The BBC chair is set to face fresh pressure to resign over a “scathing” report by MPs which is expected to lambast his role in an £800,000 loan to Boris Johnson.

All chums together – Owl

Kate Devlin www.independent.co.uk

The Independent has learnt that the powerful Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee will strongly criticise Richard Sharp for his conduct.

It is understood MPs will accuse him of failing to come clean over his part in the arrangement of the loan.

The investigation was launched after it emerged that Mr Sharp, who Mr Johnson backed for the BBC job, was involved.

The report is also set to castigate Mr Sharp for his apparent lack of remorse during a bruising encounter with MPs earlier this week.

Although the committee will not call on him to resign, their findings are thought to be so scathing it will prompt questions about his continued position at the BBC.

Last week Mr Sharp conceded he had acted as a sort of “introduction agency” to help arrange the loan.

In a hearing in front of the committee on Tuesday, he admitted that he had introduced his friend Sam Blyth, a relative of Mr Johnson’s, to the cabinet secretary Simon Case after Mr Blyth suggested he could help with the prime minister’s money issues.

Mr Sharp, a prominent Conservative donor who has given the party more than £400,000, denied he had facilitated the loan for Mr Johnson.

But he did admit he went to see the prime minister to discuss the BBC job before he applied, although he insisted that their relationship had been “broadly professional”.

He said he was trying to ensure that the correct due process was followed when he introduced Mr Blyth to the Cabinet Office and denied that he had offered any personal financial advice to Mr Johnson.

Mr Sharp, a former Goldman Sachs banker, told MPs: “I’ve had a lot of time over the past few weeks to consider whether all the rules were followed and I wish we weren’t where we are now. I acted in good faith and have no regrets in that sense but I clearly could have said to Blyth, ‘Find your own way to Mr Case.’”

He later added that he also regretted causing “embarrassment for the BBC”.

But he insisted that during the process by which he was awarded his current role he had been “subject to a very rigorous interview process” and was hired “on merit”.

But he was accused by Labour MP Kevin Brennan, a member of the committee, of a “monumental failure of judgement” in not telling them about the loan arrangement at a pre-appointment hearing last January.

That session had been before Mr Sharp took over as BBC chairman. But he was hauled in front of the committee again after details of his involvement in Mr Johnson’s loan were reported by the Sunday Times.

Before Tuesday’s hearing the committee’s chairman Damian Green said that MPs wanted to “establish whether … anything we should have known was kept from us”.

Official guidance released by the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) on conflicts of interest in public appointments warns against even the “perception” of a clash, and says it is therefore essential all potential conflicts are declared.

It reads: “Even the perception of a conflict of interest in relation to a board member can be extremely damaging to the body’s reputation and it is therefore essential that these are declared and explored, in the same way as an actual conflict would be. The fact that a member acted impartially may not avoid accusations of bias.”

The document goes on to warn that it is “necessary for the standing of the individual and the board that members of the public have confidence in their independence and impartiality.”

Public appointments commissioner William Shawcross had been due to investigate Mr Sharp’s appointment as BBC chairman.

However, he has recused himself, saying he had met Mr Sharp “on previous occasions”.

Lawyer Adam Heppinstall KC has now been appointed to lead the investigation.

The BBC is also conducting a probe after Mr Sharp announced that he had referred himself to the nominations committee of the broadcaster’s board.

The West Lancashire by-election is the latest confirmation that Labour’s commanding lead in the nationwide opinion polls is no mirage.

Hugo Gye inews.co.uk 

There was no realistic prospect of the Conservatives winning this seat, which stayed Labour even in the 2019 general election when so much of the “Red Wall” fell to a Tory takeover.

But the huge majority for new MP Ashley Dalton will nonetheless worry Tory strategists. She took 62 per cent of the vote with her Conservative challenger on 25 per cent: the swing of a little of 10 per cent compared to the 2019 result roughly mirrors the national polling picture, and if replicated at the next general election would lead to a landslide victory for Sir Keir Starmer.

The result in the seat is even better for Labour than it was in the 1997 election, when Tony Blair’s party swept to the largest win of any postwar vote. Even allowing for the usual trend of governing parties doing badly in by-elections, that is an ominous sign, and a turnaround from the heady days of 2021 when the Tories under Boris Johnson repeatedly challenged Labour in its own heartlands.

There is one small consolation for Rishi Sunak: Reform UK, the latest incarnation of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, made no real impact in West Lancashire, taking less than 5 per cent of the vote. Fears that the Prime Minister might find his right flank seriously exposed have not yet materialised.

Mr Sunak has steadied the Tory ship this week, delighting many MPs with the relative success of his reshuffle and his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky. But this by-election is a reminder that Sir Keir remains firmly in the driving seat.

Inevitably, a poll that suggests the Conservatives could win fewer seats at the next election than the SNP grabs attention. As it should.

John Curtice www.independent.co.uk

According to a large 28,000-person poll conducted at the turn of the month by FindOutNow and statistically modelled by Electoral Calculus for The Telegraph, the Conservatives would win just 45 seats in an immediate general election, while the SNP would have 50.

However you look at them, these kinds of poll numbers will produce heavy seat losses for the Tories – if these poll numbers transpired at an election, the losses are bound to be greater than the conventional approach to estimating seat outcomes would suggest.

