Boris johnson

Thursday

James Heale

Inside the clash between Boris and Charles

Boris Johnson is the kind of prime minister who believes that rules are there to be broken. This certainly seems to apply to his relations with the Crown. Conversation between the government and the monarchy is, by convention, kept strictly confidential. But when Prince Charles privately described the government’s Rwanda deportation policy as ‘appalling’ within political earshot, word leaked out suspiciously quickly – via Westminster channels. Johnson then chose to fuel the story at the Commonwealth summit in Kigali by telling broadcasters that Charles should keep ‘an open mind’. Given that the Prince was standing in for the Queen as head of the Commonwealth, it was remarkable to have the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why tactical voting is so dangerous for the Tories

Boris Johnson has always been a celebrity politician. It is one of the reasons why the normal rules of politics have so often not applied to him. This status has given him political reach and put him on first-name terms with the public. It makes it easier for him to command media attention than other politicians: a fact that he turned to his advantage in 2016 and 2019. But this strength is now becoming a weakness. Johnson’s ability to dominate politics means that the country is now polarising into pro- and anti-Boris camps. The worry for him is that he has more opponents than supporters. Last week’s by-elections suggest people

Tuesday

Robert Peston

Nicola Sturgeon has put Boris Johnson in a tight corner

Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she will not contemplate breaching the rule of law by holding an independence referendum was pretty blatant trolling of Boris Johnson, given the multiple allegations he faces of being less than scrupulous in following domestic and international law. But Sturgeon also put Johnson and the Tory party in a tight corner by asking the Lord Advocate to petition the Supreme Court in London to determine the legality of a referendum. If the Supreme Court rules her way, then there will be the mother of all constitutional crises if Boris Johnson continues to reject the lawfulness of any vote by the Scottish parliament to hold a poll on

Friday

James Forsyth

What will the anti-Boris rebels do now?

Looking at these Tory losses, it is hard not to conclude that the rebels would have got the 180 votes they needed to oust Boris Johnson if they had been organised enough to wait until after the by-elections before going for a vote of no confidence. But having had a vote two weeks ago, it is not credible to suggest changing the rules immediately to allow another one. However, judging from the conversations I have had with Tory MPs this morning, more of them would now like the option of having another vote sooner than a year from now. Some talk about the autumn, others about March. In a way, Oliver

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why Oliver Dowden’s resignation matters

Boris Johnson has been clear that he will not resign in the face of by-election losses. But his party chairman just has done, saying someone needs to take responsibility for losses in both and Tiverton & Honiton. Tory chairman Oliver Dowden announced he is quitting as ‘we cannot carry on with business as usual’. In his resignation letter, he says ‘our supporters are distressed and disappointed by recent events and I share their feelings’. Dowden does not offer an endorsement of the Prime Minister – instead saying he remains loyal to the Conservative party. No Tory MPs really believe a lack of organisation is the key factor in these two

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The by-elections are a disaster for Boris

Boris Johnson is suffering a further blow to his leadership this morning after the Conservatives lost two by-elections overnight. Labour took Wakefield from the Tories by 4,925 votes – a swing of 12.7 per cent. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats managed to overturn a Tory majority of 24,239 in Tiverton and Honiton – beating the Conservatives by 6,144 votes, with a swing of nearly 30 per cent. Tory MPs with seats where the Lib Dems are the second largest party will be particularly nervous The opposition leaders have been quick to herald their successes. Labour’s Keir Starmer has said the result is ‘a clear judgement’ on the Tory government while Liberal

Thursday

Robert Peston

Where’s Boris’s plan to stop the economic chaos?

