Tory infighting between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak is damaging the UK’s reputation internationally and putting off investors, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer claimed.
Mr Johnson, who formally quit Parliament on Monday in advance of a report which was expected to find he deliberately lied to MPs over the partygate scandal, has been involved in a public spat with Mr Sunak over his resignation honours list.
Sir Keir said it “is certainly evidence of chaos” in the Tory party, claiming the by-elections triggered by Mr Johnson, Nadine Dorries and Nigel Adams were “essentially political tantrums”.
“Political parties usually fight like this when they’re out of office, it’s very unusual when they’re in office,” he said.
But, Sir Keir told business chiefs at London Tech Week: “There is a price to be paid.
“Everywhere you go across the country, most people are really worried about the cost of living, they are worrying about how they can pay their bills.
“And for them to see a government squabbling with itself instead of focused on what they need addressed, I think is a very serious situation for this government.
“And there’s a deeper price because there’s a reputation hit to the UK. And I think there’s an economic hit as well … many investors said to me, we’re not investing in the UK right now because we don’t see the conditions of certainty and stability we need in order to invest.”
Despite the expected findings of the Privileges Committee this week, Mr Johnson insisted “I’ll be back”, echoing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.
In the Daily Express, the former prime minister said “We must fully deliver on Brexit and on the 2019 manifesto. We must smash Labour at the next election.
“Nothing less than absolute victory and total Brexit will do – and as the great Arnold Schwarzenegger said, I’ll be back.”
The message echoed Mr Johnson’s sign-off during his final appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions last year, when he told MPs: “Hasta la vista, baby” – the catchphrase of Mr Schwarzenegger’s cyborg character in the 1991 movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
That reference similarly left the door open for a possible comeback, but the former Uxbridge and South Ruislip MP remained on the back benches until quitting the Commons on Friday.
The committee’s report is widely expected to find that Mr Johnson would have been sanctioned with a suspension of more than 10 days – enough to trigger a by-election, the reason he quit Parliament in protest at what he dubbed a “kangaroo court”.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office dismissed Mr Johnson’s attack on Mr Sunak over his handling of the resignation honours.
The rancour between former Tory leader and his successor descended into a public slanging match as Mr Sunak said his one-time ally had asked him to “do something I wasn’t prepared to do”.
Publicly turning on the man he used to share Downing Street with, Mr Sunak suggested Mr Johnson wanted him to ignore the recommendations of the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac).
But Mr Johnson’s camp accused the man who was his Chancellor of having “secretly blocked” the peerages of former culture secretary Nadine Dorries and other allies in his resignation list.
The former prime minister released a statement saying: “Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish.
“To honour these peerages it was not necessary to overrule Holac – but simply to ask them to renew their vetting, which was a mere formality.”
But the Cabinet Office said: “Holac did not support the nominations of the MPs put forward by the former Prime Minister .
“It is unprecedented for a sitting prime minister to invite Holac to reconsider the vetting of individual nominees on a former prime minister’s resignation list.
“It is, therefore, not a formality.”
