Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Conservative voters regard the favourite as better at making decisions and negotiation
Boris Johnson is more trusted by Tory members to make big decisions and negotiate with the EU than Jeremy Hunt – as well as being regarded as more competent than the current foreign secretary – according to the latest Opinium poll for The Observer.
The findings reinforce Johnson’s position as the strong favourite to succeed Theresa May when Tory party members vote on who should be the next prime minister in the coming weeks. Last week Conservative MPs voted to send Johnson and Hunt into the final round of the contest.
Boris Johnson was struggling to keep his campaign to become prime minister on course on Saturday night as he repeatedly refused to explain why police had been called to his home after a loud, late-night altercation with his partner.
Senior Tories were quick to raise fresh concerns over the former foreign secretary’s suitablity for No 10 as the favourite to succeed Theresa May stonewalled question after question about the incident at the first hustings of the leadership contest in front of party members.
Deputy leader fears ‘catastrophic’ vote loss to Lib Dems and Greens
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has warned MPs and peers that an analysis of the party’s losses in recent local and European elections that was presented to the shadow cabinet last week dangerously underestimated the crisis it will face if it fails to back another Brexit referendum.
In a briefing document circulated to more than 100 Labour MPs and peers yesterday, Watson says sections of the analysis leaked to the media have “skewed” understanding of the party’s plight. He warns that if Labour does not face the actual lessons and become a Remain party, it risks electoral disaster.
Advisers worked to keep him on message all week, but Friday night underlined why he remains a ‘grade one liability’
It was the moment the “Back Boris” team had dreaded but half-expected – when months of careful campaign planning were thrown off course by revelations about their man’s private life. As votes were being counted on Thursday afternoon in the final ballot of MPs for the Tory party leadership, a member of Johnson’s inner circle was upbeat but still on edge. As he paced the Commons corridors he knew Johnson would come top by a mile and reach the final two candidates – but there was no way he would lower his guard.
Asked how it was all going, he replied: “Yes, well, thanks. But you never know what can happen next, do you?”
As David Miliband argues in his Fulbright lecture, world leaders have found they can lie with impunity. We must not be complicit in their mendacity
Truth or consequences, a parlour game in which players are penalised for dishonesty or wrongdoing, is mostly fun – but it also reflects a broad moral consensus about the unacceptability of lying. This long-held belief is deeply rooted in popular culture. Truth or Consequences was the title of a postwar American TV quiz show whose success was so great that a New Mexico town was named after it. Put simply, and as a general rule, most people expect that if you tell whoppers, you get punished.
Why, then, do so many modern leaders seem to think they can lie and get away with it? A propensity to deny, dodge or disown the consequences of political actions is spreading globally like a toxic virus. There was a time, as David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, argues in this year’s Fulbright Lecture, when public accountability was on the rise. Not any more. In what he calls the age of impunity, “those engaged in conflicts around the world believe they can get away with anything, including murder”.
Neighbour records shouting and banging at flat potential PM shares with Carrie Symonds
Police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and his partner, Carrie Symonds, in the early hours of Friday morning after neighbours heard a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging.
The argument could be heard outside the property where the potential future prime minister is living with Symonds, a former Conservative party head of press.
Janet Barker recounts assault by suspended MP and says it will not stop her activism
Bruised and still shaken, Janet Barker is incredulous at the violent reaction of the Foreign Office minister Mark Field to her peaceful protest with fellow Greenpeace activists at the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.
However, she has no plans to press criminal charges over the physical assault. “I think it is something best dealt with in the court of opinion,” she said, while welcoming his suspension as a minister.
Bank of England governor says UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to EU
The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, has said that the UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to the EU in a no-deal Brexit, rejecting a claim made by Boris Johnson that this could be avoided.
Tory leadership candidate Johnson said this week that tariffs would not necessarily have to be paid if the UK left the EU without a deal because the UK could rely on article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt).
Video shows Foreign Office minister manhandling female demonstrator
The Conservatives have been plunged into controversy after a video showed a minister grab and manhandle a protester who disrupted the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.
Police began looking into the incident on Thursday night after footage seemed to show Mark Field pushing the female Greenpeace activist against a pillar and grabbing her neck. There were calls for Field to lose his position as a Foreign Office minister. In a statement, he apologised to the woman and said he would refer himself to the Cabinet Office over the incident.
The British government should call for restraint and de-escalation, says a group of campaigners, politicians and leading cultural figures
The threat of war with Iran is terrifying and the behaviour of the US government risks making the danger real. Its categoric claim that Iran was responsible for last week’s attacks on the two tankers in the Straits of Hormuz has been challenged by the Japanese and the German governments. It has served only to make a dangerous situation more serious.
The context to this is Donald Trump’s scrapping of the nuclear deal with Iran last year, which blocked the way to normalising relations and immediately escalated tension. The accompanying sanctions have caused real economic damage and human suffering. In May the Trump administration turned the screw tighter by dropping exemptions for oil exports. These measures are part of the policy of regime change advocated by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s two senior foreign policy officials, both of whom have called for military attacks on Iran.
This vast unethical trade is co-created by politicians, including President Duque of Colombia, who back a policy of global prohibition, writes Danny Kushlick
In time-honoured fashion we see the tired trope of cocaine users’ responsibility for violence in Colombia (Colombian president says middle-class cocaine users are hypocrites, 18 June). It is 10 years since the UK and Colombian governments launched their “Shared Responsibility” campaign to highlight links between users and the criminal trade. It was dropped because it was ineffective in reducing demand. This most recent call will have little or no effect on demand, but does serve politicians’ need to distract citizens from the catastrophic failure of the so-called “war on drugs”.
