Boris johnson

Critics of Boris Johnson were quick to seize on the fact that when Beth Rigby, the political editor of Sky News, asked a question at his launch yesterday she was jeered by some of his supporters. Jessica Simor QC, an opponent of Brexit, tweeted: ‘The road to fascism – their boos at Beth Rigby made me shiver.’ Referring to the same incident, professor Colin Talbot asked: ‘How long before he goes full Trump and starts talking about Fake News?’ Had Rigby been non-partisan, these complaints might have some merit. But the words she used when she was jeered made it sound as if she was siding with Boris’s opponents. You

Should Boris Johnson become Prime Minister it would be a calamity for his country and for Europe. That’s the view of Le Monde, a newspaper that declares it’s time for France and the rest of the continent to stop ‘regarding him as a buffoon’. In an editorial headlined ‘Boris Johnson at the head of the UK? No thanks!’, the left-wing paper said that Britain’s answer to Donald Trump is a danger to European stability, although clearly not as much as the Brexit Party. Since the party’s formation earlier this year, Le Monde routinely describes them as ‘extreme-right’, which must come as something of a shock to Claire Fox and millions

The source of government revenue is a mystery for many people, but one thing voters do remember is that they are taxed. When people open up their pay slips, the income tax deduction stares them in the face. The sight of it is galling, and the higher the percentage taken, the worse it is. This is true even if there is a sense that, like a foul-tasting medicine, it is a necessity. So this aversion to tax explains why Boris Johnson’s pledge to raise the level at which the higher rate tax band of 40 per cent kicks in – from £50,000 to £80,000 of earnings – is electorally attractive. This remains

Boris Johnson is currently the quiet man of the Tory leadership contest, lurking in the shadows rather than courting media attention as he usually does. His campaign team has deliberately held him back from touring the studios to avoid gaffes or rows. They’re even nervous about the limited exposure he has, joking that he is ‘always one Monday column away from disaster’. Of course, it’s easier to do this when your candidate has as high a profile as Johnson: he doesn’t really need any more attention than he’s already got. It is, though, not the greatest of compliments from those members of his campaign team that they seem to feel

The Tory leadership is fast becoming Boris Johnson’s to lose, I say in The Sun this morning. He has more MPs backing him than any other candidate, and his campaign receives a further boost this morning with the former Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon endorsing him. In the words of one of those knows the Tory parliamentary party best, ‘the wind is blowing in one direction’. There is increasing talk among senior figures in the party that if the former Foreign Secretary comes out on top in the parliamentary rounds, it would be best to skip the members part of the contest and make him Prime Minister straight away. The

In the end common sense has prevailed – and swiftly. When District Judge Margot Coleman decided last week to issue a summons against Boris Johnson for misconduct in public office it looked as if the case would drag on for weeks or months. But exceptionally the High Court today intervened in the criminal case to stop it now, recognising that it would have inevitably failed had it made it to the Crown Court. The arguments in court today centred around the nature of the crime that Boris Johnson was alleged to have committed. Misconduct in public office is an offence aimed at public officials who misuse their public position to such an extent