From Kyiv to Kigali: PM fined but comes out fighting after big week

By Fraser Raleigh

The Government’s week started with the Prime Minister in Ukraine, projecting solidarity with President Zelenskyy and ended with the Home Secretary in Rwanda, launching a controversial new approach to asylum seekers crossing the Channel.  

In between, it came close to losing a Chancellor after COVID fines hit both No.10 and No.11 but emerged with just one junior ministerial resignation and a parliamentary party largely rallying behind it. 

Paradoxically, it was the widespread expectation of the Prime Minister’s fine that protected him, and the surprise at the Chancellor’s that destabilised him further after the bruising row over his family tax arrangements.  

The new No.10 operation – bolstered by recent political hires who have put aides on a pre-election footing – responded to the fines with a well-co-ordinated show of Cabinet unity, with cut-and-paste tweets that the PM had ‘apologised and accepted responsibility’ and should now be allowed to focus on getting on with the job.   

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Conservative MPs – even those who had previously called for the Prime Minister to go – insisted that now was not the time for a contest, publicly citing the war in Ukraine but privately looking worryingly at challenging local elections next month, and the collapse in popularity of the Chancellor as the previous heir apparent. 

The government therefore pushed ahead by doubling down on two of the key wedge issues it wants to create with Labour before the next election: boats and Brexit. More specifically: demonstrating that Brexit has delivered clear changes to the UK’s border policy that – it argues - Brussels and Remain-supporting Keir Starmer would have blocked.  

Added to those core issues of Brexit and migration are – according to reports - dealing with the cost of living crisis, tackling the backlog in the NHS and reducing crime. Next month’s Queen’s speech will also offer an opportunity to re-focus the government’s agenda and move the party’s focus on from any disappointing election results the week before.  

Yet, Conservative MPs risk conflating their own assessment that the political danger has passed with public opinion, with YouGov polls this week showing a widespread belief that the Prime Minister (and Chancellor) should resign over the fines and a dismissal of the idea that the war means ‘now is not the time’ to change leader. More than half (57%) of voters think that the Prime Minister should resign, while just 32% agreed that it was unacceptable to make a change at the present time. 

Far more worryingly for them, 75% believe that the Prime Minister ‘knowingly lied’ about breaking lockdown rules. It is no surprise then, that Keir Starmer has hit back hard over the fines, tweeting that they had “broken the law and repeatedly lied to the British public”, calling again for them both to resign. 

With its own improved political operation, Labour will laser in on this attack and expand it to argue that the scandal has distracted the government from dealing with the cost of living and energy prices, as inflation reaches a 30 year high of 7% this week.  

Both parties, then, have already drawn their clear battlelines for the next election, with one side betting that the public will have – if not forgiven – then forgotten Partygate when the time comes, and the other side enthusiastically accepting that high stakes bet. 

Whoever wins that wager is likely to find themselves forming the next government.