What is uncertain is how much greater the losses would be… not least because we have never had a party’s support drop by as much as 22 points at an election. However, we should not discount the possibility that they could be quite a bit more, even if not necessarily on the scale suggested by Electoral Calculus.

How could this be so? There is, after all, only a small difference between the estimate of national party support in this poll and the average of other polls conducted at the same time. The Conservatives are credited with 23 per cent of the vote, only a couple of points below other polls. At 48 per cent, the estimate for Labour is exactly in line with that for other polls.

Turning estimates of national support into anticipated outcomes in seats is far from straightforward. Under our first-past-the-post system, how many seats a party wins depends not just on its level support, but also on how that support is distributed across the country.

The conventional approach is to assume the geographical distribution of each party’s support will remain the same as at the last election – that is, each party’s support will go up or down in every constituency in line with the change nationally.

If we analyse the Electoral Calculus/FindOutNow poll in that way, the Conservatives, down 22 points on their 2019 tally, would be credited with 142 seats (still an all-time record low). Meanwhile, Labour, up 15 points on 2019, would have 406 seats, just a little below the record tally of 418 seats Tony Blair won in 1997, and well short of the 509 projected by Electoral Calculus.

However, at present there is a problem with this approach. There are 90 seats in which the Conservatives won less than 22 per cent of the vote in 2019 and thus where it is arithmetically impossible for the party’s support to fall by 22 points. Consequently, the party’s support must be down by more than 22 points in some places where it performed better last time. That is likely to include constituencies the party is trying to defend, resulting in a greater loss of seats than the conventional calculation would anticipate.

But where and by how much would Conservative support fall by more than 22 points? According to Electoral Calculus’s modelling, the answer is clear – the higher the Conservative vote last time, the more the party’s support would fall. In true blue Castle Point, the party’s support is projected to have fallen from 77 per cent to 42 per cent, a fall of 35 points – in sharp contrast to the picture in Liverpool Riverside, where it is estimated to have slipped from 7 per cent to 4 per cent.

On average, Electoral Calculus estimate the party’s vote in its 120 strongest seats is now as much as 30 points down on 2019 – and by 27 points in the 120 next strongest. It is those figures that explain why the poll’s estimated outcome of the Tory tally of seats is nearly 100 less than in the conventional calculation.

But is this expectation of a much sharper fall in Conservative support in the party’s strongest seats correct? After all, when the party last crashed to a serious defeat in 1997, its share of the vote was only down two points more in its safest seats than across the country as a whole.

However, at 11 points, the national drop in support for the party on the previous election in 1992 was half the fall in the Electoral Calculus poll – so there were far fewer seats in which it was mathematically impossible to match the fall across the country as a whole.

Closer to the Tories’ current position is the predicament of the Liberal Democrats in 2015, when their support fell across the country by 15 points. That translated into as much as a 20 point drop in their strongest seats. However, as compared with the position of the Conservatives now, there were nearly twice as many seats in which it was arithmetically impossible for the drop in Liberal Democrat national support to be replicated locally.

In truth, we are in unchartered waters. Given the unprecedented scale of the fall in Tory support, nobody can be sure what the outcome in seats would be if the current polls were reflected in the ballot boxes.

Maybe the party would lose rather less support in its strongest seats than Electoral Calculus anticipate. But, equally, perhaps voters would vote tactically for whichever of Labour or the Liberal Democrats could best defeat the Conservatives locally, something mid-term polls rarely pick up but which, as in 1997, could cost the Conservatives dear.

One thing though is certain. Unless the Conservatives can haul themselves out of the electoral doldrums, the party will be a much diminished parliamentary force after the next election.

John Curtice is a professor of politics at Strathclyde University, and senior research fellow for NatCen Social Research and ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’

Residents in Exmouth will be charged less than a takeaway coffee in extra council tax to help fund the town’s CCTV, grass cutting and bus service.

Becca Gliddon eastdevonnews.co.uk

Exmouth Town Council recently announced Band D households will be charged £58.37 towards the authority’s costs during 2023/2024, compared with £57.14 last year.

The town council said it had recognised the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on residents when increasing its charge.

The total charge of £761,125 to the town council was agreed last month – an increase of £28,100 compared to last year.

Councillor Steve Gazzard, Exmouth mayor, said: “The town council’s budget demonstrates a continuing commitment to the residents of Exmouth that the town council will use its precepting powers appropriately.”

Councillor Alex Sadiq, the deputy chairman of the council, said: “Being conscious of the difficulties for many residents at this time, the council has thoroughly reviewed its expenditure to keep the precept increase to a minimum.

“We are confident the people of Exmouth continue to get good value from the town council.”

The council voted to approve the £1.23 increase at the start of January – funding services such as the town’s CCTV, grounds maintenance, grass cutting and the authority’s buildings and officers’ wages.

A contribution from the charge goes towards the running costs of the 99E bus service, which stops in areas of Littleham, Withycombe Raleigh, Brixington, and Exmouth town centre.

The town’s Tourist Information Service, Exmouth Festival, beach wheelchairs, Jubilee Clock Tower and Gorfin Hall also fall under the authority’s care.

The fee is added to the overall council tax bill, which includes charges set by the district and county authority, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall Police, and the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Authority.