Sunak excuses ministers’ faults at expense of integrity

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Good morning. Rishi Sunak is grappling with a growing row about the conduct of Sir Gavin Williamson. Some thoughts on why stories like this keep happening to the prime minister — and why he has few good ways to avoid them — in today’s note.

Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Follow Stephen on Twitter @stephenkb and please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to [email protected].

Another blunder

Rishi Sunak is facing political embarrassment after a series of damning leaks about one of his ministers. Again.

This time the politician in the spotlight is Gavin Williamson, who Sunak appointed as minister without portfolio, while the chosen vessel for the leak is the Sunday Times. Williamson is accused of sending a series of sweary text messages to Wendy Morton, former chief whip, complaining that he and other Sunak-supporting MPs were excluded from the Queen’s funeral. At the time Williamson was a backbencher in Liz Truss’s government.

Former party chair Sir Jake Berry issued a statement saying he informed the incoming PM about the allegations a day before he entered Number 10.

Sunak has told the Sun’s Natasha Clark and Ryan Sabey that the messages to Morton were “unacceptable”, which to me looks like a bigger blunder than bringing Williamson back into government.

Ultimately, Williamson was brought back into the cabinet because he is a former chief whip and a parliamentary fixer. Sunak cannot really afford to have too many of Williamson’s kind out on the backbenches — not when he has to pass an Autumn Statement containing either heavy tax rises, harsh spending cuts or some combination of the two (as is most likely).

Sunak is not so naive as to have been unaware that Williamson had a rough past in parliament; as chief whip he had a reputation (one he himself liked to cultivate) for strong-arming would-be rebels. On the backbenches he was known (again in part due to his own efforts) for his skill in managing Theresa May’s internal opponents.

But that’s the beginning, middle and end of the case for bringing him back into government. (It’s not as if Williamson had a great record from his time at the Department for Education).

The prime minister’s professed dismay at Williamson’s exchanges are similar to his claim that he brought Suella Braverman back to government in order to tackle crime and immigration (as if Braverman were the only member of the Conservative party to be bothered by those things). It’s obviously not true and it’s obvious he knows it’s not true.

The trouble for Sunak is that he can’t really come out and admit that his government was a co-creator of an economic crisis and that he is too weak to tackle that crisis, without looking weak and annoying people within his own party. But he also can’t defend his government without looking and sounding like a man who spouts obvious falsehoods. That undermines one of the few assets he and his party has: his own standing in the country as a whole.

Zoom time for commuter towns

One consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the change to working patterns, the economy and even infrastructure of communities around the UK. Andrew Hill and Emma Jacobs tackle that topic in the weekend Big Read.

This story also has the potential for big political shocks because of the nature of the UK’s first past the post electoral system. One driver of some of the surprising results over the past few years has been the diffusion of Labour voters from inner cities into suburbs. That’s part of why formerly Tory-held constituencies such as Canterbury and Bristol North West went red in 2017, and stayed that way in 2019. The movement also contributes Liberal Democrat gains in suburban seats too.

All three of the main parties believe that the pandemic will have accelerated that change. While none of them really know the exact extent of the shift yet, one subplot of the next election will be the electoral hangover of these economic shifts.

Now try this

One sad consequence of lockdown is that it meant that Hackney residents lost out on a new permanent home for Decatur London. For people outside of Hackney (I’m told they do exist) however, this means that you can order a very fine boil-at-home dinner for you and your guests wherever you are in Great Britain.

They also do the occasional pop-up and this weekend I was lucky enough to get tickets for their residency at Dina Wines, a nearby biodynamic wine bar I hadn’t visited before. Both the food and the wine were lovely. My favourite wine was this one, a really delightful white wine.

The FT’s award-winning Tech Tonic podcast has launched a series on climate technology. In yesterday’s instalment, host Pilita Clark visits Iceland to meet the engineers and scientists working on direct air carbon capture.

Top stories today

• Call for state help | Britain will struggle to create an industry producing sustainable aviation fuel unless the government provides regular subsidies to manufacturers, leading airlines and airports have warned.

• Today’s OBR handover | Jeremy Hunt will set out measures totalling £60bn at the Autumn Statement under current plans, including at least £35bn in cuts, and up to £25bn of tax rises, which are likely to include freezing income tax thresholds and targeting dividend tax relief, the Guardian reports. Ministers must submit the key points of the statement to the Office for Budget Responsibility by this morning.

• British ‘betrayal’ | Political infighting in the Tory party during the cost of living crisis is a “betrayal of the British people”, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey told party members in a speech yesterday, the BBC reports. Over the past week the Lib Dems have announced several new policies, including offering struggling homeowners a £300-a-month grant to pay off mortgages.

• Children’s data risk | The UK’s data protection regulator has reprimanded the Department for Education for giving improper access to identifying information on up to 28mn children, which was used to conduct age verification checks for gambling companies.

• ‘Losing one habitat for another’ | A campaign in a Welsh village speaks to a wider battle playing out in rural communities across the UK between new investors seeking to utilise state incentives for tree planting and residents, who fear such projects will harm local economies and ecology.