The Conservative chair has announced that Boris Johnson will kick off a two-year election campaign from May, as he hit out at “net zero dogma” and sought to pitch Labour as still linked to Jeremy Corbyn.
Oliver Dowden, the party co-chair and former culture secretary, made his comments in a speech at the Tory spring conference in Blackpool, as the party attempts to draw a line under the prime minister’s troubles over alleged lockdown-breaking parties. As part of an attempt to downplay the scandal, the Brexit minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, dismissed the furore over Partygate as “disproportionate fluff” compared with the crisis in Ukraine.
