Will Operation Red Meat work?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

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🗓️ 17 January 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Tory MPs have just returned from their constituencies after a weekend of persuading voters to support their party in the May local elections. It’s not just the public that is angry, the local associations are equally outraged at the scandals that have marred the first month of 2022.
Those around Boris Johnson are planning 'Operation Red Meat' which is a policy tactic to save the Prime Minister's premiership. Nadine Dorries has announced her plans to cut the budget of the BBC. It has also been announced that the military is stepping in to try to stop migrants crossing the English Channel. But is it a little too late?

‘They’ve been telling us they are going to sort this [migrant crisis] out but for two years the problem has got worse' - James Forsyth.

Even by the government’s own admission, the solution rests on finding somewhere to host an offshore processing centre. But most of the countries the government is looking towards are unlikely to be suitable partners.

All of this on the podcast as Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, Suspect Heater's Daily Politics Podcast.
0:06.8	I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Fisciper and Isabel Hardman.
0:10.5	So going into the weekend, Boris Johnson's position seemed to be in a fairly perilous place.
0:16.1	And MPs have spent the weekend in their constituencies where they've been hearing from voters.
0:20.5	What have they been hearing, James?
0:22.3	A lot of anger. I think a lot of anger from their associations too.
0:26.6	I think there is now a split having done a bit of a ring round this morning opening up among
0:31.3	Tory MPs. Those people who have local elections in their patch in May tend to favour
0:36.9	moving sooner rather than later.
0:39.3	They take a kind of, you know, if it were done to the best it were done quickly,
0:41.8	view.
0:42.5	Lots of them have either had council candidates telling them that they will lose,
0:47.4	a change of leader, or even council candidates kind of dropping out on them or telling
0:52.2	them that they're going to drop out because they think it's untenable. Those people who don't tend to take the view of, well, why don't
0:58.6	we see how the local elections go in May, it gives us a sense of things. I mean, that's kind of the
1:05.6	constituency development. I think the one, and you know, you take your comforts where you can right now, if you're Boris Johnson, I suppose.
1:12.5	And it shows how the bar has been set that even the kind of Daily Mirror's latest revelation of a leaving due for a military aid in number 10 has not kind of, has not created, I think, the excitement that it has if it had come first, if you see what I mean, because we're onto kind of a double-digit number of these events,
1:28.2	that they slightly don't have the same impact that they once did.
1:31.1	But I do think the worry is that the weekend away has made lots of Tory MPs aware of how angry, not just their voters are,
1:42.0	but lots of their associations are.
1:43.8	And I think that is going to be a
1:44.9	particularly important factor in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Isabel, we're starting to hear various
	...

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