Despairing and angry, yet also defiant and sanguine — the mood in the Tory party is markedly divided after the Supreme Court humiliated prime minister Boris Johnson and his government by declaring his prorogation of parliament “unlawful”.
This contrasting emotions were exposed by the febrile atmosphere on the government benches after the unexpected return of parliament on Wednesday. The mixture of support and criticisms from Conservative MPs underscored the divide between those who still fully support Mr Johnson’s Brexit strategy, and those who think the wheels are coming off his government.
But the PM is not alone in taking the blame. Some of the ire is being directed at Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is blamed by several MPs for drawing up the prorogation plan. “There is real anger at Jacob,” said one senior MP. “Colleagues are really pissed off at his strategy to shut down parliament. He has made us look utterly ridiculous.”
Others are blaming attorney-general Geoffrey Cox, who told Mr Johnson the prorogation was lawful. But his angry diatribe at the despatch box — declaring “this parliament is a dead parliament” — looks to have eased the feelings of some Brexiters.
“There was anger at Cox yesterday, but his bravado performance may have dissipated some of it,” said one government official. “It was half inspiring, half utterly mental.”
A number of MPs have privately called for a clear out of officials in Downing Street, particularly the prime minister’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings and Nikka da Costa, the legislative affairs adviser, who was involved in drawing up the prorogation plan. “Our incompetence is cutting through, something at the top has to change,” said one.
One Whitehall official pointed out that both Mr Cummings and Ms da Costa are “leaving anyway” — the former is set to have a long-planned operation on October 31 while the latter is soon heading on maternity leave. “There is no chance they’re coming back after this.” But Downing Street insiders said it was “laughable” to suggest that Mr Cummings would quit.
Inside Mr Johnson’s inner circle, the mood was initially combustible — one official said the prime minister was “apoplectic” after the ruling, another said it was “entirely unexpected, there was no plan, it caught us totally off guard”.
But as Downing Street digested the response to the ruling, officials believe it will ultimately “reinforce” their argument for an upcoming election that “there is only one party — and one person in particular — who wants to get Brexit done.”
One Number 10 official said “internally we are very relaxed. The team are united in a common goal of leaving the EU — it’s a very similar atmosphere to the Vote Leave office.”
“Everyone appreciates that it is going to be a bumpy period, as there are very powerful forces who want to cancel the referendum. We should not pretend this is about stopping no deal, it’s about stopping Brexit altogether,” the individual added.
Those in Mr Johnson’s core team put the tensions in parliament down to “MPs facing the reality of the vote in 2016 when they pledged they would deliver on the result of the referendum.”
“Westminster makes a lot of noise at these moments. But when you look back two to three months, often these incidents weren’t of great consequence in the grand narrative,” a Downing Street insider said, adding that voters may punish those who “want to dither, delay and frustrate Brexit . . . when the election comes”.
Sources close to the cabinet agreed that ministers were still behind Mr Johnson’s strategy. “There is no sense of any change in Number 10. They said it would be a wild ride and they’d deliver Brexit by any means necessary. There’s no bubbling sense in the cabinet about a need to change direction.”
Other Tory parliamentarians direct their anger at the Supreme Court. “Nobody expected they would interfere so strongly,” said one senior MP who was “very, very annoyed” at having to return to parliament, describing the end of prorogation as “unforced error”.
The MP added: “The courts are acting where parliament should have acted. If MPs didn’t like the prorogation, it could have brought the government down in a no-confidence vote. Parliament isn’t functioning properly, but it is not up to the courts to decide to interfere in prorogation when it has never done so before.”
The government has taken some comfort that while parliament has spent its first day back debating the Supreme Court ruling, Brexit as well as Iran, MPs have yet to come up with a meaningful plan to upend Mr Johnson’s strategy to leave the EU.
“What has actually changed? Not a lot. Proroguing hasn’t shifted the strategy. Parliament will be annoying but they aren’t actually able to do anything that problematic. So we just have to wait and see if the PM can bring back a new deal,” said one Whitehall official.
Another official said “we’re focused on getting on with delivering Brexit. The country isn’t interested in legal machinations or parliamentary games.”
But other senior Conservatives believe that the events of the last 24 hours have proven that the “blitzkrieg” strategy of Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings to deliver Brexit is damaging the prime minister and events may have spun out of his control.
One influential MP said Mr Cummings was “trying to make the prime minister look like a hard man bulldozing his way through the obstacles to delivering Brexit. But in reality, parliament has made him their marionette, dancing to their tune until he’s been humiliated by having to delay Brexit till after October 31.”
