Boris johnson

‘It’s the return of Tory sleaze’: so said Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. His was an assertion immediately echoed by various leading Labour figures across social media. Former prime minister David Cameron’s questionable relationship with Greensill Capital is the immediate occasion for this potentially toxic claim. But Labour clearly hopes to drag Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and many other ministers into the mix. For, as Starmer went on, ‘sleaze’ is ‘at the heart of this Conservative government’. In contrast, Johnson is seeking to protect himself against the taint of ‘sleaze’ by announcing an inquiry into claims of impropriety. Perhaps it will protect him. But in the meantime,

Can things get any worse for Keir Starmer? Yes appears to be the answer, if the latest YouGov poll is anything to go on. While the Tories have surged ahead to 43 per cent, support for Labour has tumbled down to 29 per cent. It’s important not to blow a single poll out of proportion, but nonetheless these numbers make for grim reading for the Labour leader. That 14 per cent lead for the Conservatives is the largest since mid-May 2020, when the recently elected Starmer was still digging his party out of the polling abyss of the Corbyn period. A year on – and coming weeks before a crucial

‘Keir today, gone tomorrow.’ The whisper before Easter was that Labour’s troubled leader might not survive until the next election but the spectre of Tory sleaze – which felled John Major’s government – has come to the rescue. Sir Keir started PMQs by alluding to David Cameron’s freelance activities for Greensill Capital. ‘Are the current lobbying rules fit for purpose?’ he asked. Boris tried the ‘nothing to see here’ approach. He wants to smother the controversy by appointing a legal sleuth with a spectacularly dull name, Nigel Boardman, whose findings will be delivered in June. So for the next two months the PM can happily refer every question to ‘the

To paraphrase the old adage, truth can still be pulling on its boots when a misconception is already half way around the world. This is what has happened over the David Cameron/ Greensill affair. There is only one antidote to that: the facts. David Cameron’s statement sets these out clearly. There is to be an inquiry, which is likely to recommend procedural changes. It should also become clear that Cameron has nothing to fear from what has happened. To see why, it’s first worth delving back to 2010, when the Tories had just returned to office. In the early days of the coalition government, there was much discussion about the future of the civil service. Francis Maude, the

Political parties like to think of themselves as being a ‘broad church’ when tackled about conflicting views among members. It makes it all the more ironic then that it was a visit to a church which exposed a challenging split in the Labour party. Keir Starmer’s trip to Jesus House last week resulted in him apologising for associating with people who believe homosexuality to be a sin. The Labour party can ill-afford to keep excluding groups of voters. The difficulty for Starmer (and for many who wish there to be a viable alternative government) is that left-wing politics is increasingly an ‘AND’ movement. This means that to be welcome on the

No prime minister wants to be dependent on the opposition to get the government’s business through the House of Commons. But this is the position Boris Johnson will likely find himself in when it comes to ‘Covid status certificates’, I argue in the magazine this week. Labour are sounding sceptical of vaccine passports at the moment More than 40 Tory MPs have already signed a pledge to oppose vaccine passports, and the government’s majority is 80. ‘It is just down to Starmer. If he whips against, Boris will lose,’ says one of the leaders of the Tory rebellion. The policy has hit a nerve in the Conservative party. Tory opponents

Alan Duncan’s diaries are currently being serialised by the Daily Mail ahead of their release next Thursday. As a long-serving MP of 27 years who knew four successive Tory premiers, who lent Major his leadership headquarters, was part of May’s Oxford generation and worked alongside both Cameron and Johnson, surely such chronicles would be brimming with brio and insight? Unfortunately thus far revelations appear to have been fairly short on the ground, despite the Mail‘s best efforts to puff its ‘hilarious’ purchase as ‘one of the most explosive political diaries ever’ by claiming the cabinet had been ‘rocked’ by its contents. As of day three, the biggest bombshells have been that Duncan didn’t think

The biggest question facing Boris Johnson is the future of his so-called vaccine passports. A few months ago, the idea was dismissed by No. 10 as ‘discriminatory’. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said: ‘We are not a papers-carrying country.’ But now, without debate or democratic scrutiny, vaccine passports are quickly heading from unthinkable to unstoppable. Today, No. 10 released more details — hence the questions Johnson is facing. But bizarrely, the Prime Minister was unable to admit to any of it, and pretended to be confused by what he was being asked. This matters. If he cannot acknowledge his flagship scheme, leaving such an indefensible gulf between what his government has just published and what he has just said, he may already be

The recent report of the commission on race and ethnic disparities has given the clearest indication yet of the guiding philosophy animating the Conservatives under Boris Johnson. It is rooted in the traditional commitment of conservatives to national unity. The calculative political positioning of the Cameron and May regimes seems to be long gone. Since the nineteenth century the platforms of political parties can be understood by measuring the relative weight they attach to the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Labour puts equality above the other two ideals and, when we had a Liberal party, it put liberty above everything else.  Today’s Liberal Democrats are closer to Labour than

How strange to have spent a year in a world where to hug someone outside of your household is not allowed. For the past five days, six people in England have been able to meet up outdoors again, but only in a socially distanced way. Previously, the argument for crackdown on such instinctive human behaviour centred around hospitals being overrun. Today, the Covid data tells a very positive story, with infections, hospitalisations and deaths all down by 90 per cent or more since the most recent peak. Meanwhile, the right data is going up, with over half of the UK adult population having received at least their first dose of a Covid

This afternoon the Prime Minister chaired the second meeting with business bigwigs on his ‘Build Back Better’ council, whose membership includes John Lewis supremo Sharon White, Heathrow chief Lord Deighton and Charlotte Hogg of Visa. The dry-as-dust press release to mark the occasion is replete with the usual jejune platitudes beloved of Whitehall mandarins for the government’s ‘Plan for Growth’ and forthcoming ‘Innovation Strategy.’ What the dispatch did not mention however was a typically Johnsonian jibe at the expense of his former chief adviser. Following the news yesterday that GlaxoSmithKleine will support the manufacturing of up to 60 million doses of the Novavax coronavirus vaccine at its Barnard Castle plant, Mr