Here’s a roundup of key developments from the day:
- Boris Johnson’s deputy has insisted the prime minister did not breach the ministerial code even though he was fined by police for attending a No 10 party in lockdown, as the government’s ethics chief reportedly threatened to quit over the scandal. Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, said on Wednesday that Johnson had only “unintentionally” and “inadvertently” broken the law.
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The prime minister faces fresh criticism of his conduct over Partygate as the committee on standards in public life issues a statement raising questions about his commitment to uphholding the ministerial code. Members of the independent watchdog are understood to have been particularly irked by Johnson’s decision, announced last week, not to give his independent ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, the power to launch his own inquiries in future.
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Boris Johnson was “very surprised and taken aback” to get a fine for attending an event during lockdown. He told Mumsnet: “I was there for a very short period of time in the Cabinet Office, at my desk, and I was very very surprised and taken aback to get a fixed-penalty notice.”
- Simon Fell, the MP for Barrow, has become the latest MP to publicly question the prime minister’s position, saying an apology was “insufficient” after the damning details in Sue Gray’s Partygate report. Fell, who was elected to the “red wall’ seat in 2019 and was part of the “pork pie plot” of MPs who met to discuss their loss of faith in Johnson earlier in the year, stopped short of saying he had written a letter of no confidence in the PM.
- Tory MPs including a junior minister are holding back from submitting letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson over fears their names will leak and they will face reprisals from the whips. Rebel Conservatives trying to orchestrate enough names to oust the prime minister say many MPs, particularly newer ones, are concerned about the privacy of the process.
- Efforts to topple Boris Johnson are being co-ordinated by “one or two individuals” for reasons of “personal ambition”, Nadine Dorries has said. The culture secretary told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme “the overwhelming number of Conservative MPs are fully behind” the prime minister and “absolutely back him”.
- Boris Johnson’s unpopularity in Scotland is at a record high, according to a new poll for STV News. Ipsos Mori has found he has a popularity rating amongst Scottish voters of -71, with a large majority fearing they will be worse off if remains prime minister after the next election.
- The shadow levelling up, housing and communities secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said “any government worth its salt would be moving heaven and earth to stop the misery and the chaos” unfolding at airports. She said: The government was warned all the way through the pandemic that the loss of skilled staff was going to create problems.”
- Charities that support asylum seekers say they are documenting a number of suicide attempts among those threatened with being sent to Rwanda. Cases include a female Iranian asylum seeker who attempted suicide and told charity workers she took this action because she believed she faced being offshored to Rwanda.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I’ll be back again tomorrow.
You can follow our Russia-Ukraine war liveblog here:
Watchdog questions PM’s commitment to public standards
Boris Johnson faces fresh criticism of his conduct over Partygate as the committee on standards in public life issues a statement raising questions about his commitment to uphholding the ministerial code.
Members of the independent watchdog are understood to have been particularly irked by Johnson’s decision, announced last week, not to give his independent ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, the power to launch his own inquiries in future.
That was one of nine recommendations made by the committee earlier this year, of which Johnson has implemented only two – one of which was to allow ministers to escape resignation for minor infractions.
A source close to the committee said members were angered by what they saw as “cherrypicking” – and that its chair, Jonathan Evans, a former director general of MI5, was expected to express those concerns publicly.
Even before Partygate, Johnson’s government had been accused of undermining standards in public life, including by overruling the finding of Geidt’s predecessor, Alex Allan, that the home secretary, Priti Patel, had bullied staff, albeit inadvertently. Allan resigned in protest.
Geidt used his annual report, published on Tuesday, to pose what he called the “legitimate question” of whether Johnson had broken the ministerial code, in receiving a fixed-penalty notice for breaching lockdown rules. The code includes an “overarching duty” to comply with the law.
Geidt reportedly considered resigning over the fact that until Tuesday evening, Johnson had failed to make any statement setting out why he believed he had not broken the code. However, it is understood he now has no intention of stepping down.
The prime minister, who is the ultimate arbiter of the ministerial code, then published a letter in which he exonerated himself on several grounds, including the fact that he had apologised, and did not believe he was breaking the rules at the time.
