Inside Politics: Inside the tent pi*sing out

Hello there, I’m Matt Mathers and welcome to The Independent’s Inside Politics newsletter.

Suella Braverman has outlasted Sir Gavin Williamson in the government. Who’d have thought it? No other cabinet ministers had resigned at the time of writing. But as ever these days, it might be worth checking before you get to work.

Commons action gets underway at 11.30am with Northern Ireland questions followed by an unmissable PMQs at noon. After that there is a statement on Northern Ireland. Next up is a ten minute rule bill from Bob Blackman which would require tobacco companies to publish their marketing and sales data. Then there are backbench debates on Sri Lanka and leveling up rural Britain. MPs then rise for recess until next week’s fall budget.

It is now often said that 24 hours is a long time in politics. But even that sounds like a glacial pace following yesterday’s events. At lunchtime a spokesperson for Rishi Sunak said the prime minister was still backing Sir Gavin Williamson as the minister without portfolio came under increasing pressure over bullying claims, which he continues to deny. By dinner time, Sunak had accepted his resignation. It is now a hat-trick of scandal-hit exits from the cabinet for Sir Gavin. But who would bet against him being back in the frame following the next Conservative Party leadership contest?

Sir Gavin’s decision to leave the government (it was, No 10 says, a mutual agreement) came following several updates in the claims against him and a frankly unsurvivable interview given to Channel 4 News by Anne Milton, the former Conservative Party deputy chief whip, who served alongside the Staffordshire South MP during the Theresa May era.

Milton, who lost the whip during the Brexit wars, gave Williamson both barrels and went into eyewatering detail about some of the methods used by Williamson, the self-confessed master of the dark arts, to strong-arm MPs into voting with the government. Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, said it was the “worst interview” he had seen. And he wasn’t talking about Cathy Newman’s skills as a journalist. If Sir Gavin’s fate hadn’t been sealed before the piece then it probably was afterwards.

What does it all mean for Sunak? While Sir Gavin’s exit from the government eases the immediate headache of the drip-drip of allegations and negative headlines, his involvement in the government poses more questions than it answers, especially now the minister has gone. If reports are accurate, then Sunak knew about at least one complaint against Sir Gavin before appointing him to his cabinet, after promising the public integrity and professionalism outside Downing Street in his first day in No 10. That begs the question: why did he hire him anyway?

Sunak might have calculated that it was better having Sir Gavin inside the tent pi*sing out than the other way around. But in the end, it transpired that the wind at the door was sufficiently strong that Sir Gavin’s urine ended up all over the floor anyway. Some have suggested that Sunak was using Sir Gavin as a lightning rod to distract from other controversies, while other reports say that he was not given a government brief because it is he, not Simon Hart, who is really in charge of the whipping operation.

Could it be that Sunak hired Sir Gavin because he thought the former defence and education secretary was the only Tory in the Commons who could keep his unruly party in line, ahead of a series of crunch votes in parliament? If that is the case then the PM’s problems have only just begun.

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Sir Gavin isn’t the only MP attracting controversy at the moment. The speaker of the House of Commons rebuked a Conservative MP after he used the word J*** in parliament to refer to the Japanese. Sir Lindsay Hoyle said the term, which was described by one Labour MP as an “outdated and crass racial slur”, “should not be used”.

The row erupted just days after a Tory minister was criticised for using the phrase “little man” in relation to China. The comment was made by Mark Francois, a former Armed Forces minister, during questions to the defence secretary Ben Wallace.

A Labour source told The Independent: “If there was ever any doubt, the nasty party is firmly back. While Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party are distracted by scandal after scandal, their MPs are bringing our parliament into disrepute by using derogatory language in the chamber. Mark Francois may need reminding that it is 2022, not 1940. He should apologise for this language.”

In his resignation letter, Williamson refutes mounting claims against him.

“I refute the characterisation of these claims, but I recognise these are becoming a distraction for the good work this government is doing.”

FT politics editor George Parker on Williamson’s dismissal.

“But you can be sure he’ll be running the whipping operation for the winner of the next Tory leadership contest.”

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