Boris johnson

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: In defence of Boris Johnson

Boris’s legacy Sir: It is grossly unfair to assert that Boris Johnson’s legacy was the lockdown (Leading article, 9 July). His chief legacy was, of course, Brexit, followed by the crushing of Corbynism, the world-beating vaccine rollout, and his leading role in supporting Ukraine against the Russian invaders. Not a bad tally. Most European countries, though not Sweden, imposed lockdowns of varying lengths and severity, on the advice of scientists and with overwhelming public support. Governments were on a learning curve when the vicious virus struck. Johnson’s government made mistakes, but got most of the big decisions right. We all know about Johnson’s flaws, but he was a remarkable prime

Dot Wordsworth

‘Our’ by ‘our’, Boris’s resignation speech

There was a word I didn’t understand in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech (in which he did not resign). He spoke of ‘our fantastic prop force detectives’. Prop? Prop forwards, clothes props, proprietors, propositions, propellers? Perhaps they are personal protection officers, though I don’t think those are detectives. Or it might be family slang made up by Wilfred, two: ‘Ook, Papa, prop-props…’ More cunningly deployed in the 900 words of the speech was our. Not just our props but ‘our police, our emergency services, and of course our fantastic NHS… our armed services and our agencies… our indefatigable Conservative party members… our democracy’. First he had thanked ‘Carrie and our children’.

Thursday

Svitlana Morenets

Ukrainians are in mourning for Boris

Boris Johnson’s support for Ukraine looked like a gimmick for many in Britain. Whenever the PM was in trouble, he called president Zelensky. When things got too much in Westminster, Boris popped up in Kyiv. But for Ukrainians, Boris’s backing of Ukraine is no joke: he is a national hero. He is the most popular foreign politician: his approval ratings are 90 per cent, only 3 per cent behind Zelensky. He recently became an honorary citizen of Odessa. Four streets are named after him, and one cafe in the capital even makes a ‘Boris Johnson’ croissant (with vanilla ice cream on top, which is supposed to look like his hair).

James Kirkup James Kirkup

History won’t look kindly on Boris

‘Them’s the breaks’. Those three words speak volumes about Boris Johnson’s ability, his character and his fears. The words show Johnson retains the talents that made him a successful columnist. I know a lot of people don’t like this, but he was a good columnist, in the sense that he consistently said things that people were interested in hearing and talking about. Amid the eternal babble of the media, being able to find a phrase, a word, a sentence or a paragraph that captures attention and captures ideas – consistently – is no small skill. ‘Them’s the breaks’ is already doing exactly what its author intended. It’s becoming the headline on

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Boris was never Trump

The urge to compare Boris Johnson to Donald Trump was always irresistible. It has been fun, too. Both men are colourful creatures in a political environment that elevated dullards. Both men had privileged childhoods. Both are veteran womanisers with much younger wives. Both are brilliant electoral campaigners and great communicators, albeit in very different ways. Both are also much hated. Yesterday, as Johnson’s government collapsed on top of him and he appeared to be refusing to resign, some journalists instantly went for the ‘Britain Trump’ allusions. Johnson was desperately ‘clinging on’ to power; ‘unable to face reality’ and ‘refusing to respect the basic conventions of parliamentary democracy.’ Some Twitter blowhards even

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Why Rishi Sunak quit

On Tuesday, the last cabinet meeting with Sajid Javid as health secretary and Rishi Sunak as chancellor passed without any hint that either was about to resign. The ministers did not co-ordinate their resignations, but they had both been tipped over the edge by growing evidence that No. 10 had misled MPs by declaring Boris Johnson had no prior knowledge of Chris Pincher’s behaviour. Sunak had also grown tired of the Prime Minister’s economic ‘cake-ism’ – the fantasy of wanting both high spending and low taxes. The contradictions had become untenable. In that cabinet meeting, Johnson offered more cake. He was his usual ebullient self, promising a morale-raising speech to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Boris on the brink, petrol price protests and a £3,000 swear word

