Tory MPs are ambivalent on the issue and there is uncertainty over what a caretaker government can do
Channel 4’s privatisation could be dropped by the next prime minister, with plans to sell the channel unlikely to be published before September.
Boris Johnson had already signed off on proposals to sell the publicly owned broadcaster, and the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, had been preparing to push the law authorising the change through parliament in the autumn.
Continue reading...Follow all the political developments as more candidates join the race to succeed Boris Johnson as Tory party leader and prime minister
Sajid Javid, who resigned as health secretary five days ago, is on BBC’s Sunday Morning discussing his leadership bid.
He says he didn’t want to give up the “very important” post and denies that his resignation was a move coordinated with former chancellor Rishi Sunak.
Continue reading...The PM’s frivolous style won’t be missed in the EU, but his serious side emerged on Ukraine
Boris Johnson’s supporters last week championed his legacy as a bullish enforcer of the British people’s will against European technocrats.
The reality of his diplomatic record over six years in office, first at the foreign office and then at 10 Downing Street, is rather different. Negotiators in Brussels found the old Etonian more malleable than they had expected.
Continue reading...PM pushed candidate forward for role in City Hall while he was mayor of London, report claims
Boris Johnson is facing new allegations he lobbied to get a job for a woman who claimed to be having a sexual relationship with him while he was London mayor.
It is alleged that Johnson lobbied for the woman to have a City Hall job during his time as London mayor and MP for Henley.
Continue reading...Senior Tories say the former chancellor is the main focus of the ousted leader’s anger as bitter infighting breaks out
Senior Tories accused Boris Johnson of trying to torpedo Rishi Sunak’s bid to succeed him as prime minister – and of refusing to leave No 10 with good grace – as the leadership race descended into bitter infighting.
As a trio of cabinet ministers entered the contest last night, senior MPs said the battle now risked inflicting even more damage on the party than the fall of Margaret Thatcher more than three decades ago.
Continue reading...String of candidates announced on Saturday including Kemi Badenoch, Liz Truss, Grant Shapps and Nadhim Zahawi
Tory MP Rehman Chishti has confirmed he is “actively considering” running for leader.
The newly appointed Foreign Office minister retweeted quotes attributed to him by the BBC, stating: “We need leaders who best reflect modern Britain and can provide solutions to the challenges our nation is facing now.”
Continue reading...Conservative MPs fear the race to replace Boris Johnson risks becoming a drawn-out, bitter battle
The race to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister was already slipping into acrimony on Saturday as Conservative factions briefed against Rishi Sunak, the early favourite, while one senior MP called for “no hope” candidates to drop out.
With four candidates confirmed, but predictions that up to 15 could put themselves forward as the next Conservative leader, Tory MPs expressed concern at the potential timetable for the race, and the prospect of bitter infighting.
Continue reading...Former chancellor says it it time to restore trust, rebuild the economy and reunite the country
More now from the 1922 Committee’s Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who says that while in an “ideal world” deputy PM Dominic Raab would have been made caretaker prime minister after Johnson’s speech yesterday, “that ship has sailed”.
I think in an ideal world, Dominic Raab, as deputy prime minister, should have been the caretaker prime minister, but that ship I think has sailed and we must we must now live with the fact that Boris Johnson will be prime minister until a successor can be voted on.
[Johnson] has said very clearly that he won’t be making any major changes during that period. And I think that is a good thing.
Continue reading...Analysis: If Johnsonomics stands for anything, it is a lack of plan or vision to address Britain’s economic woes
Boris Johnson entered Downing Street in July 2019 with a promise. The doubters, doomsters and gloomsters were going to get it wrong again: his leadership would make Brexit a success, re-igniting an economy stalled by the divisions over Europe.
Three years later, almost to the day, he prepares to leave with the country reeling from a political implosion of his own making, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession.
Continue reading...UK prime minister’s fellow populist is facing a tough re-election fight in October against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Tremors from the political earthquake that shook the United Kingdom have reached Brazil, where the left is hoping the demise of a British populist leader presages the downfall of their own far-right authoritarian.
Boris Johnson’s political collapse was met with a mixture of hope and humour, with Ciro Gomes, one of the presidential candidates in October’s Brazilian election, describing the leaders of both nations in similar terms.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson says all major fiscal decisions will be left to his replacement
Last night Braverman said she would stand in the Tory leadership contest when Boris Johnson goes.
When it was put to her that she did not have enough experience, Braverman did not accept that. She said she had run a government department, the attorney general’s department.
