How Tory sleaze will destroy Boris Johnson’s premiership – Andrew Vine

The Prime Minister cannot quip or charm or bluster his way out of this scandal. All the familiar tactics Mr Johnson employs when his back is against the wall won’t work this time. He’s up to his neck in this and will have only himself to blame when there is a backlash from the electorate.

Boris Johnson must act over shameful sleaze crisis - The Yorkshire Post says

No other Government of modern times has been so presidential in style, or so dependent upon the personality of the person in charge for its success at the polls.

How Boris Johnson is exposed by Owen Paterson and Tory sleaze – Tom Richmond

This means he cannot shift the blame onto backbenchers, or the former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson whose appetite for making money by lobbying blew the whole issue of Conservative sleaze wide open.

Owen Paterson had to quit; he brought democracy into disrepute – The Yorkshire Post says

No, this belongs squarely to Mr Johnson, and the flaying he endured in the Commons during yesterday’s emergency debate could well come to resemble a slap on the wrist when compared to the kicking voters give him at the next general election.

There have long been questions of trust surrounding the PM. His own charge sheet when it comes to an ambiguous relationship with honesty is disturbingly long. Equally disturbing is that it appears to bother him not one bit.

He was rebuked over the prorogation of Parliament during the battle over Brexit, and he has repeatedly fallen foul of the rules on standards. In 2018, he apologised for failing to properly declare £52,000 from book royalties, then failed to declare his 20 per cent share in a property in Somerset. Soon after, Mr Johnson failed to declare that a wealthy Tory donor had paid for a holiday in Mustique.

Hard on the heels of that came the Prime Minister’s evasiveness over who had paid for the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat. The sense that rules are for others, and not for him or his court – a charge levelled by his predecessor Sir John Major in a devastating attack – is only deepened by failures to act against transgressors.

The manipulation of the Commons to save Mr Paterson from suspension came after Mr Johnson’s refusal to take action against Home Secretary Priti Patel when she was accused of bullying, leading to the resignation of the ministerial standards adviser Sir Alex Allen. And most notoriously of all, Mr Johnson failed to discipline his then close aide Dominic Cummings over his lockdown-busting trip to County Durham.

Taken together, this paints a picture of a politician with scant regard for the norms of what constitutes honest behaviour in following the spirit of regulations, and not just their letter. Since the last election, 19 Conservative MPs have had complaints about them upheld by the standards commissioner, and a further three are under investigation.

They should have a care about the atmosphere of sleaze this has created. Voters who behave with honesty in their professional lives, and for whom lobbying on behalf of vested interests who pay MPs handsomely for their services looks like a grubby racket, won’t stand for it.

The electorate kicked John Major’s administration out in 1997 partly because they were sick of seeing smug, entitled MPs lining their own pockets instead of doing what they were paid for, and they will do the same again. Trust in politicians is already at a low enough ebb, and sleaze can only undermine it further.

It is now up to the intake of new Tory MPs who won the red wall seats of the North from Labour to start protesting about what is going on. They know all too well that the trust placed in them is conditional on the Government doing its best to help places for too long neglected by those in power. Instead, constituents see a ruling party containing people rubbing their hands in glee at how much they can make from their positions.

Voters are entitled to ask why, when they have to pay for their own holidays and home improvements, the Prime Minister shouldn’t do likewise. And MPs forget at their peril that from the perspective of most northern seats, the salaries paid to them for doing what they are elected to do look very handsome indeed.

It is just possible that only two years after the election, Mr Johnson has passed a point of no return with the voters who put him into office. Sleaze may have doomed him. This is not an issue that is going to blow over or be forgotten by households getting poorer because of rising bills, who will be merciless to MPs exploiting their positions to become richer.

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