Home Rishi Sunak resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sajid Javid as Health Secretary. (Nadhim Zahawi accepted the post of Chancellor and Steve Barclay, the PM’s chief of staff, Health Secretary.) The resignations came five days after Chris Pincher, aged 52, the MP for Tamworth, resigned as deputy chief whip the morning after he ‘drank far too much’ at the Carlton Club where he was alleged to have groped two men. Then began questions of what Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, knew and when. Mr Pincher had the whip removed as a member of the parliamentary Conservative party, and said: ‘I will benefit from professional medical support.’ He had

Bruce Anderson

My memorable night at the Carlton Club

‘Club’ is a four-letter word. Whenever a club is mentioned in the press, it will inevitably be portrayed as a sinister meeting place where men gather in secret to plot against the common weal. If only. The main point about all clubs is that they are fun. That is true in St James’s. It is also true in the working-men’s clubs of the north and Midlands. That said, the Carlton Club could claim to be a special case, although anyone entering its portals in the hope of coming across louche behaviour would be disappointed (almost always). But it could be regarded as a trustee of the Conservative party. As such,

Coffee House

The 57 Tory ministers who resigned – forcing Boris to go

Boris Johnson has announced that he is resigning as Prime Minister after facing a tide of ministerial resignations. Below is the full list of cabinet ministers, junior ministers and other government employees who resigned, forcing the Prime Minister to act. Cabinet ministers who have resigned from Boris Johnson’s government: 1. Oliver Dowden, party chairman (5.35 a.m. 24 June) 2. Sajid Javid, health secretary (6.02 p.m. 5 July) 3. Rishi Sunak, chancellor (6.10 p.m. 5 July) 4. Simon Hart, Wales Secretary (10.30 p.m. 6 July) 5. Brandon Lewis, Northern Ireland Secretary (6.49 a.m. 7 July) 6. Michelle Donelan, Education Secretary, (8.53 a.m. 7 July) Junior ministers, trade envoys and party officials who have

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Boris skewered – for one last time?

A brutal encounter at the Liaison Committee this afternoon. Boris was grilled for two hours by a gang of aggressive MPs, (many of them Tories), who were drooling and panting for him to quit. But it wasn’t until the final moments that the session caught fire. Darren Jones took the first chunk out of the PM.  ‘How’s your week going?’ asked the Labour MP mildly. ‘Terrific, like many other weeks.’ ‘Did Michael Gove come in and tell you to resign today?’ ‘I’m here to talk about what the government is doing.’ Boris brushed off a similar attack from the SNP’s Angus MacNeil. ‘The game’s up. Will you still be prime

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris isn’t ready to go

Boris Johnson’s final hours as Prime Minister have been undignified. We do not yet know quite how this will end, but we know he will eventually have to quit. There is a delegation of cabinet ministers in Downing Street waiting for him – more here. Johnson found out about this group while he was in the liaison committee hearing, and was confronted about it by Darren Jones. His response shows that he is not going to accept the first plea from this cabinet delegation. He burbled on about the cost of living and how he wasn’t going to ‘give you a running commentary’ on political issues. This underlines the point

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is the end nigh for Boris?

Boris Johnson is now facing a situation where if he doesn’t resign he will face more cabinet resignations. Johnson is currently in front of the liaison committee, but when he returns to his office he will have a delegation of cabinet ministers waiting to see him who will him he is done and that he must resign. When I asked one ‘Is it over?’, they simply replied ‘yes’. If Johnson won’t go, he will face more cabinet resignations than he can fill. Leaving junior ministerial posts unfilled is bad, but it is simply not credible to not be filling cabinet posts. Remarkably one of the ministers who will tell Johnson

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs was a blue-on-blue bloodbath

Knife crime beset PMQs. It was a horrific blue-on-blue bloodbath as Tory backstabbers queued up to play the role of Brutus and hack Caesar to death. David Davis shoved in his stiletto and claimed that the PM’s lack of integrity would ‘paralyse proper government.’ Mind you, he said that six months ago. ‘I thank him very much for the point he has made again,’ said Boris. Super-sulky Tim Loughton asked, ‘does he think there are any circumstances in which he should resign?’ ‘Being a good father, husband, son and citizen is enough for me,’ claimed the arch-plotter Boris fought back. ‘The job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances, when he’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs will only encourage further rebellion

At one point in today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, the Speaker called MPs to order and told them: ‘We’ve got to get through Prime Minister’s Questions.’ This was an instruction to backbenchers who were shouting at one another across the chamber. But it sounded like an ambitious goal for Boris Johnson. He barely got through the truly brutal, angry session. He barely got through the truly brutal, angry session Sir Keir Starmer led on the allegations of sexual assault against Chris Pincher, and on why the Prime Minister had made him deputy chief whip when he knew about Pincher’s behaviour. His questions and lines were strong, Johnson’s were exhausted and irrelevant.

