Inside Politics: Half the world away

There’s nothing like a good trip halfway round the world for a Commonwealth summit to avoid difficult questions about your premiership. Boris Johnson has touched down in Rwanda within the past few hours as voters head to the polls in Wakefield and Honiton and Tiverton.

Commons action gets underway from 9.30am with Defra questions, followed by any UQs. Commons leader Mark Spencer has the weekly parliamentary business statement next. After any other ministerial statements, the main business will be a backbench debate on the impact of the pandemic on people with heart and circulatory diseases.

Voters are heading to the polls today in two crucial by-elections where defeat for the Tories could spell fresh trouble for the premiership of Boris Johnson, whose position has become somewhat safer after he narrowly won a confidence vote earlier this month.

Previously published polls suggest that Labour is on course for victory in the ‘red wall’ seat of Wakefield in Yorkshire. But a much closer contest is expected in the Conservative stronghold of Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, where the Liberal Democrats are the main challengers, hoping to turn the Tories’ ‘true blue’ seat in the southwest yellow.

A win for the Lib Dems in the seat, where the Tories have a huge and seemingly unassailable majority of 24,000, would be a huge success for Ed Davey’s party and raise further questions about the prime minister’s electoral appeal in the south of England, where voters are said to be more angry about Partygate and the government’s willingness to break international law over Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol.

Conservative MPs told The Independent at the weekend that a double by-election defeat on would be a “disaster” for the embattled PM, who is coming under fresh pressure over reports that he tried to get top taxpayer-funded jobs for wife Carrie while both while he was running the country – and when he was serving as foreign secretary, before the pair got married.

Professor John Curtice, writing in The Independent (see below) says Labour “ought to have little difficulty” in winning the Wakefield by achieving a swing of a little less than 4 per cent. In Tiverton and Honiton, however, the polling expert warned success for the Liberal Dems “is by no means guaranteed”, and that the collapse of Labour support in the constituency “could well be crucial to the outcome”.

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The PM will be nowhere to be seen as the by-election results come in very early tomorrow morning and the second day of rail strikes go ahead today. He is on a trip to Kigali for a Commonwealth leaders summit, also attended by Prince Charles, who recently slammed the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

That policy is coming under fresh scrutiny today as we reveal that new asylum seekers are being locked up in order to be deported – even after court challenges raised questions about whether the controversial removal flights will ever take off amid concerns about their legality.

Campaigners accused ministers of being “untethered from any sense of morality or legality” after it emerged that people seeking refuge in Britain have been placed in detention centres following the grounding of last week’s planned flight.

The Rwanda policy will be subject to a judicial review hearing on 18 July, where a High Court judge will assess whether it is lawful.On Wednesday, the most senior civil servant in the Home Office admitted that the policy may even fail in its stated aim of deterring migrants from attempting the dangerous journey across the Channel by small boat.

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See all of The Independent’s daily cartoons here

“As Lady Bracknell might observe, for the Conservatives to lose one by-election on Thursday might be regarded as unfortunate. However, to lose two might look like much more than carelessness – but a sign of a government that is at risk of losing its electoral footing.”

Professor John Curtice, polling expert, on what by-election results might mean for the Tories.

“Senior Labour figures agree with the Tories that they will take back Wakefield but have cautioned against a big majority. ‘It’s going strong but we are very, very worried about complacency and turnout,’ one shadow cabinet minister said.”

Sebastian Payne, FT Whitehall editor, hears Labour is confident it will win Wakefield by-election.

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