This vote marks the beginning of the end for Boris Johnson

There is a school of thought, expressed by Fraser Nelson here this morning, that the Prime Minister’s Tory opponents have shot their bolt too soon, that they should have waited for a couple of by-election defeats and for the emergence of a clear front-runner to replace Boris Johnson, before sending in their letters of no confidence. This analysis is right in that Johnson will very likely gain more votes that MPs vote against him this evening. Whether that really amounts to ‘winning’ is another matter. Historic precedence suggests that Keir Starmer is correct when he asserts that today’s confidence vote marks the beginning of the end for the Prime Minister.

Since 1974, Conservative leaders have faced leadership challenges/votes of confidence on six occasions. On only one of those – John Major in 1995 – did the leader in question survive to fight another general election, and we all know what happened then: he went down to the heaviest Conservative election defeat in a century.

Of the others, Edward Heath was defeated by Margaret Thatcher in the first ballot of a leadership election in 1975. Mrs Thatcher saw off her ‘stalking horse’ challenger, backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer to 314 to 33 votes in December 1989, only to face a more serious challenge from Michael Heseltine less than a year later – which she won by 204 to 152 votes, but at the cost of losing her authority. She resigned 36 hours later. Iain Duncan Smith lost a vote of confidence by 90 votes to 75. Theresa May won her confidence vote by 200 votes to 117 in December 2018, but was gone six months later.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that once a Tory leader has lost sufficient confidence so as to provoke a leadership challenge, a smell of death has settled around them. Under the rules, if Boris Johnson wins this evening we will not be able to have another formal vote of confidence for 12 months, but that will hardly put an end to the plotting any more than it did in Theresa May’s case. The matter will then be handed over to the proverbial men in grey suits just as it was with Theresa May – who soon found herself having to proffer her resignation as a carrot in order to try to win Brexit votes, unsuccessfully. The coup de grace was delivered by Sir Graham Brady when he ‘sought clarification’ as to when she would resign.

Is there anything to suppose Boris Johnson can thwart precedent and win tonight’s vote and go on to win a general election, too? In many ways he starts off in a poorer position than did his predecessors, neither of whom had been accused of breaking the law or misleading the Commons. A thumping majority was not enough to save Mrs Thatcher. Boris Johnson can no longer claim to have more support among the public than among backbench Tory MPs – the booing at Friday’s Jubilee thanksgiving service has been interpreted by many as a vote of acclamation against him. Remember, by contrast, how he drew cheers – and George Osborne boos – at the Olympics ten years ago.

Any reasoned assessment of the Prime Minister’s chances would conclude that he will have an extremely difficult task surviving this challenge, and this if the end does not come this evening it is very likely to come at some point over the coming months.

Team Boris doesn’t have long to convince the waverers

Now that the confidence vote in Boris Johnson’s leadership is on, Conservative MPs have suddenly become very busy, while senior Tories are breaking cover to declare that they no longer support the Prime Minister either. Jeremy Hunt, currently the favourite to replace Johnson with some bookies, has surprised no one by announcing that ‘today I will be voting for change’. 

Perhaps more surprising has been the resignation of Johnson’s anti-corruption tsar John Penrose, who sent his letter in this morning. Penrose said he couldn’t continue as an anti-corruption champion given the Prime Minister had, in his view, clearly concluded he had broken the ministerial code:

As a result, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be honourable or right for me to remain as your anti-corruption champion after reaching this conclusion, not for you to remain as Prime Minister either. I hope you will now stand aside so we can look to the future and choose your successor.

The suspicion among those around Johnson is that there are two main groups who are agitating against him: One Nation types, seen as the more centrist elements of the party, and a small rump of people who are in some way prosecuting Brexit. There is also, though, a ‘God Squad element’, according to one cabinet minister, pointing to Steve Baker, Andrea Leadsom and Gary Streeter – all prominent Christians who have strongly criticised Johnson or called for him to go.

In the meantime, the whipping operation around Johnson is trying to get back into gear, having been largely quiet over the past week or so. One of the problems, explains a Johnson supporter, is that ringing around MPs in the Jubilee week would have attracted even more attention to the instability of the Prime Minister. 

But it does mean that MPs who are deeply worried about Johnson’s leadership – but who are still keen to hear reasons why they shouldn’t vote against him tonight – haven’t heard anything. One 2019er who says they are not ‘brimming with confidence’ has yet to be contacted. Many MPs are still on their way back down to Westminster from their constituencies because the Commons doesn’t sit until 2.30 p.m. this afternoon. Of course, one downside of having lots of Red Wall MPs is that they have longer train journeys than their shire colleagues. It is much harder to have these kinds of conversations on the phone or on WhatsApp than it is face to face. This means that the work to convince wavering MPs is unlikely to start in earnest until a couple of hours before the voting starts.

In defence of Swedish hospitality

The debate about Swedish hospitality started on Reddit – a forum otherwise known for such profound discussions as ‘Can you watch porn on a hotel’s wifi?’ – and has now gone global. Even the New York Times has weighed in with an article entitled: ‘Do Swedish People Feed Their Guests?’ 

Suddenly, it seems, the world is talking about Sweden’s lack of domestic warmth. Here in Stockholm, the buzz was first brushed off as a joke. When the subject started trending on Twitter, it was in all seriousness thought to be the potential work of Russian troll factories; professional provocateurs spreading disinformation and propaganda.

The famously neutral Sweden has just taken the historic decision to apply for Nato membership. Defence experts have warned us and fellow applicant country Finland that we’re facing a dangerous period of all manner of threats and provocations – from Russian military jets trespassing on our airspace to more subtle operations, aiming to tarnish the Nordic countries’ reputations. But really, would the Kremlin bother with meatballs and pickled herring? Or is that exactly what they want us to think? (It’s very much a paranoid Cold War vibe here).

The whole fuss is difficult to comprehend from a Swedish point of view, not least because we’re already seen as frosty and aloof. If surveys showed Mediterranean countries like Italy or Spain scraping the bottom of the hospitality league, that would be news.

Also, are you sure you want to eat a full Swedish meal? We don’t need Moscow to tell us that our best dishes are all imported.
Ask any Swede in a relatively large city what they’ve dined on over the weekend and it won’t be our traditional sturdy fare of meat and potatoes. Rather, it’s Thai takeaway or homemade tacos on Friday, sushi or a Chicken Korma on Saturday, and the classic Italian hungover treat of greasy pizza (or a Turkish kebab) come Sunday.

In TasteAtlas.com‘s June 2022 ranking of the world’s best cuisines, Sweden doesn’t make the list. Bolivia, Uruguay and Slovenia, perhaps not renowned as global gourmand Meccas, hog the final places of 48, 49 and 50 respectively. (Italy, naturalmente, grabs the number one spot.)

But, as stories take on their own life online and move further and further away from the original piece, it should be pointed out that #Swedengate started as criticism of the perceived habit of not inviting your kids’ playmates to dine with the family. In other words, a specific situation that has little to do with the adult world. I can assure you that Swedes do offer their guests coffee, snacks, dinner, dessert, wine, whatever they like. We’re not total barbarians up here, and the courtesy of letting guests slaughter their own meats is thankfully behind us.

I’ve lost count of how many Swedes announced, tongue-in-cheek on June 6 that they would celebrate our National Day by not inviting their children’s friends to dinner. But is there truth to that claim? Yes. And no. It varies wildly. Foreign-born writers have told of their culture shock at encountering the phenomenon (‘in our home, not feeding guests was taboo!’).

Being born and raised in Sweden by Swedish parents, I remember it clearly from my childhood, but not with dismay. I loved remaining in my friend’s rooms reading instead of being forced to make stiff conversations with their parents.

