Boris johnson

It seems fresh infighting has broken out in Whitehall on what is supposed to be the most important Budget day of a generation. Yes, a briefing war has spilt out into the open, with the PM’s fiancée Carrie Symonds taking to Twitter to defend… Dilyn the dog.  Some fed-up official appears to have been whispering that the prime ministerial pooch is ‘sickly’ and could be on the way out.  According to reports, the inhabitants of No. 10 are sick to the back teeth with, to borrow Ms Symond’s phrase, ‘a load of total crap’. The Times‘s Ben Ellery reports the words of one insider, who told the paper: ‘For a while there was dog shit everywhere in

This afternoon Boris Johnson came close to losing a Commons vote for the first time since the election. Over 30 Tory MPs broke a three-line whip in order to protest over the government’s decision to allow the Chinese company Huawei to be involved in the UK’s 5G network. The government saw off the rebellion by Tory MPs over an amendment calling for Huawei to be removed from the 5G network in two years time if it is still deemed ‘high risk’ by British cybersecurity experts by 306 votes to 282. This means that the government’s working majority of 87 was cut to 24. The rebellion was spearheaded by Iain Duncan

Global system breakdown has defined all our lives for 13 years. From the banking system’s boom and bust to the rise of a new anti-globalisation, the populist generation of politician and political leader, to the mounting cost of global warming, to the exponentially charged proliferation of a jumping-the-species virus.  There is definitely no sleep till Brooklyn, or for the wicked. And we have a choice, as people, as nations, as culture. We can try to understand what is happening in a balanced, calm, rational, scientific way and rebuild some sense of control over our destiny. Or we can continue shouting at each other, in social media’s Tower of Babel, and

Even if the Covid-19 coronavirus does not become a mass killer on the scale of, say, the Spanish Flu in 1918, the mere possibility of such severity still carries huge weight. Just the potential for a disastrous pandemic demands a response whose seriousness and nature will have political and social implications. Even in this first week of the full UK response, some of those implications are clearly visible. And some of the inferences and lessons that can be drawn from this week are, to my mind, quite positive – small points of light in a dark and threatening sky, if you like. 1. The State matters Small-state libertarians have always

This week’s Prime Minister’s Questions had Tory MPs bursting out of their seats to ask Boris Johnson some lovely easy questions. There were more than usual whose contribution to the session was merely to ask him to agree with them that he had the right priorities and was doing a great job.  Claire Coutinho, recently-elected as Conservative MP for East Surrey, gave the Prime Minister a chance for a breather right after his stint sparring with Jeremy Corbyn with this question: ‘My constituents in East Surrey care enormously about climate change. Does my right hon. Friend agree that yesterday’s news that the UK’s carbon emissions have been reduced by a

Upon how many fronts can a government fight at any one time? Political capital has a short-enough half-life as it is without the risk of it being diluted through simultaneous multiple battles. Concentration of political firepower matters. At a rough count, Boris Johnson’s ministry is currently fighting the civil service, the media, the European Union and now, of course, a looming public health emergency from a likely coronavirus epidemic. There is also the small matter of a budget and the government’s actual – or, if you prefer, notional – plans for ‘levelling-up’ the United Kingdom. Some of these are more significant problems than others, and some of them required no

The fundamental issue revealed by the resignation of the Home Office’s Permanent Secretary Sir Philip Rutnam is the yawning gap between what Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings want post-Brexit UK to be on January 1, 2021, and what senior civil servants think is deliverable. The PM and his chief aide want to have a fully functioning new immigration system by then, whereas officials fear there’s not enough time. Johnson and Cummings argue the police should be able to keep us safe if we are no longer part of European Arrest Warrant system. Officials can’t concur. Downing Street thinks we can ward off pandemics if we withdraw from the EU’s Early

There’s much speculation (and conspiracy theory) about why Boris Johnson chose today to announce that he’s becoming a father for the sixth time. Was it to get the resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam off the front pages? But to many in Westminster, the real question is how they have kept it quiet for so long. Rumours have been circulating for some time fuelled by Carrie Symonds’s reduced profile and a series of clues for those who were looking. When the couple chose to take in the recess week from the more discreet Chevening rather than Chequers, it was read in some quarters as a pregnancy-related decision. Then when Symonds didn’t

There is chatter in the Westminster village about Boris Johnson’s low-profile. Why isn’t he visiting flooded towns? Why isn’t he fronting efforts to reassure a country worried about pandemic coronavirus? Here, I think it is worth quoting at length a speech given before becoming prime minister: ‘If we win the election we will get our heads down and get on with implementing the big changes I’ve spoken about today. You will not see endless relaunches, initiatives, summits – politics and government as some demented branch of the entertainment industry. You will see a government that understands that there are times it needs to shut up, leave people alone and get

The Brexit talks are heading for a breakdown. Next week’s meeting will be a stand-off between the two sides. As I say in the magazine this week, the EU will make its demands on level playing field provisions and the UK will say they are unacceptable and render the talks pointless. The government’s hope is that by saying it will walk out of the talks in June it can persuade the EU to shift from its current, maximalist position. The EU will offer carrot and stick in these talks. They’ll make clear that if the two sides agree a trade deal, they’ll go for a light touch at the border

One of the Tories’ tactical successes has been to push Brexit down the news agenda. But even if it no longer dominates front pages and news bulletins as it once did, the task of sorting out Britain’s future relationship with the European Union remains the government’s biggest challenge. Brexit also provides the best explanation for some of No. 10’s other actions. Last week’s cabinet reshuffle, for instance, can only be properly understood in the context of Brexit. The purpose was to create an all-powerful centre. The three greatest parts of government — No. 10, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office — have now been joined together. There is a combined