He also stated that he believed the principles of good conduct in public life, which include selflessness and integrity, remained “the bedrock of standards in our country and in this administration”.
Johnson still faces an investigation by the House of Commons privileges committee over whether he lied to MPs, when repeatedly asserting that “all guidance was followed” in Downing Street.
Read more from my colleagues Rajeev Syal and Heather Stewart here:
Updated
The government should mitigate the cost of living crisis by rejoining the single market (Norway model), the senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood has argued.
The former minister said that, with inflation soaring and the cost of living crisis growing, “more radical thinking is required if we are to energise our economy through these stormy waters” and ultimately hold on to power at the next general election.
In a comment piece for Politics Home, he writes:
As a recent YouGov poll indicates, this is not the Brexit most people imagined, with the majority believing Brexit has gone badly. There is appetite to make improvements – not U-turns but course corrections.
In a nutshell, all these challenges would disappear if we dare to advance our Brexit model by re-joining the EU single market (the Norway model). Leaving this aspect of the EU was not on the ballot paper, nor called for by either the prime minister or Nigel Farage during the 2016 referendum. There was, however, much discussion about returning to a ‘common market’, which is exactly what I propose.
Any model will have benefits and drawbacks. The single market means the free movement of goods, services, capital and people. It would see £7bn of paperwork and checks go, and boost our economy by restoring free trade to sectors demanding change.
Senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood says government should mitigate the cost of living by rejoining the single market (Norway model)
— Adam Payne (@adampayne26) June 1, 2022
Brexit isn't what "most people imagined" & "sector after sector" is "strangled by the red tape we were supposed to escape from"https://t.co/JdjuTmhDgy pic.twitter.com/kJuNQkPPfv
Updated
Tory MPs hold back from move against Boris Johnson over leak fears
Tory MPs including a junior minister are holding back from submitting letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson over fears their names will leak and they will face reprisals from the whips.
Rebel Conservatives trying to orchestrate enough names to oust the prime minister say many MPs, particularly newer ones, are concerned about the privacy of the process.
They worry that the Tory whips will be spying outside the office of Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chair who gathers the letters, and do not trust emails not to be accidentally shared or viewed by staff who have access to the accounts.
Some senior Tories who are publicly opposed to Johnson have taken on the role of conduits carrying letters to Brady. One said they had offered to take letters to Brady’s parliamentary office on behalf of colleagues concerned about leaks, as there was a pervasive feeling of mistrust in the process among new MPs who had not been through the vote of no confidence in Theresa May.
They said MPs had not been prepared to email their letters because of concerns about others having access to their inboxes or computers, and they said they had repeatedly reassured colleagues that no letters had leaked from the challenge against May.
Another Conservative backbencher said the newer MPs in particular were worried about being targeted by the whips if they went public with having submitted letters, and if the coup attempt was ultimately unsuccessful.
A third MP said some of those who had gone public with their opposition to Johnson already felt as though their lives in parliament were being made difficult by the whips.
At least one minister has been wavering over putting in a letter over fears his name could come out and he would have to resign if the challenge is unsuccessful.
Read more from my colleagues Rowena Mason and Jessica Elgot here:
Updated
Who are the main contenders to replace Boris Johnson?
My colleague Rowena Mason has taken a look at Tory ministers jostling for top job with ratings out of 10 on their chances of success.
Boris Johnson’s future could be sealed as early as next week if 54 Tory MPs submit letters saying they have lost confidence in the prime minister, and 180 Conservative MPs then vote to oust him in a secret ballot.
But one of the factors making some MPs hesitant is the lack of an obvious successor. Here are the main contenders jostling for position with a rating out of 10 on their current chances of success, although MPs are taking seriously the idea that a wild card candidate could end up winning in the event of a contest.
Read the analysis here:
You can watch a clip from Boris Johnson’s interview with Mumsnet here:
Jessica Elgot has written a round-up of the MPs who want to get rid of Boris Johnson.
They come from different wings of the party, but in short they are William Wragg, Tobias Ellwood, Mark Harper, Andrew Bridgen, Alicia Kearns, Caroline Nokes, and Stephen Hammond.