And this, of course, is the core of #Swedengate – hard individualism challenged by foreign, more social cultures and the ensuing clashes of everyday customs. Much is made in European nationalist circles of our ‘wave of imported crime’ (rape as a native Swedish tradition going back to Viking times is conveniently forgotten).

The hospitality debate is a reminder that some of our less charming Swedish traits have been softened by the advent of multiculturalism. We should be thankful for it.

Estonian PM: When will Macron stop talking to genocidal Putin?

Alongside Britain, Estonia has been among Kyiv’s staunchest allies in its efforts to repulse Putin’s forces, delivering more military equipment to Ukraine since February as a portion of GDP per capita than any other country in the world. Kaja Kallas, its prime minister, is in London today and spoke at her country’s embassy. She took questions on a range of topics and didn’t hold back – especially when it came to Emmanuel Macron.

He has tried to position himself as a mediator between Putin and the west throughout this conflict, only to end up being played like a $10 banjo. The Ukrainians are unwilling to cede territory to force while the Russians don’t want to lose face. After Macron’s latest initiative at the weekend – his latest repeat of the call not to humiliate Russia – Kyiv’s foreign minister Dmitro Kuleba hit back and rebuked the president’s position, saying it ‘can only humiliate France’. Asked about Macron at the Estonian embassy in London this morning, Kallas had this to say:-

Coming to Macron, I spoke to him about these things. I tried to say: look at the definition of genocide – if you will to wipe off a nation, or part of a nation – and act accordingly. This is [according to] the Genocide Convention. This is what Putin is doing: literally. So every time you talk to him, that should also be kept in mind… Talking about ‘off ramps’ and ‘saving face,’ I mean: Putin can well save face by going back to Russia. They are in a sovereign country, trying to occupy that country and part of that territory. Look at the statements that the soldiers have made who are on the battlefield. There is an intention to ‘rape every Nazi whore, killing the Nazis, liberating people from the Nazis’, ‘this de-Nazification’ – it definitely works as propaganda and this is going on [against] the Genocide Convention. 

So I don’t see any point in really talking to him [Putin] if we want to get the message through that he’s isolated. And also get the message through that you will not get unpunished for this. You will have to be held accountable for all the crimes committed because that was in the Nuremberg Trial… war crimes are not committed by any abstract entity, but by individuals. The individuals are also held – or should be held accountable ­– for these things. So this is my worry of talking to him. And as long as this goes on, it means that Russia has the feeling that ‘we are winning and they will forgive us.’ This is the negotiation tactics that they have had so long.

Will such caustic comments dissuade Macron from such further Russian dalliances in the future? Mr S for one won’t be holding his breath.

Dorries goes for Hunt amid Tory civil war

Ding, ding, ding! In the blue corner, it’s Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary and Boris-backer par excellence. And, er, also in the blue corner, is Jeremy Hunt, her fellow Tory MP and noted Johnson critic. Ahead of tonight’s no-confidence vote, Hunt has (finally) nailed his colours to the mast and admitted he will not be voting in support of the man who he ran against in 2019. Hunt tweeted this morning that:

‘Anyone who believes our country is stronger, fairer & more prosperous when led by Conservatives should reflect that the consequence of not changing will be to hand the country to others who do not share those values. Today’s decision is change or lose. I will be voting for change.’

That declaration prompted an enraged Dorries to hit back an hour later, responding with the kind of vitriol usually reserved for wounded mothers defending a favoured son. The former health minister fired off a series of howitzers at her parliamentary colleague, issuing a four-tweet threat that cited a phone conversation she had with Hunt back in June 2020.

Dorries claimed that Hunt told her that the UK should ‘handle the pandemic following the example set by the East/China’, something to which she responded that the ‘British people would never tolerate being removed from their homes and loved ones’. She continued that ‘your handling of the pandemic would have been a disaster’ adding ‘your pandemic preparation during six years as health secretary was found wanting and inadequate’. Ouch.

If all that wasn’t enough, Dorries concluded her riposte by telling Hunt that he is ‘destabilising the party and country to serve your own personal ambition’, that he told her after the 2019 election in Victoria Street that the government ‘would swiftly collapse on back of Brexit’ and he ‘would swoop in’ and that ‘if you had been leader you’d have handed the keys of No10 to Corbyn.’ She added cuttingly ‘You’ve been wrong about almost everything, you are wrong again now.’

With fights breaking out all over the place in parliament, will there be much of a party left to lead, regardless of tonight’s result?

The thrilling misogyny of Love Island

The thought of Love Island starting tonight gives me that same fuzzy feeling I had as a child when I lost a tooth, aware that I’d be waking up a slightly richer woman. I realised after years of turning my nose up at the show that – once you get past the initial guilt – watching trivial nonsense is a bit of a sugar rush. All your friends are watching and, crucially, badmouthing, the young 20-somethings prancing across our screens each night.

Love Island is a moral vacuum, one that much of the nation loves being sucked into. Good manners are cast out the villa window and what is frowned upon in the real world – infidelity, nastiness and misogyny – is amped up, even celebrated.

If you aren’t familiar with Love Island, the show begins with bikinied women in high heels lined up like Barbies on a Toys ‘R’ Us shelf, stepping forward if they like the man brought out in front of them. The men choose their partner – but the joke is that the men appear one by one. What if, having seen the other male contestants, the newly coupled-up women prefer someone else? Tough. ‘Isn’t that all a bit sexist?’ I’d normally ask myself. It seems skewed to encourage female jealousy. But they sign up for it, and we all want to watch it, so time to set aside the moralising and have a good chuckle. After all, it’s fundamental to the show.

And they really do sign-up for it in their droves. However vacuous you think these people are, (and some really are) appearing on the show has become something of a viable career option. Each year, men and women throw their long-term jobs away for six to eight weeks in Majorca, in a seemingly desperate attempt to find love. In 2018, Rosie Williams quit her job as a solicitor to appear on the show. She was booted off after just 20 days, one of five seemingly-fame demented law graduates to enter the villa. Last year, halfwit Hugo left his job as a teacher to try to find love (or was it sleb status he was after?). While in the villa, his school publicly announced that there was no chance they’d have him back. Another twist in the thrilling silliness of the whole thing.

Contestants – invariably the women – spend hundreds of pounds on non-surgical ‘tweakments’ to become the perfect Love Island contestant. Last year, one islander, A.J., admitted she spent £1,000 the month before the show on four sessions of filler. There was little point. At the ripe old age of 28, she was swiftly labelled a granny by the British public and voted off.

The misogyny of Love Island is so pervasive that even the most ardent feminists fall victim to its dimfluencer culture. Viewers with #BeKind plastered all over their social media find themselves whispering that this or that contestant could have done with a crash diet or that a contestant’s bikini makes her look saggy. Last year one contestant, Faye Winter, faced weeks of social media cruelty over the shade of her lipstick, an unflattering shade of brown. We hate ourselves for saying it, but isn’t that part of the fun? Every night for six weeks we switch off our feminism and switch on the guilty pleasure of petty bitching.

Why does Love Island get a free pass? You could explore the erosion of traditionalist values or point the finger at permissive third-wave feminism. Or you could see it for what it is: misogyny is entertaining. When it’s happening to others, away from viewers’ own lives, there’s something titillating about the whole thing. These perfect women are systematically turned against each other for nothing more than a date with Scott, the 22-year-old plasterer from Wigan. It’s ridiculous. That’s why 4.2 million of us tune in every week.

