Boris Johnson’s promise to crack down on MPs’ second jobs came at a perilous moment for his premiership last autumn, with backbenchers in open revolt over the botched attempt to save the disgraced MP Owen Paterson.
It was a classic Johnson manoeuvre – a bold bid to get ahead of the story, claiming to outflank Labour by promising that MPs would be “appropriately punished” if they put their second employers, not their constituents, first.