Continue reading...Analysis: Suella Braverman is lone frontbencher to voice leadership plan as Rishi Sunak, Sajid Javid and others hang back
Even before Boris Johnson delivered his ill-tempered exit speech, Conservative MPs’ focus had already switched to who might succeed him – and unlike in 2019, when he had been the prince across the water for months, this time there is no obvious successor.
Rishi Sunak, who walked out of the Treasury on Tuesday within minutes of Sajid Javid quitting, had been widely seen as the frontrunner until a series of missteps, including the botched spring statement.
Continue reading...Outgoing PM confirms no big changes of direction, including about taxation, during race to succeed him
Boris Johnson’s government will not try to implement new policies while the Conservatives choose a new leader, the prime minister has told his cabinet, deepening concerns over paralysis in the aftermath of his resignation announcement.
The prime minister, who has pledged to step aside, said he will not introduce “major changes of direction” including tax decisions over the coming weeks as Tory MPs and party members run an election for his replacement.
Continue reading...Kremlin gloats as oligarch Oleg Deripaska welcomes end of ‘stupid clown’ but Zelenskiy pays tribute to ‘true friend’
Boris Johnson’s downfall has been met with delight and ridicule in Moscow, while in Kyiv Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed sadness at the resignation of his key ally.
Johnson, who championed weapons transfers to Ukraine in the early stages of the war and was the first leader of a G7 country to visit Kyiv in April, has emerged as a much-loved figure in Ukraine. “We all heard this news [of Johnson’s resignation] with sadness,” Zelenskiy said in a statement after the two leaders spoke by phone. “Not only me, but also the entire Ukrainian society, which is very sympathetic to you.
Continue reading...Yvette Cooper requests more details about Boris Johnson’s meeting with Alexander Lebedev in Italy in 2018
Yvette Cooper has used an urgent question in the Commons to ask if Alexander Lebedev sought to arrange a private phone call between Boris Johnson and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during a weekend party in April 2018.
A day after Johnson admitted for the first time that when foreign secretary he had met former KGB agent Lebedev without officials present, the shadow home secretary told the Commons there were further questions raised by the trip to the party at an Italian palazzo owned by Lebedev’s son.
Continue reading...Word from No 10 bunker goes out to the Tory trenches but even the diehards know that the party’s one-time hero has to go
A blood-curdling vow to fight to the death, despair among Tory grandees at the impending loss of their champion, and incredulity that Boris Johnson is still hanging on – it is all part of the mix as the UK newspapers feast on another day of high drama at Westminster.
In what it calls an “exclusive” on “Defiant Boris’s message to Tory rebels”, the Sun splashes with the headline “You’ll have to dip your hands in blood to get rid of me”. A “key ally” of the prime minister repeats the No 10 briefing line that the rebels will have to overturn the “will of the people” if they want to oust Johnson.
Continue reading...A defiant prime minister may try to hold a general election to buy himself more time
Boris Johnson already knew more of his cabinet ministers wanted him gone before he went to face his MPs at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday. Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, and Simon Hart, the Welsh secretary, had told him to quit.
But the prime minister was immovable. He pressed on with the day, determined to answer questions three hours later from select committee chairs on the price of grain in the Bosphorus and the merits of road pricing at the liaison committee.
Continue reading...Thursday: Covid-19 led Australia to record 3,105 more deaths than expected in January and February. Plus: UK prime minister told to step down by his own ministers
Good morning. A fourth Covid vaccine is to be made available to more Australians as it was revealed hospital admissions have reached their highest levels since early February. In the UK, Boris Johnson has been told by his own ministers to quit. And Nick Kyrgios is through to the semi-finals of Wimbledon.
Johnson’s woes have continued amid a string of resignations from his collapsing government and a series of senior Conservatives called for him to step down. But the PM is refusing to budge, even after a delegation of cabinet ministers met him at Downing Street to demand his resignation on a day of rapidly unfolding political drama. Follow all the latest developments as they happen here.
Continue reading...Levelling up secretary fired several hours after urging Boris Johnson to vacate No 10
Michael Gove was sacked by Boris Johnson on Wednesday evening after telling the prime minister to quit earlier in the day.
Allies confirmed the levelling up secretary had been dismissed after a delegation of cabinet ministers told Johnson he should resign.
Continue reading...A number of senior Tory MPs are preparing leadership bids as Johnson’s hold on power weakens
Leadership jostling kicked off among leading Conservative MPs as Boris Johnson clung to power, with departing cabinet ministers Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid the favourites, and Eurosceptic Steve Baker publicly saying he would “reflect seriously on whether to run”.
Baker, a former chair of the European Research Group who was one of the “Spartan” holdouts against Theresa May’s Brexit deal, was the second to go on the record with leadership ambitions, saying it was “accurate” that he was thinking about a bid.
Continue reading...