We may feel like we’re better than these Love Island stars, with our office jobs and Pret a Manger subscriptions, but perhaps it’s them who are getting the last laugh. Molly Mae is now sitting comfortably on £2 million after she and her TV boyf were runners-up in 2019. Most contestants get enough exposure to bag some social media sponsorship deals. They might even, in the first few months out of the villa, get to live the life of a low-grade celebrity. 

But is it really worth it? Look at Molly Mae, who earlier this year tried to make a well-intentioned but ill-expressed comment on the power of self-motivation. She was abused for days as some brainless Thatcherite with her comment that:

You’re given one life and it’s down to you what you do with it… I understand we all have different backgrounds and we’re all raised in different ways and we do have different financial situations, but I think if you want something enough you can achieve it… I’ve worked my absolute arse off to get where I am now.

I doubt most other C list celebrities would have been met with the same level of vitriol as she got for those comments. Feminists sometimes talk about ‘objectification’. Well, if you want evidence of it, just look at Mollie Mae. Fans wanted her to be pretty and shut up. To just sell a bit of make-up on TikTok and turn up as a ‘VIP’ to the occasional Essex nightclubs.

It’s a testament to how well the show conditions its fans, how well it inculcates cruelty towards its contestants, that this anodyne expression of girlboss ideology was met with such harsh criticism. That cruelty is at the heart of the show. Really, when it comes down to it, Love Island is a bit like a catcall: it’s sexist, and as feminists we are supposed to be disgusted by it. But sometimes we can’t help but secretly love it.

We’ll miss Boris if he goes

Boris Johnson is often talked about as the luckiest politician on earth — and in a sense he has been. Outrageous fortune powered his ascent. A child of privilege, he always seemed to get away with it, no matter what it might be. In elections, his timing has been almost miraculously perfect, culminating in his big win over the hapless Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.

But Lady Luck turns out to be the cruellest mistress Boris ever had. She built him up to tear him down. And if this ‘Jubilee Coup’ — and tonight’s vote of no confidence — end up removing him from power, he may be looked back on as one of Britain’s unluckiest Prime Ministers. Many will feel delight at his demise. Many will be relieved. Those feelings won’t last. They hate him now. They’d miss him soon after he’s gone. Jeremy Hunt? Liz Truss? Ben Wallace? Tom Tugendhat? Come on.

It will be Covid that kills Johnson’s premiership in the end — having nearly killed him outright in April 2020. He never really recovered. The virus fogged up everything. The pandemic’s impact on the economy is arguably the biggest factor in the cost-of-living crisis that now subterraneously drives Boris’s demise. And without Covid, you wouldn’t have had lockdowns. Without lockdowns, you wouldn’t have partygate.

Historians may look back and marvel at how, as inflation ripped up the British economy and possible world war rattled Eastern Europe, the British press managed for several months to sustain its fixation on a series of boring parties in Number 10. Because it will be hard to understand the post-pandemic bitterness towards the people in power.

I have a childhood memory of the hatred many people felt towards Thatcher. The mass loathing of Boris — the booing this weekend — is different. Thatcher didn’t mind being hated because she had fixed beliefs: an ideology, for better or worse.

Boris’s political philosophy has always been far looser. And that’s why the popular rage against him is more like contempt: people hate him for not believing in anything. It’s still psychotic, though, and contagious: a TikTok video this weekend joked with strange seriousness about boarding up Number 10 and burning it down with the residents still inside. Lol!

British people bond by hating things or people together. In Boris, Brexit-loving and lockdown-hating libertarians and lockdown-loving and Brexit-hating socialists have found a common foe. And as more and more Tories turn on the Prime Minister, the power of Boris-hate grows as it festers. But it won’t be long before these people remember they can’t stand each other: And then what? Keir Starmer?

From now on, Boris is in a daily fight for survival

Up until now, the Tory leadership rules have protected Boris Johnson. The requirement that 15 per cent of MPs must send in a letter sets a high bar for a no-confidence ballot, as demonstrated by how long it took the rebels to get the numbers against both Johnson and May. But from now on, the rules work against him.

The reason for this is that because the bar is so high for a no-confidence ballot it means that a substantial number of the leader’s own MPs will vote no confidence in them. Once that has happened it cannot be undone. Johnson will be wounded by the result tonight even if he wins. If he gets less than the 63 per cent of the vote that Theresa May got, he will be in a particularly bad way.

The worry for Johnson is that it is hard to see how he could bring the party back together even if he wins tonight. The only thing unifying the rebels is their opposition to his leadership, there is no policy solution that would placate them. (Indeed, if the rebels were more organised they might have had the strategic patience to wait until after the by-elections on 23 June at which point it would have been more likely for Johnson to lose). So, the rebels will keep coming, keep pressing for a rule change that will allow another vote within a year.

Johnson will likely win tonight’s vote. But that does not mean he will lead the Tories into the next election or even that he is safe for another year. He will now be engaged in a daily fight for survival.

The Tories are becoming ungovernable

Today’s no-confidence vote in Boris Johnson is best seen as the next stage of a determined long-term plot to bring him down rather than as a stand-alone event. That is to say, Johnson will not be safe or restored to anything like full political health simply by winning it. Unless he triumphs by a crushing margin, he will have been further weakened and face new waves of attacks from a Labour opposition into whose lap huge amounts of extra ammunition will have been deposited by Conservative backbenchers.

One can almost already hear Keir Starmer at PMQs this week making the taunting observation that ‘more than a hundred of the people sitting behind him right now agree with most of the British people that he isn’t fit for office’. The spectacle of Johnson struggling to keep his head above water – and internal plots against PMs are always in part a mass spectator sport – will further weaken Tory prospects in both of the impending by-elections; one in Johnson’s northern Red Wall, one in the traditional Tory Blue Wall.

So don’t believe Conservative loyalists who claim that any numerical win this evening automatically ends the uncertainty about whether this PM will lead the party into the next election. Indeed, it is far more likely that Johnson will be pitched even deeper into crisis as soon as the morning of Friday 24 June when the by-election results in Wakefield and in Tiverton & Honiton have been declared.

Exactly six years after his Brexit referendum triumph he will very likely be staring at the damage caused by a double-barrelled blast from both parts of the electoral coalition he forged. So, having given their most activist parliamentary picadors the green light to weaken the bull, logic suggests that many Tory MPs will decide their only option is to make sure he is killed. This will in turn swell the anti-Johnson vote tonight, especially given the secret nature of the ballot.

It is not impossible for an embattled Tory PM to fend off internal opposition once a crisis point has been reached. John Major managed it under different rules in 1995 when he beat John Redwood in a self-induced leadership contest by 218 votes to 89. Yet the result still ultimately proved another nail in Major’s coffin when Redwood’s campaign slogan – ‘no change, no chance’ – was borne out less than two years later by a landslide general election defeat.

Much more recently, in December 2018, Theresa May won a confidence vote by 200 to 117. The party rules supposedly dictated that this made her safe for a year. In fact, she was drummed out of office just seven months later after disastrous European election results.

The disingenuous postures of many of Johnson’s parliamentary critics – combining a challenge to him of ‘why aren’t you ahead in the polls?’ with an incessant public chorus of ‘you’re useless and a liar’ – is likely to be found repellent by a big chunk of Tory supporters. Yet this in turn will tend to further depress the party’s poll rating and further weaken Johnson’s position.

If he pulls through it will be by the skin of his teeth and his arithmetic parliamentary majority of more than 70 could soon feel more like an ungovernable rabble, in reality, hamstringing his ability to enact radical policies popular with Tory-leaning voters. That would be another gift to Starmer and Labour.

