Category Archives: Conservatives

Boris Johnson indicates at PMQs he has not read winter coronavirus report

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Keir Starmer presses PM over scientists’ call for preparations for possible second wave

Boris Johnson has indicated he has not read a government-commissioned report setting out urgent measures needed to prepare for a possible second wave of coronavirus, telling the Commons only that he was “aware” of it.

Johnson was questioned at length by Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions about the study by 37 senior doctors and scientists, published this week, and the need for an effective test-and-trace system to mitigate any new outbreak.

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Brexit: UK’s new fast-track immigration system to exclude care workers

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Minimum salary thresholds to also remain in place, presenting additional barrier

Care home staff have been excluded from a post-Brexit fast-track visa system for health workers, in a move that critics say could prove “an unmitigated disaster” and may increase the risk of spreading coronavirus.

Confirming there would be no special treatment for carers coming from the EU or the rest of the world, the government said it hoped Britons would fill a shortfall of around 120,000 workers, equating to 10% of all posts. Currently 17% of care jobs are filled by foreign citizens.

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Anne Applebaum: how my old friends paved the way for Trump and Brexit

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In a powerful new book, the journalist and historian reveals how her former friends and colleagues became agents of populism

Anne Applebaum can look at the wreck of democratic politics and understand it with a completeness few contemporary writers can match. When she asks who sent Britain into the unending Brexit crisis, or inflicted the Trump administration on America, or turned Poland and Hungary into one-party states, she does not need to search press cuttings. Her friends did it, she replies. Or, rather, her former friends. For if they are now embarrassed to have once known her, the feeling is reciprocated.

Applebaum’s latest book, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, opens with a scene a novelist could steal. On 31 December 1999, Applebaum and her husband, Radosław Sikorski, a minister in Poland’s then centre-right government, threw a party. It was a Millennium Eve housewarming for a manor house in the western Poland they had helped rebuild from ruins. The company of Poles, Brits, Americans and Russians could say that they had rebuilt a ruined world. Unlike the bulk of the left of the age, they had stood up against the Soviet empire and played a part in the fall of a cruel and suffocating tyranny. They had supported free markets, free elections, the rule of law and democracies sticking together in the EU and Nato, because these causes – surely – were the best ways for nations to help their people lead better lives as they faced Russian and Chinese power, Islamism and climate change.

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Revealed: Dominic Cummings firm paid Vote Leave’s AI firm £260,000

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Boris Johnson’s chief adviser declines to explain reason for payments to Faculty

A private company owned and controlled by Dominic Cummings paid more than a quarter of a million pounds to the artificial intelligence firm that worked on the Vote Leave campaign.

The prime minister’s chief adviser is declining to explain the reason for the payments to Faculty, which were made in instalments over two years. Faculty also declined to say what they were for.

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Bakery known for anti-Tory slogans appears in government ad campaign

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Ads pulled after Haxby Bakehouse owner and Labour member Phil Clayton complains

There are thousands of bakeries from which the UK government had to choose to star in its latest public information campaign. The Haxby Bakehouse was probably the only one to have produced loaves flour-stencilled with “F*ck Boris” during last year’s general election.

Nonetheless, a photograph of its owner, Phil Clayton, dusted with flour and carrying a tray of freshly baked goods appeared in national newspapers on Saturday with the headline “Welcome back to freshly baked bread”, to promote the government’s “Enjoy summer safely” campaign.

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Gove and Johnson ‘sold as slaves’ at Oxford student charity event

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After PM’s behaviour with the Bullingdon Club, evidence emerges of further antics at Union Society fundraiser

It may have only merited a few paragraphs in the student newspaper and have taken place 33 years ago, but an Oxford Union Society “slave auction” in which Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were involved is powerful proof of how politicians’ pasts can come back to haunt them.

“Union slave auction” was the headline in Cherwell, the journal for Oxford students, on 12 June 1987. The small story has escaped the notice of the two men’s biographers and their profile writers until now.