You can read more here:
Updated
More than 65,000 people have arrived in the UK under Ukraine visa schemes, government figures show.
As of Sunday, about 65,700 refugees had arrived, including 23,100 people under the family scheme, and 42,600 people under the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme.
About 143,900 applications had been made for visas as of Monday, and 120,200 visas had been issued.
These include 46,000 applications under the family scheme, of which 40,300 visas have been granted, and 97,900 applications under the sponsorship scheme, of which 79,900 visas have been granted.
Updated
Sue Gray findings a 'slap in the face', says Tory MP
Simon Fell, the MP for Barrow, has become the latest MP to publicly question the prime minister’s position, saying an apology was “insufficient” after the damning details in Sue Gray’s Partygate report.
Fell, who was elected to the “red wall’ seat in 2019 and was part of the “pork pie plot” of MPs who met to discuss their loss of faith in Johnson earlier in the year, stopped short of saying he had written a letter of no confidence in the PM.
“I’m left feeling angry and disappointed. It beggars belief that when the government was doing so much to help people during the pandemic, a rotten core with an unacceptable culture carried on regardless of the restrictions placed on the rest of us,” he wrote in a letter to constituents.
“To many of us, these findings are a slap in the face.
“The culture that Ms Gray’s report details is unforgivable and I certainly will not be defending it. There were no exceptions in the rules for the activities that took place, and there is no excuse whatsoever for them.
“As Ms Gray details, a corrosive culture and a failure in leadership allowed this to happen and apologising after the fact is insufficient ... Trust matters. And standards in public life go to the heart of maintaining it - once trust is lost, the whole house of cards is at risk of collapse.”
Fell’s letter makes it 45 MPs who have either submitted letters of no confidence or stated explicitly that they have lost faith in his leadership. Others from the 2019 cohort who have called for Johnson to go include Aaron Bell, Alicia Kearns, Elliott Colburn and Anthony Mangnall.
Updated
Charities that support asylum seekers say they are documenting a number of suicide attempts among those threatened with being sent to Rwanda.
Cases include a female Iranian asylum seeker who attempted suicide and told charity workers she took this action because she believed she faced being offshored to Rwanda. She was taken to hospital and survived.
A 40-year-old Yemeni asylum seeker made a video addressed to Boris Johnson and Priti Patel stating that after he arrived in the UK on 13 April and found out about Rwanda offshoring plans he had “no other choice but to kill myself”.
You can read more of Diane Taylor’s reporting here:
Updated
The prime minister has said that “more pragmatism” and “less theology” is needed to resolve the northern Ireland protocol.
In an interview with Mumsnet, Boris Johnson said:
I think that the protocol is certainly not functioning well. And the last thing we want to have is a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and that is simply not going to happen.
All that we’re trying to do is to get rid of some pretty pointless and bureaucratic checks on stuff that’s going from GB to Northern Ireland.
Now, I did the protocol, I negotiated it. The problem is that I thought that it would be implemented with common sense and pragmatism - because the ultimate arbiter of how to make it work, unfortunately, is the EU.
And I just think what is needed is more pragmatism and less theology, because at the moment what you’ve got is one community in Northern Ireland - the unionist/loyalist community - feeling that there’s a border down the Irish Sea, an east-west border, and that is inflaming their sentiment. They won’t go back into government in Northern Ireland unless we fix it.
So for me, the priority is to fix the protocol and get the Good Friday Agreement institutions up and running again. That’s what needs to happen.”
Efforts to topple Boris Johnson are being co-ordinated by “one or two individuals” for reasons of “personal ambition”, Nadine Dorries has said.
The culture secretary told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme “the overwhelming number of Conservative MPs are fully behind” the prime minister and “absolutely back him”.
She said:
There is, obviously, I think probably led by one or two individuals, a campaign behind the scenes to try to attempt to remove the prime minister for individual reasons to do with personal ambition or other reasons.
Asked who was behind the campaign, she said she had “no idea” but there was “obviously a coordinated campaign”.
Dorries said Tory MPs calling for Johnson’s resignation are doing the opposition’s work for them.
She said:
All I would say to my colleagues is the electorate, the public, don’t vote for divided parties and I don’t think we want to do both Labour and the SNP’s work for them.