Were there an obvious established successor to Johnson who had already demonstrated an ability to put together a winning electoral coalition then the plotting against him would make more sense. In fact, any replacement will walk into Downing Street as an unknown to millions of voters and without any personal mandate for whatever policy programme they propose. This, more than anything else, is the consideration in favour of Johnson that will weigh heaviest in the minds of uncommitted Tory MPs today.

Those with specific beefs against him – whether over Brexit or their own truncated careers – are by now unbiddable. But cooler heads will worry that switching back to a conventional Home Counties-orientated Tory agenda will present Labour with a walkover in 40-plus Red Wall seats. Any replacement to Johnson is likely to be seen as a fag end premier, lacking legitimacy and simply marking time before the party’s next ominous appointment with the electorate.

The man once dubbed by David Cameron as the ‘greased piglet’ of politics is in his tightest spot yet. But not every escape route is completely closed off to him yet.

The dilemma facing Tory MPs

There are two questions for Tory MPs today. One, do they believe that the PM will cost them or save them their seats at the next general election. Two, how pernicious to confidence in the important institutions of government is the widespread perception that the politician at its apex is dishonest.

The first question is about the future of the Tory party. The other is about the future of the UK. They are of course linked. Tory critics of Mr Johnson say that he is now, in the words of one, ‘our Jeremy Corbyn’, by which they mean large numbers of potential Conservative voters will never again vote for their party while he is leader.

But Mr Johnson’s supporters say he is the most formidable campaigner their party has known in the modern era, and if anyone can turn round the ailing fortunes of the Tories it is him.

The widespread expectation is that Johnson will win tonight. But no Tory MP to whom I have spoken believes he can stay PM for more than a few days if he were to win by just a single vote – despite what his spokespeople say. Being supported by just over half of his MPs is no mandate because it would mean that the vast majority of backbench MPs – who do not owe their ministerial jobs to his goodwill – would be against him.

But if he secures two-thirds of the vote, he’s safe in the job at least for a year – the time limit before another vote can be held – and possibly till at least the next general election. It is in that no man’s land of Johnson winning somewhere between a half and two-thirds of the vote where the Tory party would have a dilemma – to decide whether or not he retains sufficient authority.

And if you hear anyone in the coming hours forecasting the result with apparent certainty, you are listening to a fool or a propagandist. We are about to witness a secret ballot of a tiny electorate most of whom have a powerful motive to lie about how they plan to vote.

The attempt to depose Boris may be premature

As Tory MPs vote this evening, Jesse Norman’s letter stands as the most recent case for the deposing of the Prime Minister. But the letter itself may well end up helping Boris Johnson, given its oddly weak arguments from one of the Conservative party’s big thinkers. I’m one of those who has been disappointed with the Boris project: his lockdowns (with all of the immense social damage), a tax burden at a 70-year high, a spending-splurge instinct, lack of any idea what to do with Brexit and allowing another welfare crisis to incubate due to lack of attention. But Norman mentions none of these things. And it raises questions as to what the alternative plan is.

In his letter, Norman talks about the No. 10 lockdown parties – but does not say whether the laws made went too far. This focuses on the relatively trivial at the expense of the substantial. And to a lot of Tories, these birthday cake incidents were put into perspective by the slaughter of Ukrainians by Russian forces and Boris Johnson’s swift response – behind which the rest of Europe fell in line. That is a factor when assessing his leadership.

Another factor is the vaccine taskforce which, oddly, Norman doesn’t mention. His wife, Kate Bingham, led that taskforce – an unprecedented enterprise set free from the Whitehall bureaucracy, that only Johnson would have set up. Norman has previously spoken a lot about this saying he spent 2020 ‘supporting my extraordinary wife… in her work on the Vaccine Task Force. We worked round the clock, with me on furlough, her on vaccines. Someone described us as ‘Mr Tax and Mrs Vax’.’ Would she have had that job if anyone else had been in No. 10?

Norman’s main target is No. 10’s plan to reform the Northern Ireland Protocol – which he describes as ‘almost certainly illegal’. A controversial phrase: after the purge of the Tory Remainers (Norman has never declared his position on Brexit) the Tory party is now dominated by MPs who think that the UK parliament now decides what’s legal – and that this, indeed, was the whole point of Brexit. So under our constitution, how can a law passed by Parliament and signed by the Queen be illegal?

All this highlights the potential for post-Boris Tory splits because half – perhaps even most – of Tory MPs agree with Lord Frost that reforming the Protocol would safeguard rather than (as Norman says) threaten the union by toning down what they regard as vexatious checks imposed on goods entering Northern Ireland from the UK. Any Tory leader stood on a platform of protecting the Protocol would be asked difficult questions about this. Some 20 per cent of all checks in the EU’s borders are taking place in Northern Ireland – which has less than 1 per cent of its population. Is this acceptable – and if not, why accept it? Not a single unionist elected to the Assembly backs the Protocol. So is it democratically tenable and, if not, how should a democracy respond?

Norman once argued that Theresa May’s proposed Brexit compromise was ‘the only deal on the table or remotely likely to be on the table.’ Johnson proved him wrong on that. Yes, Johnson does regard himself as being unconfined by convention: what Tories need to ask is whether this instinct is still useful.

Norman’s final point is the most important. He says that Johnson staying in No. 10 ‘makes a decisive change of government at the election much more likely’. Tories who think this should vote to depose Johnson this evening. But they won’t, because the logic is not as clear.

In politics, it’s always a choice: you have to name the person who would plausibly do it better. If Johnson staying makes a Tory defeat more likely then who would be the more effective vote-winner? The bookmakers’ favourite right now is Jeremy Hunt – is he the man to safeguard the red wall? Number two is Liz Truss: would she unite the party? Number three is Tom Tugendhat: does he have the experience needed to set up the smooth-running government that Norman calls for? Number four is Penny Mordaunt. Perhaps they’d all do it better, but Norman does not make this case – and no one else has either.

This will be the question the Tory MPs will have to ask tonight: if they depose him, who are the two or three most likely successors? And how confident are they that any of these three will represent an improvement so significant as to compensate for the spectacle of the Tories deposing a PM who won a landslide and indulging themselves in a leadership battle during a European war?

Again, perhaps there is such a leader. But no one – anywhere – has made the case for it. As such, the attempt to depose him is premature. It may fatally wound him but may also do precisely what Norman accuses Johnson of: stumbling on without any real plan as to what happens next.

The monarchy pantomime

Down on the Embankment in London, yesterday, we came upon a peculiar sight: a completely stationary parade. Floppy-hatted drummers, with a vaguely heraldic look, marched on the spot in columns. Behind them there were equestrian forms, mid-leap, with their lower halves made to look like marble statues and their upper bodies made of clockwork, trailing a huge horse’s head drawing behind it a purple crown the size of a gasometer. Behind them, phalanxes of teenagers dressed as swans, and behind them phalanxes of teenagers dressed as some sort of fish, twirled and flapped to the famous patriotic song ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’. Someone had let the dogs out, an’ all: another team of T-shirted youngsters were ‘walking’ a Battersea’s-worth of life-sized model corgis on sticks around them.

Behind them, there were gaily-painted cyclists on top, for some reason, of Land Rover Defenders. Behind them in turn was a great open-topped lorry painted all sorts of colours atop which people painted in the same sorts of colours were breakdancing and – good god – bouncing on a trampoline. And behind them were some ladies done up as giant peacocks, or fairies, or something. Far up ahead you could see a Brobdingnagian mechanical model of a blonde woman waving and blinking. I couldn’t make out if she was intended to represent Demeter, or the young Queen Elizabeth, or Millicent Fawcett, or Mary Seacole, but she looked a bit like the robot in Squid Game and she freaked my 8-year-old right the hell out.

