Boris johnson

Boris Johnson has been plunged back into the mire of partygate. The publication of a photograph of Johnson raising a glass to his departing communications chief Lee Cain in November 2020 and the long-awaited report by Sue Gray into lockdown breaches in Whitehall means that once again there are Tory MPs publicly calling for him to resign. Some of those who had gone quiet on the basis that the war in Ukraine meant it was not the right time for a leadership election have renewed their calls for the Prime Minister to go. No. 10’s hope is that apologies and an emphasis on how the new Department of the Prime

How humbled is Boris Johnson by the publication of Sue Gray’s report into partygate? Speaking in the Commons chamber, the Prime Minister attempted to strike a solemn tone at the first of three events today which have been dubbed a ‘masochism strategy’ of taking pain in the chamber, a press conference and then appearing before Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 Committee. Johnson told MPs: ‘I am humbled and I have learned a lesson’. He went on to point out how ‘the entire senior management has changed’ including a new chief of staff, a new director of communications and a new principal private secretary. He described Starmer as ‘Sir Beer

Scott Morrison’s Liberals were absolutely thrashed in the Australian elections this weekend. The party’s vote collapsed, and there were big-name defeats, with the man touted as Morrison’s successor – Josh Frydenberg – ousted in Kooyong, a suburb which had been in the party’s hands for 121 years. Whatever went wrong for the Morrison government, Saturday’s results might have relevance closer to home, even if teasing out domestic lessons from elections on the other side of the world is problematic. Australia is a different country, with a different political culture and a different electoral system. Scott Morrison was also an unloveable figure — stolid, gaffe-prone and not outwardly empathetic. When women marched

Boris Johnson has never quite been able to decide whether he wants to be a great unifier or a great divider. Does he want to govern like he did at City Hall – the ‘generous-hearted, loving mayor of London’, as he once described himself – or is his best chance for re-election a return to the Brexit-style wars that landed him in Downing Street? These days, there are plenty of signs that the government is in fight mode. The Prime Minister is risking a trade war with Brussels with threats to unilaterally rewrite the Northern Ireland Protocol, going to battle with civil servants over home-working and planning to deport asylum

Boris Johnson is running out of time to produce things the Tories can show the voters at the next election. The theme of his Queen’s Speech – if there was one – was an attempt to fix that. That next election campaign was countered by Keir Starmer in the chamber this afternoon. The main focus was on the cost-of-living crisis and how much worse things are going to get. Funnily enough, Starmer didn’t mention the members of the government who’d broken Covid rules The Labour leader repeatedly accused this government of not being ‘up to the challenge’, with the Tories producing only a ‘thin address bereft of ideas or purpose, without a guiding

Sir Keir Starmer has spent the past 24 hours in the witness protection programme. After the Mail on Sunday published an itinerary of the now infamous visit to Durham, complete with a gathering for beer and curry, the Labour leader’s version of events appears to be in doubt. This afternoon he was a no-show at an Institute for Government event. Then he turned up at a press conference at 4 p.m. and took a gamble: No rules were broken — I’m absolutely clear about that — but, in the event that I’m wrong about that and I get a fixed penalty notice, I’ll do the right thing and step down.

In large part, these local elections were a referendum on a basic proposition. Do the government and the Prime Minister deserve a kick in the pants? As it was virtually impossible to argue against that verdict, Boris Johnson could claim to have done surprisingly well. Indeed, some of his Tory critics are disappointed with the outcome. It does not justify an immediate coup. That said, it seems certain that many of the Tory losses can be blamed on Boris. A lot of traditional Tories, who are used to seriousness in their own lives, will not accept lower standards in their prime minister. This appears to have been especially true in

Nervy Tories in Westminster will be looking at today’s results and wondering what it means for them. Council contests are often fought on very different issues to those in a general election but there’s no doubt that local councils switching parties is bad news for the incumbent MPs there. Top Tories under threat include Dominic Raab, whose Esher constituency has seen the Liberal Democrats making gains on the local Elmbridge council. Sir Ed Davey’s party has undergone something of a resurgence in the south west of England, gaining Somerset council which suggests a major threat to incumbents like Marcus Fysh in Yeovil and Rebecca Pow in Taunton Deane.  Elsewhere, Labour made some of its most

The polls have now closed in this year’s local and devolved elections. The parties – and their leaders – face a nervous wait for the results. For Boris Johnson, this is the first electoral test since he was fined by the police for breaking his own Covid rules. Tory MPs will be watching nervously to see how much damage has been done. Tory MPs will be watching nervously to see how much damage has been done CCHQ have done a canny job of expectation management, suggesting that the loss of 800 seats – which would be a truly diabolical night for the party – should be seen as par. But

In those gentle days before internet pornography there was a book you could buy which listed the precise moment in each Hollywood film when the sex scene began, or when the leading lady – very often Greta Scacchi – got her kit off, thus enabling one to buy the video, or rent it from Blockbuster, and fast-forward to the, uh, important bit. Apparently the most requested fast-forward was of Sharon Stone in Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct: a film as dumb as pretty much everything else the Dutchman has committed to celluloid, even if his reputation has lately been rehabilitated (for reasons I do not understand). Stone played a bisexual novelist

I don’t understand the logic behind how the Met Police is conducting its probe into unlawful parties at Downing Street and the Cabinet Office. My confusion reached brain-aching proportions after my ITV colleague Anushka Asthana disclosed on Friday that officials had received fixed penalty notices – fines – for attending perhaps the most famous of all the Downing Street events, the Bring Your Own Booze garden party on 20 May 2020, revealed by an email leaked to ITV News. The point is that I know of at least two relatively junior officials who have been informed by the police that they’ve been fined. So there is no longer any doubt this

Readers of a certain vintage will remember the 1980s heyday of the light entertainment show Blind Date. A series of well-scrubbed young men and women would compete to be taken out by a potential paramour who was hidden on the other side of a screen. They would begin their moment in the spotlight with a tightly-scripted introduction in which they would offer their name and where they were from. The mass television audience, who had the advantage of being able to see each contestant, would very often form an instant impression based on these few seconds of exposure and its own prejudices. I have often thought this merciless formula is