14.6 C
New York
Sunday, October 6, 2024

How I got Johnson to face reality and defended ‘spineless chickenshit’ Tory MPs

Throughout the psychodrama of Brexit and its aftermath there was one, largely silent, figure who remained even as prime ministers came and went.

Indeed, voters came to understand that when Graham Brady did actually speak it was only a matter of time before another body was carried out of Downing Street.

Now Lord Brady of Altrincham, the former chairman of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee has written his account from the very inside of the drama – and the chaos was even worse than we imagined.

Consider this from when Tory MPs were being asked to defend Dominic Cummings in the wake of revelations that he had broken lockdown by driving his wife and child to Barnard Castle.

As their ‘shop steward’ Sir Graham asked to see Boris Johnson.

“I saw Boris in his Commons office at 8:30 on Thursday morning. He opened the door looking like shit: frizzy hair and black rings around his eyes,” he writes.

“‘This is damaging the party, the government and damaging you personally. Colleagues are really angry.’ Boris spat back: ‘I think backbench MPs have been contemptible! They have been spineless chickenshit. They need to develop some backbone. The 2019 guys need to understand that they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Dom.’”

He then records how he told the prime minister that nobody believed Cummings. “‘No sane person would drive their wife and small child 30 miles to test his eyesight!’ Boris looked totally perplexed at this. ‘HE’S NOT SANE!’ He replied, as though that should have been obvious. I briefly wondered whether Boris was also losing it.”

Speaking to the i at his publishers’ office in Bloomsbury, Lord Brady agrees that finally breaking his silence after 14 years of inscrutability has been fun. Some of his colleagues, however, are annoyed that he has let daylight in on, if not magic, then corners they thought forever private.

“All the Prime Ministers write their own books,” he says in his defence. “I would say that the fact that I leaked nothing for 14 years puts me well ahead of the vast majority of people in politics, and certainly well ahead of most people who served in Conservative cabinets over that period.”

He adds that he has not revealed who wrote the letters of no confidence that triggered the exits of two of the last five Tory PMs, Johnson and Theresa May. He also left out what he describes as “smut”.

And he makes the point that parts of the book are as uncomfortable for him as the other actors, such as when he recounts being told that he had to repay £3,000 in parliamentary expenses – money he did not have.

He says he tried to help prime ministers navigate their way out of trouble – even when he didn’t agree with them. “I hope that when the book has been published, whilst I don’t expect them all to be delighted about everything I say, I hope they will see that they’re taken in the round and in a context, and working from the notes that I took, which were what I thought at the time. And I took the view that I should be honest about some things I might prefer not to say from my own point of view as well.”

“So okay, I said some critical things about Theresa May’s management style. I’ve also said that she was always completely decent and that I admired her commitment to public service. David Cameron, I’m critical of in some passages, I also say he said he wanted to be Prime Minister because he thought he’d be rather good at it, and by and large, he was until the moment when he couldn’t keep the plate spinning.”

How I got Johnson to face reality and defended ‘spineless chickenshit’ Tory MPs
Graham Brady announcing the rules of the Tory leadership contest after Liz Truss resigned in October 2022

While on the whole he says he didn’t find it hard to keep secret the running total of ‘no confidence’ letters – and he enjoys teasing journalists who consistently got it wrong – he admits it got harder when it started getting close to the trigger as when Johnson neared the exit.

“I was walking down library corridor [just off the Commons Chamber], and a colleague was walking the other way, and as he passed me, took an envelope from his pocket and said, ‘I wish it wasn’t going to come to this’ and gave me the letter. And of course, that was the one that was triggered [a no confidence vote]. I couldn’t in any way show that that was the case. I walked back to my office, sat down, my head in my hands, just trying to calm. Two minutes later, somebody knocked on the door and a colleague came in and said, ‘It’s just not the right time’ [and withdrew their letter].

There really was a safe – a locked box in a locked cupboard – in which he kept the letters (and printouts of emails). It is now at his home in Altrincham. His successor, Sir Bob Blackman, was perplexed to find the safe had gone when he inherited the ‘22 Chairman’s Commons office. “I told Bob he could get one on office costs,” he laughs.

Despite his ringside seat at the theatre of the absurd that is Westminster, he says he is not angry at their folly. The job of being a PM is extremely difficult and even backbenchers have a tough time, he says, and voters have unrealistic expectations of their MPs.

“The parliamentary system, in my view, is entirely predicated on the idea that you will choose a representative, you will let him or her go away for four or five years making decisions on your behalf, and at the end of that period, you will arrive at a balanced judgement, as we think on the whole they’ve been good or bad. Now, people expect instant answers. They expect you always to be saying and voting what they think about that thing. And I think an awful lot of it is probably driven by social media and even emails and the internet.”

Lord Brady will remain an important voice in Conservative politics for years to come. He has not so far endorsed any of the leadership candidates but stresses the need for it to rediscover its ability to be both a broad church and true to what he sees as essential Tory values of low taxation and individual responsibility and freedom. He has little time for those that want to make common cause with Nigel Farage.

“I think in the context of having just run an election campaign with the principal goal as being the destruction of the Conservative Party, it would be very difficult to see how that could happen.”

  • Kingmaker by Sir Graham Brady is published on September 26

Source link

Related Articles

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Stay Connected

0FansLike
0FollowersFollow
0SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Articles