‘Is this for the Jubilee?’ asked my 12-year-old, ‘Or is it Pride?’ Pretty sure it’s the Jubilee, I assured her – corgis, swans and Land Rover Defenders being more usually associated with this type of queen than that one. And this sort of thing, I went on to explain, is why we’re jolly well not speaking German. She gave me a look and returned to whatever she was doing on her phone. Well, I thought: Gawd bless her Majesty, on this as on all occasions. Finally, after a long period of being stationary, the parade sort of trundled forwards and the songs repeated and the Embankment, or our bit of it, fell quiet again.

The Jubilee is itself an assertion of a link to the past. This scene – when you set aside the historical specificities, such as the booming amplified music – seemed perfectly in keeping with a tradition of pageantry that goes back centuries: here were tumblers, mummers, drummers and pipers, dawdling groundlings and gawping tourists. Give or take a burning effigy of a Pope or two, it was a scene to give Peter Ackroyd a pleasant psychogeographical shudder.

The Jubilee Celebrations have shown, I think, our country’s most attractive qualities: not pomp and circumstance so much as confused enthusiasm and screaming high camp. The monarchy survives and prospers not because it is majestic, I suspect, but because it is ever so slightly absurd. It’s part of our theatrical tradition at least as much as it’s part of our constitutional tradition, and there’s probably a case to be made that the Royals were never so triumphantly themselves as when hosting It’s A Royal Knockout.

I mean, consider how close to pantomime these celebrations have been – complete with the Prime Minister, essaying the role of King Rat, being booed by the crowds, and the Duchess of Sussex deftly skirting the casting call for wicked stepsister. Even the apparent solemnities of the Jubilee Trooping the Colour had a slight flavour of the gingerbread soldiers in The Nutcracker. Here’s one of the princes capturing the heart of the nation in a sailor-suit. Here are Rod Stewart and Diana Ross belting out the oldies. Here are the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall playing themselves on EastEnders – when through the 1990s we followed the twists and turns of their lives as if they were EastEnders.

Her Majesty herself even got in on the act, appearing in a sketch with Paddington Bear (by now probably the second most beloved icon of our national identity) and revealing that she keeps a marmalade sandwich in her handbag for emergencies. That sketch cut to crowds outside Buckingham Palace pumping their arms in time to the opening bars of ‘We Will Rock You’ by, of course, Queen.

I do not point to all this silliness to deprecate it, but to marvel at it. A gaudy and jokey iconography of the royal person – all swans, crowns, handbags and corgis – is forced through a kaleidoscopic outburst of good-natured national chaos in which Paddington Bear and Her Majesty, polystyrene corgis and ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’, HM the Queen and Queen jostle merrily together. All the while such cheerfully unserious figures as Penelope Keith, Michael Palin and Alan Titchmarsh offer jocund commentary.

It’s probably what earnest Bakhtinians would identify as carnivalesque, but I prefer to see it simply as a sign of a monarchical tradition that is never more uniting and attractive than when laughing at its own eccentricities or tipping a wink to the audience like a principal boy. That’s the thing about us Brits (as I once had to explain to some outraged Russian wedding guests after my best man’s speech): taking the mickey is how we show love.

Boris to face confidence vote tonight

After months of anonymous threats and speculation, Boris Johnson will face a confidence vote by Tory MPs this evening. Announcing the news this morning, the chair of the 1922 committee Sir Graham Brady said in a statement:

‘The threshold of the 15% of the parliamentary party seeking a vote of confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party has been exceeded.

In accordance with the rules, a ballot will be held between 18:00 and 20:00 today MONDAY 6th JUNE – details to be confirmed.’

So, what comes next? No. 10 have chosen to move quickly – as Theresa May did when she faced a confidence vote and won it. It will be held this evening with the votes to be counted immediately afterwards. A Downing Street spokesperson has described the vote as ‘a chance to end months of speculation and allow the government to draw a line and move on, delivering on the people’s priorities’. They added that Johnson ‘welcomes the opportunity to make his case to MPs and will remind them that when they’re united and focused on the issues that matter to voters there is no more formidable political force’.

This vote has not come as a surprise to supporters of the Prime Minister. In the past week, there has been a consistent turn in the mood against Johnson within the Tory party – following the publication of the Sue Gray report into partygate. MPs from across the party have come out to voice their discontent. Speaking to Andrew Neil on Channel 4 on Sunday evening, business minister Paul Scully admitted that a confidence vote was likely – insisting the Prime Minister would face down his critics and win it.

However, the trouble with confidence votes is that even if a leader technically wins one, they tend to weaken rather than strengthen them – May won hers but she still left No. 10 within six months – and momentum is building against Johnson. Johnson’s supporters point out that if he wins this vote, he is technically safe from challenge for twelve months. They argue that a second challenge next year is not an issue as they could simply go for an election in 2023 instead. However, this argument has problems. If a majority of the party turns on Johnson, they will likely find other ways to pressure him out – and rules could be changed.

Former minister Jesse Norman is the latest senior conservative to come out against him – issuing a statement this morning criticising the direction of this government. Johnson and his team will use the coming hours to try to shore up his position. The belief in No. 10 is that he ought to win this comfortably – it’s why some of the rebels hoping to oust the Prime Minister would have preferred to wait until after this month’s two by-elections. But despite this, the vote presents a moment of peril for Johnson. While Johnson allies say he will fight on if he wins it no matter what the margin is, benchmarks are already being discussed as to what counts as a victory. Tonight’s vote risks exposing dwindling support for his leadership amongst a majority of backbenchers.

Why I can no longer support Boris Johnson

Dear Boris,

As you know, I have supported you throughout your career in politics: for Mayor of London in 2008 and 2012, and for Leader in 2016 and 2019.

As Prime Minister, you have been dealt a very difficult hand with Covid and Ukraine, and you deserve great credit for much of the way in which the Government has handled these twin crises. Your recent visit to Kyiv was a conspicuous act of leadership.

When I stepped down from the Treasury last September, you raised the topic of the next reshuffle, and we discussed the potential for me to run a department of state.

Worse still: you are apparently trying to import elements of a presidential system of government that is entirely foreign to our constitution and law.

But you are not a president, and you have no mandate other than as an MP, and from the confidence of your colleagues. Attempts to centralise power in 10 Downing Street are not merely yet another ill-advised political distraction, but almost certain to compound and accelerate the problems listed above.

In my judgement, all these things are at odds with a decent, proper conservative: with effective teamwork, careful reform, a sense of integrity, respect for the rule of law and a long-term focus on the public good.

Little could please me less than to have to write in these terms. But someone needs to say it, now. With Brexit and Covid behind us, we are at an inflection point. People are crying out for good government and for warm, engaged, unifying and constructive leadership, in the service of a vision all can believe in.

Neither the Conservative party nor the country can afford to squander the next two years adrift and distracted by endless debate about you and your leadership.

For you to prolong this charade by remaining in office not only insults the electorate and the tens of thousands of people who support, volunteer, represent and campaign for our party; it makes a decisive change of government at the election much more likely. That is potentially catastrophic for this country.

For these reasons and with great sadness, I am withdrawing my support for you as leader and I have notified this to the 1922 committee.

I leave it to my colleagues to decide where they stand in relation to these concerns. For the avoidance of doubt, however, this is not a leadership bid.

As ever,

Jesse Norman

Sitges: the idyllic beach town down the road from Barcelona

About sixty years ago, before my wife was born, her parents set off on a driving holiday to the Continent. They drove down through France and into Spain and ended up in Sitges. They went no further. They’d found the perfect holiday resort, a historic town with a sandy beach and a few bars and cafes, somewhere to sit back and enjoy the sunshine, with a bit of local culture thrown in.

