The critical observation about this week’s Tory mutiny comes from neither frontbench politician nor pundit, but a former backroom boy who faced a putsch nearly 30 years ago. Jonathan Hill served as political secretary to John Major while the then prime minister negotiated the Maastricht treaty, and suffered constant, debilitating attacks from the “bastards” on his own backbenches. A ruling party exhausted after a decade in power, its members were minded only to fight turf wars and marinade themselves in tawdry scandal. It was a low period in British politics whose high point came when Major faced a vote of no-confidence. Yet Lord Hill thinks Boris Johnson’s situation is even more dangerous – for one vital reason.
Back in the early 90s, he says, “there wasn’t a sense that all of our institutions were collapsing, that Whitehall was collapsing and No 10 didn’t work”. What does that look like? Let me pick just three stories from the past few days – items you may have missed amid the Westminster melee, which is at present centred around flogging an already disastrous revival of the right-to-buy scheme. Since Johnson’s aides had hoped this would be health week, let’s make that our theme.
