Former PM chosen to run again in constituency he currently holds, quashing speculation that he might seek safer seat
Boris Johnson has been reselected as the Conservative candidate in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
It comes after speculation that the former prime minister might seek out a safer seat before the next general election.
Continue reading...Some of party’s MPs even believe they could narrowly win next election – but the odds remain stacked against them
When Rishi Sunak took over, most Conservative MPs were in despair. Some even suggested the party did not deserve to be in power. “We need a reset,” one said at the time. “A period out of office to get our act together.”
But almost five months on, Sunak has given them hope that they can avoid a total wipeout at the next election. Despite 13 years in office and all the problems the UK is facing, they now believe they could hang on, albeit with a significantly smaller majority.
Continue reading...PM said Father’s Day card would be his ‘limit’ in response to Johnson nominating his father for knighthood
Rishi Sunak has said his father would be lucky to get a card on Father’s Day, let alone a knighthood, after accusations that Boris Johnson’s honours list had discredited the system.
Sunak has come under pressure to reject Johnson’s list, in which he nominated his father, Stanley Johnson, for a knighthood, given previous allegations about his behaviour.
Continue reading...Placing of media boss on resignation honours list despite previous rejection puts Rishi Sunak in difficult position
Boris Johnson has once again nominated Paul Dacre for a peerage as part of a pared-back resignation honours list despite the Daily Mail chief having previously been rejected by the appointments watchdog, the Guardian has learned.
Sources with knowledge of the list have said that Johnson has put forward Dacre’s name for a second time. He had been knocked back last autumn after reported doubts raised by the House of Lords appointments commission.
Continue reading...Senior MPs blast ex-PM’s ‘wicked’ claims after his backers level new accusations against Keir Starmer’s appointment of Sue Gray
Tory support for Boris Johnson is draining away tonight as party grandees likened his response to a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into whether he misled MPs over “Partygate” to the lies of former US president Donald Trump.
Several Conservative MPs in senior positions reacted with disbelief after Johnson and his dwindling band of allies questioned the work of the independent Commons privileges committee and accused it of an “outrageous level of bias”, after it said on Friday there was a significant volume of evidence suggesting that the former PM may have misled parliament.
Continue reading...Former prime minister will give evidence to privileges committee inquiry from 20 March over claims he misled MPs over lockdown parties
The privileges committee report out today includes evidence that has not been made public before, suggesting Boris Johnson was not being honest with MPs when he told them the Covid rules were followed at all times in No 10.
It includes this paragraph.
The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings.
There is evidence that those who were advising Mr Johnson about what to say to the press and in the house were themselves struggling to contend that some gatherings were within the rules.
The committee of privileges today is taking further steps in its inquiry into the conduct of Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP. Mr Johnson has accepted the committee’s invitation to give oral evidence in public in the week beginning 20 March.
The exact date and time of the evidence session will be announced shortly. The session arises out of the referral from the House of Commons of the matter to the committee. The session, which will be held in public, will see the committee’s members, comprised of four Conservative, two Labour and one SNP member, question Mr Johnson on a range of matters arising from evidence submitted to the inquiry, as set out in a report published today.
Continue reading...Privileges committee document intended to help ex-PM prepare for questioning contains wealth of new information
Boris Johnson faces a battle for his future in parliament after a cross-party committee found there was significant evidence he misled MPs over lockdown parties, and that he and aides almost certainly knew at the time they were breaking rules.
The damning report includes one witness saying the then prime minister told a packed No 10 gathering in November 2020, when strict Covid restrictions were in force, that “this is probably the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now”.
Continue reading...Ex-PM criticises sensitivity edit of author’s works – and also rejects sending Parthenon marbles to Greece
Boris Johnson has criticised a publisher’s rewriting of some language in Roald Dahl’s stories by reciting a song by the Oompa-Loompas.
The former prime minister expressed his “irritation at wokeness and political correctness” after Puffin made extensive changes to the author’s work to remove language it deemed offensive.
Continue reading...Negative comments by former PM and senior unionists suggest revised Northern Ireland protocol has not won over key figures
Rishi Sunak’s hopes of ending years of Brexit infighting with a revised deal for Northern Ireland have suffered a double blow as Boris Johnson came out against the plan while pressure mounted within the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) to reject it.
In his first public comments since the Windsor framework was unveiled on Monday, Johnson used a speech to a conference in London to say he would find it “very difficult” to back the plan, arguing it would stifle the UK economically.
Continue reading...Minister for women and equalities dismisses suggestion government should pilot menopause leave for women
PMQs is about to start.
Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s chief whip, has said that he thinks the Stormont brake – the mechanism at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s deal to revise the Northern Ireland protocol – will turn out to be “fairly ineffective”.
Let’s not underestimate the fact that when the EU introduces new laws in the future, it will have an impact on Northern Ireland. And the point of the brake was meant to be to give a means for unionists to oppose that. I think it will have to be used on lots of occasions, though I suspect to be fairly ineffective.
As long as it takes us to get, first of all, the analysis, and secondly, the answers from the government, before we make that decision, that’s the time we’ll take.
But the one thing I’ll say to you is that we will not have a knee-jerk reaction to this deal. It means too much to us. And we have got to give it real consideration.