Sixty years later, Sitges is a lot busier, but British tourists are still relatively rare. Most visitors are Spaniards, mainly daytrippers from Barcelona. There are some modern buildings, and a lot more bars and cafes, but the town still looks much the same. Compared to most Spanish beach resorts, it’s remarkably unchanged. My wife Sophie and I first went to Sitges in 1999. She was pregnant with our first child (our son Edward, as it turned out). She wanted to go somewhere hot but not too hot, lively but not too lively, somewhere with a nice beach and a pleasant hotel and a few quaint, authentic restaurants. That’s all most of us want when we go on holiday, but, as we all know, these simple requirements can prove remarkably elusive. In Sitges we found the full set.

I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been back since then. We went back when Edward was a toddler: up at dawn every day, traipsing along the promenade, bleary-eyed; already yawning when he went to bed at dusk. We went back and did the same thing when our daughter Thea came along. We went when they were teenagers. Now they’re both grown-up and far too cool to tag along, it’s just the two of us again, like it was in the beginning.

All the memories we’ve shared there give the place a deeper meaning. For Sophie it’s especially poignant, now her parents are no longer around. I guess it could have been somewhere else – I realise it was a coincidence. Lots of people have a place, all sorts of places, they return to every year. But if you’re looking for a Spanish beach resort, I still think Sitges takes some beating. I’ve travelled all over Spain and I’ve never found anywhere quite like it.

So what makes it so special? And how did it end up that way? Sitges is only 25 miles south of Barcelona, and this proximity gives it the same sort of relationship with Barcelona that Brighton has with London. Like Brighton, Sitges feels metropolitan, but it hasn’t been subsumed by the big city. There’s a lot of traffic between this seaside town and the Catalan capital, in both directions, but like Brighton, Sitges has managed to maintain its own identity, rather than becoming just another dull commuter town.

This close proximity to Barcelona makes Sitges an ideal destination for British visitors. You can fly into Barcelona on a scheduled flight with BA or Iberia, and get a taxi from the airport – no need to bother with pesky budget flights or interminable transfers. Once you’re here, it’s easy to do day trips into town – Barca is only half an hour away by train. Sitges has something else in common with Brighton, and that’s its thriving Gay scene. There are lots of gay clubs and bars, and even in regular cafés and restaurants gay visitors aren’t an exception but the norm. When I first started coming here, it seemed like most of the Britons who came here were gay. Now I reckon there are just as many straight Brits, but the tourist hotspots on the main drag still have a resoundingly gay vibe. The Pink Pound has been good for Sitges, generating a lot of business, and creating a groovy, inclusive ambience which has attracted a lot of straight tourists too. Gay nightlife gives the town an upbeat buzz, and the atmosphere is never malevolent. My teenage daughter feels at ease here, a lot more comfortable than she often feels in straighter resorts. Yet Sitges has never become a gay ghetto. There are plenty of places along the seafront where the clientele is straight and Spanish, and if you venture a few blocks inland you’d never know you were in a holiday resort.

With a population of about 30,000, there’s always been a critical mass of locals who live and work here and raise their families here, doing regular jobs, not just pandering to the tourist trade. Another thing that makes Sitges special is its ornate architecture. Its archaic core dates back to the Middle Ages, but most of the town was erected in the 19th Century, and the most flamboyant buildings were built by colonialists returning from the New World. During the 19th Century there wasn’t a lot of money to be made in Sitges, and so a lot of young men went to Cuba to seek their fortunes (including Don Facundo Bacardi Masso, creator of the eponymous rum). When they returned home, they flaunted their newfound wealth by building flamboyant palacios with the money they’d made in the Caribbean. When the Spanish tourist boom began, the seafront was already built up. There was no room for high-rise hotels, so the developers went elsewhere.

Today, Sitges is a convivial blend of locals, foreign tourists and Catalonian daytrippers and weekenders, and it’s this eclectic mix which has kept it alive. Tourism is a destructive force, which obliterates what it covets, but, through good luck as much as good judgement, Sitges has escaped the homogenous mass tourism which has blighted so much of coastal Spain. There are a few museums, and various carnivals and festivals but in the end nothing beats that sandy beach. Like all the best beach resorts, this is ultimately a place for doing nothing.

I’ve stayed in various places over the years and there are two I’d recommend. The Antemare is my favourite hotel, a smart four star with a communal pool, on a quiet sidestreet a few blocks back from the beach. Since I last stayed there with my children, they’ve made it adults only. I wonder if it was due to something we did? Since my children are now 22 and 18, I guess we could go back there, but maybe I shouldn’t risk it. If you’d rather go self-catering, Apollo Apartments is a practical option in a great location, with simple pleasant rooms and basic kitchenettes, overlooking a spacious pool and garden. However the most iconic hotel in Sitges is Hotel Romantic, a beautiful antique building in the heart of the old town which opened its doors to Gay travellers back when such tolerance was far from typical. The word spread, more gay travellers arrived, because this hotel isn’t the biggest it became hard to get a bed, and so other hotels followed suit. As the Pink Pound worked its magic, Sitges grew and prospered. No one is quite sure how or why Sitges became a gay resort, and then Spain’s nicest beach resort, but I have a hunch it all started here.

How not to kill your house plants

The year was 2015, and I was head over heels, completely obsessed with House of Hackney’s Palmeral wallpaper. The bold print features fans of colonial green palm leaves splayed across a soothing off-white background, and I fantasised about plastering it over all four walls of my London living room, thinking it was the closest I was going to get to living in a tropical paradise any time soon. But as it turns out, I was thinking small. Very small. Sproutl – a schmancy new gardening and outdoor living platform – have just launched a tropical plant collection in collaboration with none other than The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; so now we can all have our very own slice of their iconic Palm House in our living rooms.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that houseplants have become big business in the last decade. According to the Garden Centre Association, sales of houseplants were up 29 per cent in 2021 on the previous year, and more than 50 per cent on 2019 figures. Meanwhile, a recent poll by Miracle Gro found that the average Brit owns seven houseplants and spends more than £300 a year on foliage friends – with spend jumping to over £400 a year for 18 to 24-year-olds. If my memory serves me right, it all began with succulents. Suddenly the little blighters were everywhere; in the windows of happening hairdressers, on sale in your local Tesco Metro in snazzy pastel pots, and plastered over greetings cards and novelty mugs accompanied by infuriating cutsie slogans like ‘succ it’ and ‘what the f••culent’ (thank you, Etsy).

Small, Instagram-worthy and low maintenance, succulents are apparently the perfect houseplant for the dispossessed millennial. Not long after I moved into my flat, I treated myself to a gorgeous pinky purple one (which the internet informs me was an Echeveria dusty rose). I felt so fancy; I loved it madly; it lasted three weeks. Plants don’t tend to thrive under my care. Either I kill them with kindness (too much water), or they wither from neglect. My current collection includes a leaning tower of Swiss cheese plant, which is literally clinging to its moss poll by a thread; a pair of Chinese money plants, which seem to drop a leaf for every new one they grow (is this, like, a thing?); and a perennially droopy peace lily which, to be quite honest, is doing my absolute head in.

