A Detonation of Grievances

When William Wragg got up to speak about the intimidation party whips use to keep Tory MPs in line, the Johnson-loyal response was there's nothing to see here. When Labour's most recent recruit complained about the underhanded methods used by Gavin Williamson to support the government's position on free school meals, which implied the then education secretary would pull funding for a high school in Radcliffe if Christian Wakeford didn't vote the right way, this was just belly aching from a turncoat looking to make trouble. And even when the charge is more serious, the Tory record doesn't change.

On Friday, the Tory member for Weaden, Nus Ghani, said she was sacked from her ministerial post in 2020 partly because her "Muslimness was raised as an issue." Chief whip Mark Spencer outed himself as the one who allegedly told her this, while denying he ever uttered these words. Dominic Raab was forced to do the rounds on the Sunday morning shows to deny the Tories have an Islamophobia problem, but in the absence of a direct rebuttal it fell to Michael Fabricant (Michael Fabricant) to defend Boris Johnson with this gem: "She’s hardly someone who’s obviously Muslim ... seems a lame excuse she was sacked because of that." This is the same Conservative Party that was found to have a very deep well of Islamophobia, with 57% of members harbouring negative feelings toward Muslims, 47% who thought Islam was a threat to the "British way of life", and 58% believed they were no-go areas for non-Muslims. Before this, the always-ridiculous Alison Pearson decided Sajid Javid was a loser because he had the temerity to raise Islamophobia during the Tory leadership hustings, and do we even need to talk about Johnson's frequent forays into Muslim bashing?

"Why didn't Nus raise a complaint at the time?" has been the wiseacre retort of Johnson's self-appointed praetorians. Perhaps because she did try. In her Sunday afternoon statement, Ghani took her grievance right to the top and was told by the Prime Minister to make a complaint through party channels, something she did not think was appropriate because this was a government matter. It's worth noting, if not eyebrow-raising, that Javid and (the normally ultra loyal) Nadhim Zahawi have made public their support for Ghani against the whip's office and therefore the prop of Johnson's authority in the parliamentary party. Ouch.

The status of Islamophobia in the Tory party is not just a problem, it's a conscious strategy. An indispensable tool from their catalogue of divide-and-rule ploys. And the dirty tricks highlighted by Christian Wakeford and William Wragg are not new news. Indeed, there will be politicians in the Labour Party issuing their forthright condemnations today while being chill about the same strong-arm tactics used by the PLP's own whipping operation. Blackmail, or what polite circles would call leverage, has been used for centuries to get parliamentarians to vote the right way. However, there does come a time when murky but long-established custom and practice is no longer acceptable, and this might be one of them. As Wragg speaks to the Met about the Tories' organised blackmail operation next week, there are dozens of new MPs who haven't come up through the party the traditional way and for whom the petty tyranny of the whip invites revulsion, not obsequiousness. In both cases, the persistent sore of Islamophobia and the inability of the Tories to properly socialise their new entrants were bound to come to a head sooner or later.

Why have these stories come out now? Because of the present moment of crisis. Up until December Johnson has a pretty tight grip on his party, only suffering an anonymous briefing here, a rumour of defection there. But the double whammy of the Owen Paterson case and the Christmas party revelations, plus the incredulous efforts Johnson has gone to to save his hide has not just destroyed his polling position, but his authority in the party. Now he is weakened and the power dynamics in the parliamentary party have loosened up, what was frozen in aspic by prevailing patterns of loyalty and preferment is fluid again. In such moments when the old authority is in its death throes, the discontents it held down erupt into the open - a point underlined by ministerial support for Ghani, and the number of ministers who have more or less intimated publicly, including Raab on Sunday morning, that breaking the Ministerial Code is a resigning matter. We saw a similar breakdown with May after June 2017, and we're seeing it again. How many more damaging stories are going to come out, and is this a moment for farsighted Tories to excise these overly awful characteristics of their party? If Johnson stubbornly stays, then no. If Liz Truss succeeds him, also no. Both of these outcomes would allow the frustrations and anger to accumulate - only to detonate with more force later on.

Image Credit