Continue reading...Sunak’s government has refused to echo assertion that Jagtar Singh Johal is being arbitrarily detained
Rishi Sunak and the Foreign Office appear to be scaling back the UK’s support for Jagtar Singh Johal, the British Sikh activist held in an Indian jail for five years, his family and Keir Starmer have said.
Sunak’s government has refused invitations to echo Boris Johnson’s assertion that the Indian government has arbitrarily detained Johal, a term seen as significant because it means the UK does not recognise there is a proper legal basis to hold him.
Continue reading...Most Tory MPs welcome breakthrough as hardline Brexiters are mulling response
Boris Johnson is dangling the threat of a rebellion over Rishi Sunak after a new post-Brexit deal was announced that will rip up the former prime minister’s protocol on Northern Ireland and ditch his legislation to override it.
Although most Conservative MPs warmly welcomed the breakthrough after two years of negotiations, Johnson stayed away from the House of Commons chamber and is said not to have made up his mind about whether to endorse or oppose the “Windsor framework”.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen say ‘Windsor framework’ has been reached after four months of negotiations. This blog is now closed
Q: Why do you say you will back the PM’s deal when you have not seen the detail? And would you like to see Northern Ireland within the scope of the European court of justice, or outside it?
Starmer says he knows Northern Ireland well and knows the detail. Any deal will be an improvement on the status quo. That is why he is saying he would back it. He says the deal will not come as a surprise.
Continue reading...They stopped short of Boris Johnson’s demand for UK to ‘break the ice’ and supply Ukraine with fighter jets
UK political leaders have marked the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a renewed call to support Kyiv with additional weaponry – but stopped short of the firm commitments on fighter jets demanded by Boris Johnson.
With James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, in New York for a meeting of the UN security council, Rishi Sunak hosted the Ukrainian ambassador at Downing Street, with a national minute’s silence planned for 11am on Friday.
Continue reading...James Cleverly’s comments come after No 10 said ‘no deal has been done as yet’
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, will discuss the Northern Ireland protocol in a call with the European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič this afternoon, PA Media reports. They will be joined by the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, amid expectations both sides are inching closer to a deal.
Micheál Martin, the Irish foreign minister and tánaiste (deputy PM), has urged UK politicians not to play politics with the Northern Ireland protocol negotiations. Speaking in Brussels, where he has been attending the EU foreign affairs council, he said:
I think what’s very important is that everybody now from here on think about the people of Northern Ireland.
Not power play, not politics elsewhere, I think the people of Northern Ireland have had enough of that, of people playing politics with their future. And, in my view, my only concern is that the people of Northern Ireland voted [in last May’s assembly election], they want their institutions [at Stormont] restored.
Continue reading...Analysis of civil service spending includes Rishi Sunak’s Treasury department spending £3,000 on Tate photographs
Spending on government-issued “credit cards” has risen 70% since 2010, when the Conservatives first warned they were generating “hideous waste”, according to a Labour analysis of civil service spending.
Civil servants at 14 of the 15 main government departments spent nearly £150m on government procurement cards (GPCs) in 2021, the figures show, a steep rise since 2010-11, when David Cameron warned about the lax rules and oversight governing their use.
Continue reading...Ukrainian leader drew upon his showmanship during trip to ask for ongoing support and place on agenda
Few world leaders arrive for an effective state visit to the UK wearing battle fatigues, but even fewer leaders come to the UK with a mission to remind their hosts of their own greatness and history, manifestly leaving a flattered audience so convinced that the world does indeed need their country’s leadership. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has many extraordinary skills as a showman, but one is a unique ability to appeal to a nation’s psyche.
In retrospect, it would have been unforgivable for the Ukrainian leader to have only visited EU leaders at their meeting in Brussels and not also flown to the UK – the major European power that has from the outset provided not just moral support, but been in the vanguard in offering arms, training, intelligence, and has since 2014 cooperated with Ukraine by helping to rebuild its navy. So when it was leaked that Zelenskiy was likely to address EU leaders on Thursday, it should have been self-evident he would also come to London, but the visit, meticulously planned and choreographed, was kept under wraps until Downing Street broke the news before 9am.
Continue reading...Controversial MP appointed as Greg Hands’ deputy; Michelle Donelan becomes minister for science, innovation and technology
This is from TalkTV’s Kate McCann.
“Next hour or so …” We’ll see. Reshuffles often take longer than expected, because all it takes is one minister to say no, or ask for time to think, and then the whole process gets clogged up. There is already some evidence that this one is not going to be quite as quick as originally expected. (See 8.30am.)
Continue reading...Johnson’s administration made promises over Northern Ireland deal that it knew were unworkable, former PM tells MPs
John Major has launched a scathing attack on Boris Johnson’s handling of Brexit, saying his administration agreed to the Northern Ireland protocol despite knowing it was unworkable.
“That must be the first agreement in history that was signed by people who decided it was useless in the first place,” Major told a Westminster committee on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Sources say prime minister also wants to split Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Rishi Sunak is planning a mini-reshuffle to replace Nadhim Zahawi as Conservative party chair as he tries to reassert his grip over his divided party, according to reports.
The prime minister is also believed to be considering a shake-up of Whitehall by splitting the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy into two or three new departments to better reflect his priorities.
Continue reading...