With prices starting at £80 for an ‘ultra-rare’ Philodendron white knight – a neat, desk-sized plant with striking white flashes across its leaves – and going up to £295 for a dark leafed elephant’s ear – a monster of a plant with impressive matte, almost-black leaves – the Palm House collection’s super-sized plants come with matching price tags. This obviously means the stakes for keeping them alive are high… very high. So what are the chances of that actually happening? ‘Perhaps surprisingly, our Kew x Sproutl plants aren’t divas,’ Hollie Newton, Sproutl’s Chief Creative Officer and author of How to Grow: A Guide for Gardeners who Can’t Garden Yet, reassures me. ‘Each plant comes with comprehensive care instructions, but broadly they like a sunny spot, need watering only when the soil feels dry, and those with the largest leaves like the banana plant and the alocasia will enjoy regular misting throughout the week,’ she says. ‘Our Kew plants love routine, so one of the best things you can do for your plant is to keep things consistent; try not to keep moving them, water them at around the same time, and keep them in the same pot for the first few years.’

The collection, which is made up of seven plants, has been about a year in the making, and Newton tells me it was a truly collaborative process. ‘To choose the plants, we literally walked around the Palm House with the head gardener and our sourcing team, and worked out how to truly “get the look.”’ But can these tropical plants from far-flung places really thrive in our UK homes? ‘Plants are keen to adapt, and modern house plants are tough,’ Newton explains. ‘Many of the plants in our collection are the exact same genus as their cousins in Kew – which were all originally brought to England from far off tropical locations, and have learned to thrive indoors – whereas others are lookalikes cultivated to thrive in a normal house’s warmth and moisture levels.’

So which plant from the Palm House collection is best suited to me – a woman with a 50/50 houseplant survival rate and a north-west facing living room? Apparently that would be the ‘Maggy’ shield plant, which I’m told only needs ‘a bit of love’ and is ‘the most resilient’ of the pack. If anyone can put these claims to the test, I believe it is me.

How to make a White Lady

It may not be as famous as the Martini or the Daiquiri, but the White Lady is a real treasure from the golden era of cocktails. Calling for just two bottles, it’s a drink of great elegance and simplicity – filled with charm and old-school glamour.

The first White Lady landed on the bar in 1919, served by Scottish cocktail pioneer Harry MacElhone to a guest of the ultra-fashionable Ciro’s Club. The restaurant and drinking den on London’s Orange Street traded for only a short time before being shut down for being too fun (and violating its license) but it was an important proving ground for MacElhone. The White Lady on the menu there was a prototype which, according to the head boy of booze history David Wondrich, contained crème de menthe and no gin.

Any drink that’s all liqueur is bound to be oversweet and generally unwholesome so this early version is best left in the past. Thankfully, our man had perfected the formula by the time he opened his own spot in Paris the following decade – the extravagantly named Harry’s New York Bar. It was there that the modern White Lady made her debut, a chemically perfect variant on the classic Gin Daisy made with London Dry, Cointreau, lemon juice and egg white.

It’s one of the spare instances in the indispensable Savoy Cocktail Book where a brand is called for by name. Coming in at a respectable 40% ABV, Cointreau (£16, Waitrose) has the necessary heft to properly carry the essential oils present in the peels of bitter and sweet oranges. It’s been a staple of the bar world since the mid-19^th century and still towers over other orange liqueurs.

Ingredients

35ml Dry Gin

25ml Cointreau

25ml Lemon juice

Egg white

For the gin, you’ll want something juniper-forward with a bit of backbone. Your Tanquerays and Beefeaters will perform admirably in the role, as they always do. However, if you want something a bit more complicated The Botanist (£35.25, The Whisky Exchange) from the pronunciation-defying Bruichladdich distillery on Islay is ideal. Its core of foraged native botanicals contributes floral and herbaceous notes that sit perfectly alongside the earthy juniper.

Anyone who favours the out-of-fashion but still very tasty gin and orange juice will be aware of this classic flavour pairing. The berries and herbal botanicals speak to the zest and subtle spice in the Cointreau, while the lemon adds lift and the egg white blurs the lines between the ingredients. Well played, Mr MacElhone.

It’s a combination favoured by Cointreau master distiller Carole Quinton, whose face lights up when the White Lady is mentioned. ‘What I like is that In Cointreau you have these vegetal notes, a bit of cucumber,’ she tells us. ‘In The Botanist you have those peppery notes and more vegetal notes from the flowers and plants from the Island. For me, the freshness, the citrus notes, the vegetal notes all balance the sweetness of Cointreau.’

‘What it is important in a drink is equilibrium, you have to have balance between acidity and sweetness. This balance will make the aromas explode. For the White Lady, I feel like the acidity of lemon juice and with the sweetness delivers everything.’

Another great advantage of the White Lady is that it’s easy to put together. With your ingredients assembled, and a small amount of forward planning, you can turn out a round for your guests in just a couple of minutes.

Method

Squeeze some lemons ahead of cocktail hour and, if you’ve got the patience for it, pass the juice through a fine strainer. Any bartender will tell you that squeezing citrus to order is an unnecessary faff so it pays to do the advanced prep.

Next, put some cocktail glasses in the freezer to chill down. A cocktail coupe or Nick & Nora makes a nice nod to the White Lady’s 1920s origins, but a Champagne saucer or one of those triangular Martini glasses will work just fine.

Cut a few long, wide strips of orange peel and set them to one side. Combine all your ingredients in a cocktail shaker and dry shake, that’s without ice, to whip up those egg whites. Make sure you keep a good grip on the shaker during this step as it may try to pop open.

You’re now ready to crack the tin, add as much ice as you can, and shake extra hard. When the surface of the shaker is frosted over you can strain into your chilled cocktail glasses. Squeeze the reserved orange peel over the surface of the drink to give it a spritz of citrus oil and discard. Don’t skip this step as the intense aroma and slight bitterness it affords really makes the drink sing.

For a twist you could add a dash of absinthe or omit the egg white but honestly, the White Lady is fine as she is. In an age of baroque cocktails that call for whole shopping lists of components, this is a great argument for simplicity.

All the elements harmonise perfectly with each other. The juniper and herbal botanicals in the gin speak to the orange oil and subtle spicy notes in the Cointreau, while the lemon adds lift and the egg white blurs the lines between the star ingredients.

The Queen’s long goodbye

Asked at the start of the Golden Jubilee as to which one of the many events he was most looking forward to, the Queen’s husband answered in typical Philip fashion with two words: ‘the end’. There’ll have been times during the run-up to the Platinum weekend when those around the Queen may well have shared these sentiments as they anticipated what could have gone awry. There were plenty of potential clouds on the jubilee horizon. One by one, they were dispersed. Covid-19’s silver lining revealed itself when Prince Andrew tested positive. He had to recover rather than attempt to kickstart his rehabilitation on his mother’s coat tails.

The greatest concern of the Jubilee organisers will have been the Queen’s health. Though frail and more absent than present, she has played a blinder. Her ability to surprise and pull something fresh out of the hat – or in her case a marmalade sandwich out of a handbag – remains undimmed. The Paddington film was genius. The woman born during the era of silent films, whose grandmother was averse to royals smiling in public, used a teaspoon to tap out the opening bars of a rock anthem with a computer-generated bear. Some have interpreted this brief encounter with a fictional Peruvian refugee as coded regal criticism of government immigration policy. Seven decades on, the head of state is still a blank canvas onto which we can project so much.

The comic sketch was the highlight of the pop concert. It was yet another of the events Harry and Meghan didn’t attend. They did make it to the thanksgiving service at St Paul’s where hierarchy was enforced mercilessly. A year on from when they wouldn’t walk side by side for eight minutes behind their grandfather’s coffin, William and Harry couldn’t be seated within touching distance of each other at a service in honour of their grandmother. And this in a cathedral used by celebrants extolling the virtue of forgiveness.

