PMQs: Boris counter attack on Manchester Covid measures leaves Starmer on the back foot

At PMQs, Boris Johnson went some way to correct the government’s communications failures from yesterday, when negotiations with local leaders in Greater Manchester collapsed.

Asked by Keir Starmer to “stop bargaining with people’s lives and provide the [financial] support that’s needed in Manchester”, Johnson responded: “This government has already given Greater Manchester £1.1bn in support for business, £200m in extra un-ringfenced funding, £50m to tackle infections in care homes, £20m for Test and Trace, another £22m for the local response that we announced yesterday, and yesterday the Mayor of Greater Manchester was offered a further £60m, which he turned down.”

He added that the £60m offered yesterday would still be distributed to Manchester’s local authorities, and praised Conservative MPs in the region for working with the government. After Mayor Andy Burnham yesterday suggested that the government had removed the £60m from the table, this counter-attack led to the loudest roar of support from the government backbenches in several weeks, and left Keir Starmer on the back foot.

Johnson has done enough to stave off a Tory rebellion later today when the House votes on an Opposition Day motion calling for “a clear and fair national criteria for financial support for jobs and businesses in areas facing additional restrictions.”

Still, the Prime Minister’s parliamentary troubles over the regional tiers system will continue in other forms. He continues to face opposition from his party over the very principle of imposing local restrictions. Sir Graham Brady, the usually-reticent chair of the powerful 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers has been hitting the airwaves in recent days and casting doubt over the science behind a Covid-suppression strategy.

“The devastating effect on mental health and other aspects of people’s health, which we now know after the experience of the lockdown earlier in the year, is part of the cost of pursuing lockdown policies,” Brady told Sky News yesterday. Ultimately, we know what works, which is a combination of social distancing and hand hygiene.”

The views of Brady and other sceptical Tories will likely play out in a series of votes to be held in the coming weeks affirming the government’s tiers system. Given that Labour is now opposed to the system on the basis that only a full lockdown will reduce infections, a Conservative rebellion of 40 or more on any one of the votes could lead to an embarrassing government defeat.

There’s also parliamentary trouble for Johnson on the financial front. The Treasury has confirmed that next month’s Spending Review, setting out ministers’ resources and capital budget, will only account for the coming fiscal year rather than the rest of the parliament. This puts the Integrated Review on hold, with the government delaying any meaningful decisions on the future of the defence forces until at least next year.

While the move will come as a blow to the security establishment, most will sympathise with the Treasury’s insistence that the economic environment is insufficiently stable for the government to make long term commitments.

Johnson will, in the coming weeks and months, have to answer to two perilous and increasingly-organised forces within his own party: those outraged by the societal impact of the government’s strategy, led by Sir Graham Brady, and those concerned about the financial impact, led by Chancellor Rishi Sunak. In such a context, going to war with regional Labour leaders seems an ideal way for the Prime Minister to distract, and momentarily unite, his fractured party.