Boris johnson

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

Boris Johnson’s India trip hasn’t got off to the best of starts. Seeking to escape domestic woes, the Prime Minister jetted off to the subcontinent yesterday, only to face a fresh row about the Commons U-turn on the parliamentary investigation into Partygate. And Johnson’s irritation at the prospect of yet another inquiry was palpable in an interview he gave to Sky’s Beth Rigby earlier today. Throughout the ten-minute long grilling, the PM sighed exaggeratedly, rolled his eyes, looked at his watch and barely concealed his disdain at his interrogator’s questions. He asked Rigby ‘how many’ times she would ask him about Covid parties, claiming that: ‘You promised to get on, you did

Prime Minister’s Questions took a rather bizarre twist this afternoon when the Labour leader ended up demanding Boris Johnson apologise to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Prime Minister reportedly complained to Tory MPs last night about Justin Welby’s criticism of the government’s Rwanda asylum policy. Sources at the meeting said Johnson had claimed Welby was ‘less vociferous’ about Vladimir Putin than he had about this policy – something the Church of England has already condemned as a ‘disgraceful slur’. Johnson did not apologise, instead saying:  I was slightly taken aback for the government to be criticised over the policy that we have devised to end the deaths at sea in the Channel as

After Boris Johnson faced a hostile response in the chamber from opposition MPs over his partygate fine, on Tuesday evening the Prime Minister addressed his own MPs in a meeting organised by the government whips. Ahead of the meeting, Johnson had been dealt a blow when former chief whip Mark Harper said he no longer had confidence in his ability to lead the government. Johnson’s meeting was notable for what it missed: no mention of partygate. ‘It was more like an election rally speech,’ says an attendee. The Prime Minister embarked on a call and command as he asked MPs who they would trust more with the economy – Rishi Sunak

Since her appointment as Culture Secretary in September, Nadine Dorries hasn’t been shy about making the odd enemy or two. Whether it’s the BBC, Channel 4, Facebook or Ofcom, the former nurse has shown no compunction in dishing out the harsh medicine during her seven months in office. And now it seems the Bedfordshire MP can add another name to her growing list of foes: Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic Russian regime. For Dorries is one of the more surprising additions on a list of 13 British politicians who have today been banned by Moscow over the UK’s ‘hostile’ stance on the war in Ukraine. While some of the names like Prime Minister Boris Johnson,

Is the Prime Minister’s plan to divert some asylum seekers to Rwanda racist? Is it inhumane? Is it a dead cat to distract from his fixed-penalty notice for breaching Covid rules? These are the questions fixating the political-media-activist class today and while they are not necessarily unimportant, they neglect a question that might be of more immediate concern to the average voter concerned about border integrity and abuse of the asylum system. Namely, will the Prime Minister’s plan work? To answer this, we must acknowledge its provenance in Australia’s policy of offshore processing, detention and turn backs, introduced in 2001 as John Howard’s Pacific Solution and reintroduced by Tony Abbott