A cabinet minister has triggered a backlash from Conservative MPs by dismissing the Owen Paterson lobbying and vote debacle as a “storm in a teacup”.
The environment secretary, George Eustice, made the claim despite fury among his party’s MPs about being forced to vote for an ultimately doomed attempt to save Paterson from disciplinary action.
An Opinium poll for the Observer show ed ratings for Boris Johnson and his party down significantly since last weekend.
Eustice spoke as Labour demanded the resignation of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, over his handling of the matter, and Keir Starmer declared the prime minister incapable of cleaning up politics because he was “in the sewer with his troops”.
In an interview with Sky’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday , Eustice sought to make light of what happened last week, saying: “I think what we have seen is a sort of Westminster storm in a teacup, if I may say so.”
Eustice said the government made a “mistake” in ordering its MPs to vote for an amendment that combined shelving the proposed punishment for Paterson, a Tory former cabinet minister found to have broken the rules banning paid lobbying, with a plan to review the way standards rules for MPs are enforced generally. But he claimed there was widespread support for introducing a new right of appeal into the system.
This story is from the November 08, 2021 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the November 08, 2021 edition of The Guardian.
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