Boris johnson

Monday

Katy Balls

Johnson faces a mauling from his own MPs

Ahead of the publication of Sue Gray’s report into partygate, there had been talk that the police investigation — which meant the most tricky parts of Gray’s investigation were left out — would help Boris Johnson by ensuring he got off lightly. However, anyone watching the reaction from MPs to the Prime Minister’s statement in the chamber will have been left wondering what the full report would have triggered. While the shortened report meant the Prime Minister was spared embarrassing details coming to light, it did not stop Johnson from facing a mauling from his own side. While a number of supportive MPs asked the Prime Minister to focus on channel crossings and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Johnson’s defence deteriorates

That Boris Johnson regards the Gray update as an opportunity to come up for air was very clear from his statement on the report in the Commons. The Prime Minister’s opening remarks struck what seemed to be a reasonable balance between apologising, offering some operational changes to No. 10 (to show he was taking the report’s recommendations for ‘learning’ seriously) and trying to buoy up Tory MPs with a reminder of what his government was achieving. Brexit, freeports and the comparatively early end to Covid restrictions all came up. He might have been pleased with himself as he commended his statement to the House, but things went downhill after that. The

Sunday

Keiran Pedley

How bad are the polls for Boris Johnson?

It’s no secret that the polls do not look good for the Prime Minister at the moment. The most recent Ipsos Mori political monitor, released this week, shows that seven in ten Britons are now dissatisfied with the job Boris Johnson is doing. The PM’s numbers now are similar to Theresa May’s just before she left office in 2019, Tony Blair’s in January 2007 and the types of figures registered by Gordon Brown throughout 2008 and 2009. In this context, some six in ten Britons think the Conservatives should change their leader before the next general election (up from 42 per cent last July), including more than one in three

Bruce Anderson

The real reason Boris is unfit to be prime minister

Three years ago, imagine that you had wanted to write a film script about a prime minister and his travails. By some coincidence, your draft bore a close relationship to Boris Johnson’s character and recent developments. We know the outcome. You would have been laughed out of the producer’s office. ‘Some of this is quite amusing,’ you would have been told. ‘You clearly have a talent for slapstick. But you have none for verisimilitude. You are writing about the head of government of a serious country, at a time of great events and challenges, at home and abroad. And this is how you portray the PM and 10 Downing Street?

Friday

Steerpike

Has Cressida bailed out Boris?

‘Wait for Sue Gray’ was the ministerial mantra last week. And wait, we all have, as the days have ticked by with no sign of her report into the lockdown parties allegedly held at No. 10. But now, after a week of stasis which has had Westminster on tenterhooks, Cressida Dick and the Met police have dropped another bombshell on a quiet Friday morning. Dick revealed on Tuesday that her officers would be launching a criminal investigation into ‘partygate,’ having previously ignored all calls to do so. And today the Met has issued a fresh statement, saying they want ‘minimal reference’ in Gray’s report to the No.10 parties which they’re

Thursday

Steerpike

Boris’s Brexit bonanza

Tory whips are working overtime to win round waverers as Boris Johnson struggles to rescue his flailing premiership. Among the arguments being deployed to keep the beleaguered premier is that Brexit could be endangered – a claim which Johnson’s longtime Remainer critics like Lords Heseltine and Adonis are only too keen to deploy too.  So, as Tory loyalists seek to remind their colleagues about Johnson’s role in winning the referendum and getting Brexit over the line, what better occasion to do that than on the second anniversary of Britain leaving the EU? Next Monday will indeed mark two years since that faithful day and Mr S hears Whitehall’s finest in the Cabinet Office are planning

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory party is split on one issue: Boris

‘I can’t put into words how awful this is’ remarks one Tory MP. The party is split not on the kind of policy issue that people can debate but on the question of one man: the Prime Minister. Neither side is finding this struggle rewarding. The Johnson loyalists feel that they spend all day trying to bail water out of the boat, only to be hit by another wave as yet another story breaks. Those who want Johnson gone fear that the police investigation may slow every-thing down and that the current mantra, ‘Wait for the Sue Gray report’, will simply morph into ‘Wait for the Met report’. In No.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The abandoned revolution: has the government given up on Brexit?

