.

But with elections of metro mayors across England, and for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments also taking place, the full picture is more complex.

With the help of YouGov’s Patrick English and Tory polling expert Lord Hayward, here are the five key things you need to know:

1. Labour turmoil in the ‘red wall’

Owen Humphreys – PA Images via Getty Images

Boris Johnson in front of a giant inflatable of himself as he meets and newly elected Tory MP Jill Mortimer at Jacksons Wharf in Hartlepool

There were bitter recriminations in Labour after it lost a slew of council seats and the crunch by-election in the so-called “red wall” seat of Hartlepool, which the party had held since the constituency’s inception in the 1970s.

Labour also lost control Durham, the county of the miners’ gala and a previous bastion of support for the party, and endured “staggeringly bad” losses in the likes of Rotherham, according to Hayward.

English says these losses to the Tories in working class Leave-voting areas are a continuation of the realignment of British politics that followed the Brexit vote in 2016.

And they are a stinging indictment of Starmer’s strategy to win back ex-Labour Brexit supporters who deserted the party for the Tories en masse in the 2019 general election and handed Boris Johnson a huge parliamentary majority.

The Labour leader is now facing an internal battle for Labour’s future, as he prepares to embark on a shadow cabinet reshuffle to refresh his top team amid a backlash over the sacking of his deputy Angela Rayner from her party chair job.

Plenty are now also asking whether Labour can ever recover, or whether the party is finished as an electoral force.

2. Glimmers of hope?

Hollie Adams via Getty Images

Starmer leaves home on Saturday morning

There were small glimmers of hope for Labour, with the party performing well in Wales where it secured an effective majority and “stemmed the tide of Leave voters flooding away to the Conservatives”, according to English.

The party also did well in so-called “blue wall” traditionally Tory seats, but which voted Remain in 2016 and are now beginning to turn to Labour.

Starmer is likely to be pleased with Labour taking the West of England and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoralties.

And there were signs of a “Brighton effect” stretching out across the south coast as Labour took a swathe of seats on Worthing council, according to Hayward.

Starmer’s party even won a county council seat from the Tories in Chipping Norton, in the affluent Cotswold area where former prime minister David Cameron lives.

Labour can at least begin making up ground on the Tories thanks to these types of university-educated, Remain voters, as voters continue to turn British politics on its head.

But “in terms of the mathematics there are not enough blue wall areas to gain a majority in a general election, absolutely not”, English says.

“If Keir Starmer is looking for silver linings, he got beaten 5-2,” the pollster adds.

“Okay, you got hammered, but you scored two goals.”

3. Green surge

Labour supporters may want to look away now, because they have another problem with the Greens enjoying a good day across England.

The party has 14 seats on Bristol council, with the city still counting remaining areas, helped push Sheffield into no overall control following the long-running tree-felling row, and has done well in the suburban home counties.

Hayward says this is “a problem” for Labour as the Greens are “showing signs of being able to do well in towns and cities as the alternative [to Labour]”.

English meanwhile talks of a “pincer movement” with Labour losing seats to both the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.

But the Greens are also appealing to different kinds of voters, and have taken more seats from the Tories than Labour, according to English.

“They are winning seats off everyone all over the country, including in places where Labour couldn’t even dream of winning,” he says.

“And they are building these coalitions of voters who are very different types.

“It would be really daft to think that they are just young, hippy, liberal voters and old tree huggers who vote for them, it’s not.”

4. High profile Tory mayors dig in

Ian Forsyth via Getty Images

Re-elected Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen with health secretary Matt Hancock

While Labour looked set to win 11 of the 13 mayoralties being contested in cities and metropolitan regions across England, the party’s heavy defeats in former strongholds in the West Midlands and Tees Valley provided more evidence of the Brexit alignment.

Andy Street was re-elected in the West Midlands with more than 48% of the vote, embarrassing Labour challenger Liam Byrne, who suggested he could win easily.

And Ben Houchen’s thumping victory in Tees Valley with 73% of the vote inspired Johnson to reportedly leave a voice note for the current toast of the Tory Party saying: “You’re just showing off now with that majority”.

English says: “Is it because the Conservatives are flooding money into these places so the mayors can campaign on it?
“Or you could flip it around, and the Conservatives would say that’s just evidence the mayors have done a bloody good job, securing money for their areas.

“There are general incumbency effects as well – once you’ve got a mayor in there and they have done a good job, they are going to get rewarded.”

5. Scottish independence

Perhaps the most significant result of them all was north of the border, where Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP fell just short of the overall majority that would have made her calls for a second independence referendum even more difficult to ignore.

However, there is a majority in Holyrood for another referendum, thanks to the pro-independence Greens picking up eight seats to add to the SNP’s 64.

In response, there are signs that the UK government’s position on a referendum may be softening slightly.

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove made clear on Sunday that now was not the time for an independence vote, with the UK recovering from coronavirus.

But he pointedly refused to say the Westminster government would go to the Supreme Court to block referendum legislation from Holyrood, and stopped short of an outright rejection of another vote in an interview with ITV Scotland.

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