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Boris Johnson criticises Oxford decision to remove Rhodes statue

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In wide-ranging interview, PM says jobs furlough not healthy and urges restraint as pubs open

Boris Johnson has expressed opposition to removing a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University, in a rare newspaper interview in which he also said the jobs furlough scheme was not “healthy” for the economy in the long term and would end soon.

Speaking to the Evening Standard, the prime minister said he did not agree with the decision of Oriel College to take down its statue of the Victorian imperialist, as he was “in favour of people understanding our past with all its imperfections”.

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Starmer overtakes Johnson as preferred choice for prime minister

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Opinium poll also shows Labour more trusted over Covid-19 response

Labour leader Keir Starmer has overtaken Boris Johnson as the public preferred choice for Prime Minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for The Observer.

Starmer is preferred to lead the country by 37% of voters polled on Thursday and Friday last week, compared with 35% who say Johnson would be the best Prime Minister.

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Putin is up to no good. But Johnson needs little help in creating chaos | Nick Cohen

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The ‘gobocracy’ that surrounds the PM is capable of doing Russia’s work for it

As Boris Johnson is leading Britain’s first government of pundits, “a gobocracy”, if you like, it is worth repeating Humbert Wolfe’s scathing poem on the press: “You cannot hope to bribe or twist,/ thank God! the British journalist./ But, seeing what the man will do/ unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”

In a gobocracy, there’s no need to become too conspiratorial about why a prime minister betrays his country. Put a Telegraph columnist in charge, throw in Michael Gove from the Times and Dominic Cummings from Vote Leave’s propaganda arm, and their bottomless cynicism and instinctive charlatanism will bring ruin with or without foreign assistance.

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Boris Johnson backs Robert Jenrick despite planning row

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Senior MP says questions remain over links between housing secretary and Richard Desmond

Boris Johnson has full confidence in the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, Downing Street has insisted, despite fresh revelations about his relationship with the billionaire property developer Richard Desmond, in documents published this week.

Pressed about Jenrick’s role in rushing through a decision on the development, allowing Desmond to avoid a £45m payment under the community infrastructure levy, Johnson’s official spokesman signalled that No 10 had no concerns.

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Monsters are heinous, but they need collaborators to do their dirty work | Suzanne Moore

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Mouths to feed, rent to pay: there’s always an excuse if you’re tempted to do the wrong thing

Where is Ghislaine Maxwell? Where? I sat through the four episodes of Filthy Rich, the Netflix documentary on Jeffrey Epstein. I had to force myself, not because it was so upsetting – which, of course, it also was – but because the tales of his sexual abuse were so monotonous. Brave and defiant, his victims had to numb themselves slightly to tell and retell what happened to them when they were as young as 14. The interviews with the monster himself, as always, were disappointingly banal. Monsters often are tediously ordinary. The magnetic charm, the immense intellect, is one of the biggest delusions of “true crime”. See also Ted Bundy.

Anyway Ghislaine, accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein, is said to be a free woman in Paris, living in the swanky 8th arrondisement. French law prevents her extradition. Many of those implicated in Epstein’s world of obscene exploitation, including all the art world and socialite scum, must have a clue where she is. Alleged scum, I should say. They love their children just like we do. Sure.

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September reshuffle expected in effort to stem faltering Tory poll ratings

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Backbenchers and party activists are unimpressed by U-turns and dithering as public support continues to fall

Ministers are expecting a wide-ranging government reshuffle in September in which Boris Johnson will sack key figures who are judged to have underperformed in the Covid-19 crisis.

Cabinet sources said the move was now seen as inevitable. They believe sweeping changes will be made in an attempt to defuse mounting discontent on the Tory backbenches following a stream of U-turns and a fall in the party’s poll ratings.

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Russia report: UK MPs condemn ‘utterly reprehensible’ delay

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Failure to establish key scrutiny committee is also criticised as ‘unprecedented underhand behaviour’

The government’s apparent refusal to release a report into Russian infiltration in the UK and to delay establishing a key scrutiny committee has been condemned as unprecedented and “utterly reprehensible”.

The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has not met since before the general election in December – – its longest break since it was established in 1994 – and critics say the government has sat on the committee’s report into Russian interference for nine months.