Andrew Lilico

How Boris Johnson squandered his premiership

Boris Johnson has been given so many second chances. He hasn’t taken any of them. Let’s start with his voting for Theresa May’s terrible Brexit deal. Despite this, when Theresa May resigned he was backed by Leavers and became PM. Having become PM he didn’t, as he should have done, back a no deal, and instead negotiated a revised version of May’s deal. Though a huge improvement on her version, it was far from perfect. Leavers backed him nonetheless and he won a large majority in the general election. And for having defeated Corbyn and achieved Brexit he will be remembered as a hero by many Conservatives. Barely a couple

Robert Peston Robert Peston

The meeting tonight that will decide Boris Johnson’s fate

The 1922 Committee – the organising body for Conservative MPs – faces a momentous decision on Wednesday night. If its members believe the mood of their colleagues is that the Prime Minister must face an immediate further test of his popularity, following the Chris Pincher debacle and the serial resignations from government, they could allow a further vote of confidence in the PM. But the threshold for such a vote would be massively increased, to avoid the charge that the committee was somehow on a vendetta against the PM and was trampling on the party’s internal rules of democracy. The new trigger for a vote of confidence would be that

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

There is no way out for Boris Johnson

Just after 6 p.m. yesterday it seemed like the Boris Johnson regime was in total, house of cards style collapse. Sajid Javid resigned as Health Secretary during a televised act of contrition by the PM over his handling – if that’s not too indelicate a word – of the Chris Pincher affair. Five minutes later Rishi Sunak quit as Chancellor. Their aides briefed that the two moves had not been coordinated. Nobody believed this. Outside the Marquis of Granby public house near Smith Square – the Tory tribe’s favourite Westminster watering hole – groups of right-wing think-tankers and researchers for Conservative MPs – avidly scoured social media for updates. Inside

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Who says Boris has to go?

As the cameras burped and clicked, as an aggravated nation watched, Boris Johnson announced that he was giving up. ‘Let us seize this chance and make this our moment to stand tall in the world,’ he said. ‘That is the agenda of the next Prime Minister of this country. Well, I must tell you, my friends, you who have waited faithfully for the punchline of this speech, that, having consulted with colleagues and in view of the circumstances in Parliament, I have concluded that person cannot be me.’ That was June 2016, you’ll remember. Johnson’s abrupt volte-face was a jaw-dropping moment; nobody saw it coming. The press conference was supposed

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Boris ‘forgot’ about Pincher allegations, claims minister

The government’s line yesterday on what Boris Johnson knew about Chris Pincher’s behaviour kept changing. Today, it’s quite hard to find anything that could reasonably be described as a ‘line’. More of a messy scribble. After Simon McDonald’s explosive intervention this morning, the ‘line’ had to change from Boris Johnson not being informed of any specific complaints, because now there was a report of an official complaint which McDonald alleges the Prime Minister was indeed briefed on. So what did it change to? As ever in these circumstances, Michael Ellis, the minister for defending the indefensible and holding lines even as they change, made his way into the chamber to answer

Friday

Steerpike

Boris’s awkward Erdogan encounter

Boris Johnson has never been afraid of expressing himself but he might well have regretted his verbosity yesterday when he had a rather awkward encounter at the Nato summit in Madrid. As Johnson sat at the summit table, a tall figure loomed over him and gripped the Prime Minister’s back. Johnson turned around to be greeted by Turkish President Recep Erdogan, with whom he, er, has some previous history. For back in 2016 when Boris was a humble backbencher, The Spectator ran an offensive limerick competition. Its aim was to poke fun at Erdogan who, at the time, was trying to prosecute a German comedian over a rude poem. Johnson