There is a lesser-known Robert Redford film, The Candidate, in which he plays a no-hope Democrat taking on a popular and well-liked Republican in a Californian election. After engaging unexpectedly well with the public and winning an improbable victory, he turns to one of his aides and asks, bewildered: ‘What do we do now?’ The question is left hanging in the air like the back end of the bus in The Italian Job. The script might as well have been written about Boris Johnson and the Brexit referendum campaign. It is nearly six years on from that victory, and two years on from Brexit itself. And yet it is still

The Spectator

What Boris must do now to survive

When Omicron struck, Britain was already the most boosted country in Europe. Our programme was so advanced that 80 per cent of pensioners were already triple-jabbed. This helped force the new variant into reverse in the first days of January, with hospitalisations half of the previous peak. A country whose economic recovery had already surpassed almost all expectations can now continue to grow — in contrast to many European countries still dragged down by restrictions and heavy-handed mandates. In such circumstances, the Prime Minister might reasonably expect to be fêted. Instead Boris Johnson is fighting for his political life, unsure of when his mutinous Tory MPs might come for him.

The Spectator

Who survived the sinking of the Titanic?

Prime numbers As of 29 January Boris Johnson will have been Prime Minister for two years and 190 days. Currently he is 38th out of 55th in the list of longest-serving PMs, sandwiched between Henry Campbell-Bannerman, whom he overtook on 22 November, and Spencer Perceval, the only PM to have been assassinated. Johnson will have to survive in office until 1 March to overtake Perceval. If he is still in Downing Street on 6 June, he will have overtaken Gordon Brown. He would overtake Theresa May on 5 August and Jim Callaghan on 23 August. Men overboard A new exhibition challenges the idea that women and children aboard the Titanic

George Osborne

My encounter with Sue Gray

I only voted in one no-confidence motion. The leader was Iain Duncan Smith, and it was a bit awkward. I spent hours every week helping Iain with Prime Minister’s Questions, and felt sorry for him. At the same time, his leadership was a disaster. Indeed, Tony Blair was going easy on him in the chamber just to keep him alive. So what to do? On the morning of the vote, I conferred with two other new MPs in the PMQ team — David Cameron and Boris Johnson. We all agreed he had to go and swore a pact. So off I went to cast my ballot. A few hours later,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Unease in Ukraine, tensions in No. 10 and hamsters escape Hong Kong

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the Commons that Britain was prepared to send troops to protect Nato allies in Europe if Russia invaded Ukraine. The Foreign Office named Yevhen Murayev, a former Ukrainian MP, as a candidate that President Vladimir Putin of Russia was plotting to install in Ukraine. About half the staff at the British embassy in Kiev would come home. The Queen took a helicopter from Windsor Castle to Sandringham, where she is expected to stay for the 70th anniversary of her accession on 6 February. The Metropolitan Police began an investigation, led by deputy assistant commissioner Jane Connors, into ‘a number of events that took

Wednesday

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Operation Save Big Dog and the real scandal of Boris’s leadership

There is a theory which states the primary reason for Boris Johnson’s political longevity is that there are simply so many scandals that the latest infidelity drives the last one from public consciousness before it really has time to sink in. ‘Who paid for his wallpaper? Meal delivery? He had a party while forcing the country into social isolation and atomisation? How many parties— what do you mean the police are investigating him?’ At this point, it seems like the revelation most likely to do him in will be the discovery that, at some point in the last two years, Boris Johnson sat quietly in a room and diligently worked