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Johnson makes U-turn on free school meals after Rashford campaign

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‘Covid summer food fund’ announced after pressure from footballer and campaigners

Boris Johnson has been forced into a humbling U-turn over providing food vouchers for some of England’s poorest families after a campaign launched by the footballer Marcus Rashford threatened to engulf his government in another crisis.

In an embarrassing about-face, the prime minister said that on Tuesday he had called the England and Manchester United striker to explain the reversal, and made the remarkable claim that he had only become aware of Rashford’s interest in the issue earlier in the day.

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Boris Johnson ‘stoking fear and division’ ahead of BLM protests

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Critics say PM’s claim that George Floyd protests ‘hijacked by extremists’ is dangerous

Boris Johnson was accused of “stoking fear and division” ahead of a weekend of Black Lives Matter demonstrations after he unequivocally condemned the removal of historic statues and claimed the protests had been “hijacked by extremists intent on violence”.

As statues – including of Winston Churchill – were boarded up to protect them ahead of planned marches, the prime minister tweeted his opposition to those calling for memorials with links to slavery and racism to be torn down.

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Johnson’s ‘culture war’ trap seems designed for Corbyn, not Starmer

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As No 10 hopes to divide Labour on statues and TV archives, its leader has made practical demands on race inequality

Boris Johnson appeared to have had his say about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests earlier this week, telling the nation in a carefully phrased article for the black newspaper the Voice: “I hear you.”

Yet on Friday morning, he dramatically returned to the fray, tweeting that taking down controversial statues was to “lie about our history” and warning would-be protesters: “The only responsible course of action is to stay away.”

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MPs join 90-minute-long queue to vote to end virtual voting

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Critics say move to physically-distant voting puts vulnerable and BAME politicians at risk

MPs are to return to parliament after a government motion was passed to prevent the resumption of virtual voting, despite what one MP called “absurd” scenes of a kilometre-long conga line of politicians trying to vote.

The 527 MPs snaked through Westminster halls and courtyards for an hour and 23 minutes to vote on the proposal by the Commons leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, which was carried by 261 votes to 163. It incited a furious reaction from many MPs, including those who are shielding and black and ethnic minority (BAME) politicians.

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EU has no legal duty to give UK trade privileges, document says

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Paper concludes EU does not have to offer privileges given to others in previous deals

The EU has no legal duty to grant the UK privileges offered to other countries in trade deals, an internal European parliament paper has concluded ahead of a crucial round of Brexit talks this week.

The document, drawn up by officials for the parliament’s UK coordination group, is a short analysis of arguments made by the UK’s chief negotiator, David Frost, in a letter to his counterpart, Michel Barnier. Frost accused the EU of treating the UK as an “unworthy” negotiating partner by denying the UK “the kind of well-precedented arrangements commonplace in modern FTAs [free trade agreements]”.

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From rose garden to ridicule: how a week of disaster for Tories and Dominic Cummings unfolded

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Boris Johnson said it was time to move on – but the public, the press and scores of his own MPs didn’t agree

As she looked out of her kitchen window towards a farm in the distance owned by Dominic Cummings’ parents, an elderly woman described her reaction on Friday to the story that had caused shock not just in rural County Durham, but across the whole country.

“I have isolated for 10 weeks. I have not seen my children since before Christmas,” said the woman, who asked not to be named. She lives in a pretty village across the valley, with a pond and village green, where life normally passes quietly by with few disturbances.

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‘Inconsistencies’ in Dominic Cummings’ story, says senior Tory

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Exclusive: Penny Mordaunt offers ‘deepest regrets’ to constituents as lockdown row rumbles on

Penny Mordaunt, a senior government minister, has said there are “inconsistencies” in Dominic Cummings’ account of his actions during lockdown and apologised for how recent days have “undermined key public health messages”.

In an email sent to constituents, seen by the Guardian, Mordaunt said Cummings’ continued position as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser was a “matter for the prime minister” but she also said she could “fully understand how angry people are” and believed there was no doubt he “took risks”.

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