Interest payments on the national debt rose 70 per cent last month to £7.6 billion (compared with a year earlier) – largely because of the impact of inflation on income paid to holders of index-linked gilts, which are inflation-protected government bonds. More worryingly, this was 49 per cent more than the official forecast made in March by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). It suggests the OBR’s forecast that the government will have to pay £87.2 billion in interest payments (a colossal sum) may be too low, especially since the ONS is not factoring in the most recent inflation figures in its calculations of the monthly bill. Little wonder Rishi Sunak says ‘rising

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The rail strikes could be the end of the line for Boris

Here I go again, in my occasional role as your intrepid transport correspondent. Last week I reported on airport chaos, last month on the opening of the Elizabeth line. Now here I am boldly defying the rail strike on a Grand Central train from York to King’s Cross. To be honest, on a perfect sunny morning, it feels less stressful than my regular journeys on this crowded and often disrupted line. The RMT pickets at the station entrance were less aggressive than the pigeons on the platform trying to steal a bite of my bacon roll. Grand Central – ultimately owned by German taxpayers, though I don’t suppose that explains

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Who monitors the moralists?

If anyone was suitable to be the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministerial interests, it was Lord Geidt. Self-effacing, professional, unself-righteous but thoroughly proper, he could be relied on to do his job without an eye to attracting headlines, gaining Remainer revenge and similar modern temptations to which some officials succumb. Yet last week he resigned. It seems a good moment to ask whether the job is doable. Many will say that it isn’t, and blame Boris Johnson. It is undoubtedly true that any system based on rules comes under strain when confronted with Boris’s work methods. Last week, a horse called Etonian ran at Ascot. A newspaper reported that he

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Three cheers for booing in the theatre

In the theatre, to boo is taboo. There was an exception last week when Andrew Lloyd Webber’s name was booed by the crowd at the final performance of his musical Cinderella after a letter written by him to the cast, in which he called the show a ‘costly mistake’, was read out on stage. But that’s rare. Outside of panto season, the West End generally prefers a play to be received in a sepulchral hush. It’s curious that booing is absent from modern theatre, because it’s as old as European drama. The earliest reports of audience booing were recorded at the annual festival of Dionysus in Athens where playwrights competed

James Forsyth James Forsyth

British politics is stuck

One of the favourite phrases of British political commentators is ‘oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them’. As with all clichés, there is a certain amount of truth to it. But both the Tories and Labour seem intent on testing the maxim to destruction: despite everything the Tories appear to be doing to ensure they lose the next election, Labour is still only ahead by single digits in the opinion polls. No incumbent party in the western world is finding the present set of circumstances easy. The Covid shutdowns, overly loose monetary policies and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have sent inflation soaring. In France, Emmanuel Macron has no way of

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

The Tories are picking inflation winners and losers

Inflation rose to 9.1 per cent on the year in May, taking the UK’s consumer price index to a 40-year-high. Optimists are noting the slowdown in pace, rising by 0.1 per cent between April and May. But I suspect we are in the eye of the storm. This price spiral is nowhere close to over, not least because the next energy price cap review is currently estimated to lift bills by an additional £1,000. The Bank of England’s latest forecast predicts inflation will peak at around 11 per cent, but it must be said that the Bank has consistently underestimated the inflation rate, playing catch-up with its forecasts, as well

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Boris is falling into the Macron trap

You can’t blame Boris Johnson for jetting off to Kyiv last week for another meet-and-greet session with Volodymyr Zelensky. He got a warmer reception from the Ukrainian President than he would have in Doncaster, the town he snubbed in order to grandstand on the international stage. Johnson was scheduled to have made an appearance at the conference of northern Conservatives, where organisers had hoped he would woo Red Wall voters by explaining how, two and a half years after they loaned him their vote, he intends to ‘level up’ their town. But to the consternation of many MPs, Johnson decided he had more important issues on the other side of