To the relief of those around the Queen, Harry and Meghan chose to be undercover royals. Their reward has been quality, private time spent with the monarch. She’s both Harry’s main royal ally and the woman who signed off on the brutal fine print of his voluntary expulsion. To much of the British media, everything the Sussexes are experiencing has been self-inflicted. A more nuanced appraisal, acknowledging the mistakes of William, Charles and their aides, may one day occupy some column inches.

The absence of distractions has ensured an uninterrupted focus on the Queen and her achievements. The level of public affection and admiration is stratospherically high. Her unassailable vantage point means it’ll be for her heirs to address the increase in the number of young people who tell pollsters they favour an elected head of state over a hereditary one. Those charged by an accident of birth to follow in her footsteps know she will be an impossible act to replicate.

The Jubilee finale was entirely fitting – an appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony by the Queen, Charles, William and George. Two future queens, Camilla and Kate and two spares, Charlotte and Louis also made the cut. In one sense every good, bad and indifferent moment of the Queen’s reign has been leading up to this point.

The Windsor dynasty appears secure as it basks in the afterglow of yet another successful celebration of the British monarchy. The transition is advancing smoothly, without fuss or fanfare. The Queen will mostly be a virtual presence in our lives as two kings in waiting take on much of her workload. The long goodbye is underway.

Will a Jubilee coup topple Boris?

Long to reign over us? That’s the question Conservative MPs are pondering this weekend about their leader Boris Johnson. The boos and jeers that greeted him at St Paul’s on Friday were in stark contrast to the warmth and affection exhibited towards the Queen all week. It’s prompted several nervy Tories to consider putting in their letter of no-confidence to Sir Graham Brady – the chairman of the 1922 committee – amid much talk about whether the magic threshold of 54 letters has finally been reached. It has previously been suggested that Sir Graham would not make such an announcement until after the Jubilee festivities had concluded. Will tomorrow be that day?

Timing is everything in politics: some of the anti-Johnsonites fear that a vote will come too soon. With 359 sitting Conservative MPs, it would take 181 votes to unseat him as PM. If the rebels got 133 votes, that would be worse as a percentage than Theresa May managed in 2018; if they got 147 that would be worse than Margaret Thatcher got against Michael Heseltine in 1990. Some, therefore, think that a challenge to Johnson should only come after the Wakefield and Tiverton by-elections on 23 June.

That fateful day – exactly six years since the Brexit referendum vote – will see the Tories try to retain a Red Wall marginal and a true blue safe seat against a challenge from Labour and the Lib Dems, respectively. To lose one seat may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like a catastrophe. Polling in the Sunday Times suggests that Labour are on course to win Wakefield with an impressive 48 per cent with the Tories expected to take just 28 per cent – down 19 points from 2019.

Frenzied speculation fills the Sunday papers about the pretenders to Johnson’s crown. Various names are being suggested from the One Nation caucus, including Jeremy Hunt and Tom Tugendhat; Tim Shipman quotes one critic of Penny Mordaunt as saying she is ‘Steve Baker in a dress’ and has ‘all the qualities of leadership except followers’. Whatever happens this week, don’t expect the drama to come to an end anytime soon: the Sun reports that Sir Graham has taken soundings on axing the one-year limit on new no-confidence votes in Johnson. And the Mail on Sunday claims that rebels are threatening to obstruct key parliamentary votes even if the PM survives a no-confidence ballot.

Regicide, plotting and an imminent civil war – what better way to mark a Jubilee?

Prevent and the problem of ‘political correctness’

Britain is reviewing its cornerstone anti-terror programme. As the name implies, Prevent is a strategy designed to stop radicalisation before it metastasises into killer intent. But how well is it working?

There have been accusations that Prevent is discriminatory. Groups such as Liberty and the Muslim Council of Britain have criticised the anti-terror strategy for targetting Muslims, arguing that it has caused hurt to Britain’s Islamic communities. But there are also criticisms that, even on its own terms, the Home Office programme isn’t working as well as it should. Dame Sara Khan, the social cohesion tsar, last week warned that efforts to tackle Islamist extremism are being hampered by ‘political correctness’. The fear of being called a racist, she explained, is hampering our ability to avert deadly extremism.

Khan is of course right, as anyone who has followed Britain’s numerous terror attacks will have heard. Remember the Manchester Arena bombing and the security guard who spotted the Salman Abedi behaving suspiciously with his rucksack? Kyle Lawler, then aged just 18, claimed that if he had confronted Abedi, his career might have been ruined by an accusation of racism. This is far from the only case. Khan herself has given the example of an unnamed local authority in which councillors were ‘very comfortable’ talking about the far-right but altogether more coy when it came to the Islamist threat – which, regardless of what some media outlets might have you believe, is still by far the greater danger to Britain’s streets

And it isn’t just local government that’s the problem. Hannah Stuart, a terrorism expert who previously worked at the independent Commission for Countering Extremism alongside Dame Sara Khan, has spoken of how common it was to sit through hours-long meetings with government departments only for Islamist extremism to be studiously avoided. She has said how during these meetings, civil servants seemed ‘very wary of talking about Islamism and very wary of being called racist’.

The police too even discussed dropping the term ‘Islamism‘ in favour of ‘faith-claimed attack’ in order to avoid accusations of stigmatisation. While in prisons the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation described an understandable fear of discriminating against Muslim prisoners, resulting in a ‘tendency to regard Islam as a “no-go area” [and a] reluctance to focus on Islamist group behaviour.’ But across Britain and Europe, prisons have proved an incubator of Islamist terror.

Surely academics, the last defenders of truth, would study this phenomenon without fear or favour? Not a bit of it. All of the career and funding incentives point toward safer subjects while focusing on jihadism risks accusations of hardline politics at best or islamophobia at worst. A colleague recently tried recruiting a graduate analyst to work on Islamist extremism and terrorism. He couldn’t find a single researcher. All of the applicants – perfectly polite and eloquent – spoke of their interest in studying the far-right, incels, or in studying video gaming and extremism. In other words, in studying anything but Islamist extremism.

Studying jihadism is not only unpopular, it can at times feel dangerous. Just ask the Bristol University professor forced to leave his home after a spurious campaign was whipped up against him – mere months after a fellow educator was forced into hiding in Batley and another was decapitated on the outskirts of Paris.

Even at the very top, the response to Sir David Amess’s murder quickly descended into a debate about online trolling. The reality was clear, if uncomfortable. During the trial of Ali Harbi Ali, who was later jailed for life for the attack, the jury heard that the killer had written that he was motivated by ‘revenge for the blood of Muslims’.

The review of Prevent, led by Sir William Shawcross, will attempt to redress some of these problems. How easy that will be remains to be seen. Far-right referrals to Prevent now outweigh their Islamist reports. It is clearly a problem – just look at the planned Neo-Nazi attack on Labour MP Rosie Cooper. But there is a question of proportion. Only so many resources are available for halting extremism. The public rightly expects that those resources are used as efficiently as possible. And yet there seem to be substantially differing referral thresholds for far-right and Islamist extremists, as well as a rapidly expanding category of what constitutes ‘far-right’ in the first place, at least according to Prevent practitioners I’ve spoken to. Perhaps that has something to do with the various NGOs and civil society organisations pushing the notion of a burgeoning far-right terror network in Britain. Their unmistakably celebratory tone whenever far-right referrals outweigh Islamist reports gives away rather more than they’d wish.

There is something unmistakeably bleak about our institutional response to an enduring extremist threat. Too often those who clearly state the problem are hounded by accusations and ditched by colleagues for fear of cross-contamination. Those charged with understanding and preventing terrorism shouldn’t be afraid of accurately and fully describing where it comes from. The risks are just too high.