Steerpike Steerpike

Six of the silliest ‘cakegate’ defences

Polls might show that two in three voters think Boris Johnson should quit over No. 10’s parties but crucially less than 15 per cent of Tory MPs share that opinion. And, as Westminster awaits the release of Sue Gray’s report, it’s clear that there are still plenty of backbenchers willing to go out on the airwaves to put their necks on the line. Let the bodies pile high, indeed. Unfortunately, given the number of alleged gatherings and the speed with which details have emerged, some long-suffering Tories have been left looking slightly ridiculous when trying to defend their beleaguered PM. That has been particularly difficult since Monday when ITV reported

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Lindsay Hoyle is turning into John Bercow

Sir Keir Starmer has a weakness, and the Tories have spotted it. His weakness is Sir Lindsay Hoyle. The Speaker likes to interrupt PMQs when noise in the chamber exceeds a threshold known only to him. During Sir Keir’s cross-examination of Boris today, he broke in three times to deliver pompous mini-sermons that might have been scripted by John Bercow. ‘Our constituents are very interested to hear this,’ said Hoyle, having told Sir Keir to sit down. The rowdies were ordered to ‘please leave quietly’. No one left. That should have told him that a game was afoot. He himself pointed out that the shouts and jibes originate from the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A rather pointless PMQs lets Boris off the hook

Given the extraordinarily low expectations, Prime Minister’s Questions went reasonably well for Boris Johnson today. That is partly because it was a pointless session: everyone is waiting for the publication of the Sue Gray report, so most likely it will be forgotten very quickly and will make no difference to the main event (whenever that comes). Most likely it will be forgotten very quickly Johnson decided to make a forceful argument that he and the government were focused on more important things than cakes and parties. He lectured Keir Starmer for raising the matter at all when he was busy bringing the west together to threaten Russia with the toughest package of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Team Boris’s scorched earth strategy

Jacob Rees-Mogg is now arguing that the UK system has become so presidential that a new prime minister would feel obliged to call an election. The message to Tory MPs is clear: depose Boris Johnson and you’ll be going to the country in months — and do you really want to do that given the polls? Rees-Mogg’s argument is being used by the shadow whipping operation too. It has, from what I have been hearing, had some effects on new intake MPs. But among older intakes, there is a bit of a backlash to it.  There is a view that the argument takes them for fools. Yes, Labour and the

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

The final word on Colin the Caterpillar

Our friend Colin is back in the news again. This time, it’s not his name that has caused a storm – Colin’s many fans may remember M&S filed an intellectual property claim against Aldi back in April in an attempt to stop them from selling their copy cat-erpillar Cuthbert. Rather, it’s the suggestion that he may have been present at the Prime Minister’s impromptu birthday party,  that is raising eyebrows. Like Prince, Madonna and Boris, in birthday party circles, Colin needs no second name, with over 15 million sales under his belt during his 30 year life. I’m only slightly older than Colin, and he’s been present at perhaps half the birthday parties I’ve ever attended,

Monday

Steerpike

Where next for ‘party Marty’?

Westminster is gearing up for ‘Sue Gray week’ as the top civil servant is due to finally release her long-awaited findings into ‘partygate.’ There’s been much speculation as to how bad the forthcoming report will be for Boris Johnson and his gang, with both political appointees and civil servants expected to be implicated. TheTelegraph reports that Downing Street police officers have been interviewed about what they saw on the nights in question while the Sunday Times claims that Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings will be grilled today. While Mr S awaits the publication of the report’s findings with interest, it’s clear that one or two people’s careers in Whitehall have already been badly hit by

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Downflood: the Good Ship Boris is sinking

In Sebastian Junger’s book The Perfect Storm, there’s a near-matchless description of how big boats go to the bottom. ‘The crisis curve starts out gradually and quickly becomes exponential,’ Junger writes of a boat wallowing and taking on water in a big sea: The more trouble she’s in, the more trouble she’s likely to get in, and the less capable she is of getting out of it, which is an acceleration of catastrophe that is almost impossible to reverse… If there’s enough damage, flooding may overwhelm the pumps and short out the engine or gag its air intakes. With the engine gone, the boat has no steerageway at all and turns