Thursday

Steerpike

Another Boris diplomatic blunder

Boris Johnson has never been one of nature’s diplomats. Unconventional, irreverent, Brexit-backing and norm-defying, the blonde bombshell’s two-year tenure at the Foreign Office is now remembered as one of the less happy periods of his political life. Still, even cynical veterans of the ambassadorial circuit were left unimpressed with the Prime Minister’s performance at the Trooping the Colour ceremony a fortnight ago. This occasion is treated by overseas plenipotentiaries as the closest thing that the UK has to a national day: the equivalent of Bastille Day in France or the Fourth of July in America – especially so in a Platinum Jubilee year. So the various high commissioners and ambassadors

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Geidt of the long knives: what the PM’s ethics adviser’s resignation means

Boris Johnson has lost his second ethics advisor since entering No. 10. This evening Lord Geidt announced his resignation as the Prime Ministers’s independent adviser on ministers’ interests: ‘With regret, I feel that it is right that I am resigning from my post as Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests.’ It’s clearly not good news, yet the timing could have been worse There have been rumours for some time that Geidt – who previously served as the Queen’s private secretary – could be on the brink of resigning. He was brought in last April to replace Sir Alex Allan, who quit the role in late 2020 after Priti Patel, the Home

Monday

Robert Peston

The Northern Ireland Protocol is a problem Boris created

If Boris Johnson was elected on a single slogan, it was ‘Get Brexit done’. He then claimed it was done at the end of 2019 in the terms for leaving the EU he agreed. Not so. Today legislation will be introduced by the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to unilaterally overhaul a central pillar of the UK’s negotiated exit from the EU, the Northern Ireland Protocol – which is seen by the EU, whatever the government may claim, as a breach of the UK’s international treaty obligations.  Economic relations with the EU, still the biggest market for our exporters by a country mile, were already bad. They are about to become appallingly

Wednesday

Andrew Lilico

What Boris needs to do to survive

Most people date the beginning of Boris Johnson’s current woes to the start of the partygate scandal, and especially to the revelations from 10 January 2022 onwards about the ‘bring your own booze’ event that Johnson himself had attended. But Johnson’s problems can also be seen as having started at an earlier date and from a different source. In mid-December Lord Frost resigned from Johnson’s Cabinet, rejecting the additional restrictions proposed in response to Omicron, a few days after Steve Baker and the Covid Recovery Group had led about 100 backbenchers in a revolt against new measures. This meant Boris felt he had to take proposals for a Christmas 2021

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The game is up, Boris Johnson

The worst possible outcome for the Conservative and Unionist party is also a pretty lousy result for the country. That this needs saying – that Tory MPs need reminding of this – is itself yet another data point supporting the proposition that Boris Johnson’s leadership has thoroughly corrupted the party. So what to do now? This is now the necessary question. Since Johnson will not depart voluntarily he must be pushed. Those cabinet ministers with an ounce – imperial measurements, obviously – of moral fibre must surely recognise the game is up. This barky won’t float. You cannot credibly lose the support of 40 per cent of the party –

Wolfgang Münchau Wolfgang Münchau

How Boris can cling on

What is happening in the UK right now is similar to the later Berlusconi years, the opera buffa phase of Italian politics with bunga-bunga parties, and worse. Readers may remember Berlusconi’s infamous put-down of recession warnings in 2009, when he remarked that he was not worried because the restaurants were still full. I remember having a conversation with a senior minister in his cabinet at the time, who said it was absolutely clear that Berlusconi had to go, and it was just a matter of time. It took another three years. And it was the euro crisis that did it, an event still unforeseen in 2008. History never quite repeats

Sunday

Patrick O’Flynn

Is the fall of Boris inevitable?

A funny thing happened on the way to the cathedral for the service of thanksgiving to the Queen on Friday. It wasn’t just that Boris Johnson got booed, it was also that Sadiq Khan got cheered. GB News solemnly reported that the Mayor of London ‘received extensive cheers from members of the public who were adorned with Union Jack hats and flags’. So who were these royalist admirers of Mr Khan and detractors of Mr Johnson? I don’t know and neither do you. Given that the mayor secured an underwhelming vote share last year and is one of Labour’s most partisan figures, it seems a stretch to think of him