Anyone who buys illegal drugs does contribute to the criminal market. However, this vast unethical trade is co-created by politicians, including President Duque of Colombia, who back a policy of global prohibition. Duque’s predecessor, President Santos, said he would consider legalising cocaine in 2011, and is now a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which collectively supports the legal regulation of drug markets. Unless and until policymakers begin to seriously engage with the issue of who controls the international drug trade, we cannot make progress in reducing opportunities for organised crime and improving international development and security. Danny Kushlick Head of external affairs, Transform
Jeremy Hunt will go head to head with Boris Johnson in the race to be Britain’s next prime minister, after beating Michael Gove by just two votes in the fifth and final round of voting by Conservative MPs.
Johnson won 160 votes against 77 for Hunt and 75 for Gove. Johnson and Hunt’s names will now go forward to the Tory membership of around 140,000 – with Johnson the overwhelming favourite to take possession of the keys to 10 Downing Street next month.
British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been declared unlawful by the court of appeal because ministers failed to properly assess their contribution to civilian casualties in indiscriminate bombing in Yemen.
The unexpected ruling has prompted the British government to suspend new arms sales to Saudi Arabia while it urgently reviews its processes – although Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, has said the government would also seek to appeal.
Rory Stewart has been ousted from the Conservative leadership contest after losing 10 votes since the last round, sparking MPs’ speculation that Boris Johnson’s operatives may have previously pushed fellow supporters to vote for the outsider to help eliminate his Brexiter rival Dominic Raab.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including the third round of voting in the Tory leadership contest and Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs
The SNP’s Neil Gray say in-work poverty has risen dramatically. Isn’t that May’s legacy?
May says the relative poverty has gone up because pensioners are better off. Gray may want to see pensioners worse off, but she doesn’t.
Julian Lewis, a Conservative, asks what May feels about the principle of bringing a dying soldier to court in Northern Ireland on the basis of no new evidence.
May says no one wants to see cases like this coming to court. But previous investigations have not been found to be lawful. She says she wants to see terrorist being properly brought to justice.
Here is more on Nicola Sturgeon from my colleague Severin Carrell.
@NicolaSturgeon says @BorisJohnson asked her recently (paraphrasing) “So Nicola: full fiscal autonomy. Does that buy you guys off?” “I’m going to make that the starting point of our negotiations should he become prime minister” @reformscotland#devo20
Nicola Sturgeon has said that Boris Johnson’s “almost certain” election as the next Conservative leader has proven how sharply Scotland is now diverging from the rest of the UK, increasing the case for independence.
In a speech to mark 20 years since devolution, the first minister said Johnson’s apparent relish for a no-deal Brexit, and his “gratuitously offensive” opinions about women and minorities are in stark contrast to Scotland’s open, diverse and tolerant politics.
It is surely deeply concerning that the Conservative party is even contemplating putting into the office of prime minister someone whose tenure as foreign secretary was risible, lacking in any seriousness of purpose or basic competence and who, over the years, has gratuitously offended so many, from gay people, to Africans, Muslim women and many others.
But while that, for now, is a matter for the Tories it does further illustrate the different political trajectories of Scotland and other parts of the UK. And it raises the more fundamental question of whether the UK and therefore devolution, in its current form is capable of accommodating those differences.
Lib Peck insists tactics are succeeding despite Londoners ‘feeling powerless’ over crime
The head of London’s newly formed violence reduction unit has said Londoners feel powerless about levels of street crime but insisted that increased use of stop and search powers had been successful.
Lib Peck, the former leader of Lambeth council who was appointed to the role in January, made the comments while on a two-day fact-finding trip to Glasgow, visiting some of the Scottish unit’s key projects and meeting senior officials.
Iván Duque decries social acceptability of drug that inflicts environmental and social damage on producers
Middle-class cocaine users are inconsistent hypocrites if they fail to recognise the environmental and social damage their drug use is inflicting on producer countries, the Colombian president has said during a visit to London.
In an interview with the Guardian on Monday, Iván Duque said that cocaine’s social acceptability had to end. “There are many people who present themselves as environmentalists, and if they want to be coherent, they must understand all the environmental damage that is caused by the production of cocaine – not just destroying tropical forests, [but] spreading chemicals in protected areas and destroying human capital,” he said.
Eurosceptic backer warns that hardliners want frontrunner to rip up May’s deal
Boris Johnson has been accused of giving MPs contradictory promises on Brexit to win their votes, as one of his highly Eurosceptic backers warned that hardliners want to see him effectively tear up Theresa May’s deal with the EU.
The Conservative leadership frontrunner will face questions on his Brexit stance in a television grilling for the first time in the campaign on Tuesday, amid frustration among his rivals that he is getting away with pledging to be “all things to all MPs” on issues from Brexit to HS2 in one-on-one meetings with them.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Tory leadership candidates take part in the press gallery hustings
And here’s another story from the hustings, filed by the Press Association.
Tory leadership hopefuls Rory Stewart and Sajid Javid believe they have the required number of supporters to survive Tuesday’s second round of voting.
Stewart managed to secure just 19 votes in the first ballot and Javid had 23 - both short of the 33 required to stay in the race after the second vote.
Here is my colleague Peter Walker’s story about what the Tory election candidates had to say at the press gallery hustings about Donald Trump.
Jeremy Hunt has vigorously defended Donald Trump for quoting the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins in an attack on the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, as Downing Street declined to condemn the US president’s words.
The foreign secretary said that while he would not have used the same words as Trump he would “150% agree” with the overall sentiment.