IT has been a refreshing change to see how UK politicians of different stripes have been showing an uncommon unity in the face of the Ukraine crisis but this sense of solidarity could trigger unexpected consequences for our domestic politics.
Before Easter and possibly within the next month, Scotland Yard is expected to announce just how many of those who work in Downing St will be handed fines for breaking the law over Covid restrictions.
Among them could be one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who has thus far steadfastly refused to comment on the police inquiry into partygate for fear of creating more unfavourable headlines.
Once the Met has finished its probe, Whitehall inquisitor Sue Gray will publish her full report, complete with the tantalising cache of 300 photos from the social gatherings that may, or may not, have been boozy parties.
The police probe dissipated the serious head of steam, which had built up with politicians from all parties demanding the PM do the decent thing and resign.
The general thinking now in SW1 is, unless a worse-for-wear Boris is caught on camera singing and sloshing back the Beaujolais with a party hat on, he will not resign, even if fined, despite the renewed chorus to do so from both sides of the House and beyond.
Outwith a general election, the only way a PM can be forced out of the famous black Downing St door is if they resign or MPs from the governing party vote to oust them.
Sir Graham Brady, who chairs the Tories’ 1922 backbench committee, might, post the Met investigation and the Gray report, receive 54signatures to spark a confidence vote in Boris’s leadership but it’s quite a leap from that number to the 181 needed to show the PM the door.
Last week, Theresa Villiers, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, argued: “I don't think a fixed penalty notice should be grounds for deposing a Prime Minister…We need to move on from this." Paul Scully, the Business Minister, also insisted how there should be a “real high bar to get rid of any prime minister”.
Boris’s supporters, it seems, were getting in their retaliation early should the PM get fined.
But there is now a new focus grabbing all the headlines: Ukraine. And it is shows Johnson at the forefront of co-ordinating the West’s response to the outrage Vladimir Putin is inflicting on the independent, democratic nation of Ukraine.
For some, it has shown Boris at his best; serious, cogent and giving a lead on a critically important international issue.
His remarks this week condemning Putin and in robust defence of Ukrainian sovereignty won praise.
The crisis in eastern Europe, set to last many months, could give the PM’s colleagues more pause for thought as they consider reaching for a pen to sign a letter to Sir Graham demanding their leader’s resignation.
Could it be that one unintended consequence of Putin’s belligerence is the saving of Boris’s premiership?
Yet there are more hurdles to come, not least the May local elections when the Tories could get a battering and the deepening cost-of-living crisis. But, as things stand, it is likely the Ukraine crisis will run over many months and so this international backdrop will colour our domestic politics for some time.
Of course, there is always a caveat with Johnson: Boris is Boris. However many hurdles the blonde Beatle can clear, there may always be another one that he doesn’t.
This mood of domestic unity over Ukraine could also have a bearing elsewhere, possibly on Nicola Sturgeon’s deep desire to see Indyref2.
In a month or so’s time, the FM – with the worst of Covid behind us - could be announcing a Referendum Bill, challenging the PM to defy the democratic will of the Scottish people.
But the backdrop is still likely to be the Ukraine crisis with the theme of unity and solidarity being demanded by citizens of all western nations to defy the tyrant in the Kremlin.
So, for many of the vital non-partisan Scottish voters, the incongruity of seeing the SNP leader begin yet another constitutional struggle with the Unionists, with all the cross-party nastiness that would unleash, might be regarded as the wrong call at a time of such international peril.
Sturgeon would probably argue all she and her supporters want is to gain the status of a free, independent nation that Russia is seeking to take away from Ukraine.
But it was only last week Boris made his view known when asked about Scottish independence: “It’s just not going to happen,” he declared.
With everything else that is happening, the PM and his colleagues will point to other, more pressing matters and many will undoubtedly think they will be right.
In another domestic consequence of the Ukraine crisis, this week we saw Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, subjected to renewed attacks over his appearances on the Kremlin-backed RT channel, pull the plug on his show “until peace is re-established" in Ukraine.
The outbreak of cross-party solidarity has also had an impact on Labour.
Keir Starmer cracked down on left-wing dissent after 11 Labour MPs signed a Stop the War statement, critical of Nato and the UK Government’s “sabre-rattling” over Ukraine. Threatened with having the party whip withdrawn, the backbenchers removed their names from the statement.
The Labour leader also acted against Young Labour activists, who attacked his backing for Nato. Their annual conference has been scrapped, their funds cut and their Twitter account restricted.
A Labour spokesman made clear: “With Keir Starmer’s leadership there will never be any confusion about whose side Labour is on - Britain, Nato, freedom and democracy - and every Labour MP now understands that.”
At some point, the normal service of disharmony across UK politics will resume.
Yet, as the tragedy unfolds in Ukraine, Western allies’ solidarity with its people speaks to a deeper truth that, at a fundamental level, democratic politicians - generally - share more that unites them than divides them.
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