The people who most want to get rid of Boris Johnson are Keir Starmer and the SNP and I would just ask my colleagues to reflect on that and do we really want to do the opposition’s work and do we really believe the public will vote for a party that they think is divided.
Asked whether Johnson should echo John Major’s tactic of telling his party to “put up or shut up”, Dorries described this as an “indulgence”, adding:
John Major was not dealing with a war in Ukraine, there hadn’t been a Covid pandemic, times were not as turbulent as they are right now.
Updated
Partygate has become a “Westminster bubble issue” and the public wants to move on, Nadine Dorries has said.
The culture secretary told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme:
I think the British public are now ready to move on and I don’t think that any report or any investigation can deliver anything other than the findings that both Sue Gray and the Met police have delivered.
I think what we are talking about is becoming very much a Westminster-centric, Westminster bubble issue, and what I detect out in the country is that people are wanting to move on.
Updated
Boris Johnson would probably win a confidence vote but cannot rely on all of his ministers to back him, a Conservative pollster has said.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme, the former Conservative MP Robert Hayward said:
My guess is he probably would [win] at this stage, but the Tory party has a history of PMs winning confidence votes but not lasting the due term.
Asked whether Johnson could rely on the “payroll vote” of around 150 ministers, whips and parliamentary private secretaries to support him in a confidence vote, Lord Hayward said: “Absolutely not.”
He added:
There is a range of people within the party who are now expressing concern and the government’s ministerial team and therefore the probability is that there is a good range of views.
Some of those would not support Boris Johnson if it came to a vote of confidence.
Updated
Boris Johnson suggested he has considered questions over his future amid the Partygate affair, but insisted staying as prime minister is the “responsible” approach.
Johnson, who was answering questions from users of Mumsnet, repeated his apology for the events in Downing Street.
Johnson said:
If people look at the event in question, it felt to me like a work event, I was there for a very short period of time in the Cabinet Office at my desk and, you know, I was very, very surprised and taken aback to get an FPN, but of course I paid it.
I think that on why am I still here, I’m still here because we’ve got huge pressures economically, we’ve got to get on, you know, we’ve got the biggest war in Europe for 80 years, and we’ve got a massive agenda to deliver which I was elected to deliver.
I’ve thought about all these questions a lot, as you can imagine, and I just cannot see how actually it’d be responsible right now - given everything that is going on simply to abandon a) the project which I embarked on but b)...
At this point Johnson was interrupted and told some believe he has lost the trust of the people, to which the prime minister replied:
Let’s see about that and, yeah, I’m not going to deny the whole thing hasn’t been a totally miserable experience for people in government and we’ve got to learn from it and understand the mistakes we made and we’ve got to move forward.
Updated
Asked by Mumsnet about No 10 parties, Boris Johnson says staff were “working blindingly hard” and it was necessary to keep morale high.
The prime minister was speaking to the co-founder of Mumsnet Justine Roberts, who was asking questions sent in by users. He said leaving drinks were necessary as it was “a time when we had to keep morale high, and the whole place was under a huge amount of pressure”.
One user, a teacher who said if she had broken Covid laws, she would have lost her job, asked why the prime minister was still in his job.
Johnson replied:
I am still here because we have got huge pressures economically and the biggest war in Europe for 80 years and we have got a massive agenda to deliver.
He said it was not “responsible” to abandon his project over Partygate but he admits the saga has been “totally miserable”.
He insisted “no cake was consumed by me” at his “miserable” birthday party.
Updated
Boris Johnson 'taken aback' by Partygate fine
Boris Johnson was “very surprised and taken aback” to get a fine for attending an event during lockdown.
The prime minister was speaking during a Q&A with Mumsnet. User questions were put to Johnson by the website’s co-founder Justine Roberts, which has been posted on YouTube.
In response to one question about his fine from the Metropolitan police, Johnson says:
I think if people look at the event in question it felt to me like a work event.
I was there for a very short period of time in the Cabinet Office, at my desk, and I was very very surprised and taken aback to get a fixed-penalty notice.
The first question asked of the prime minister is: “Why should we believe anything you say when it’s been proven you’re a habitual liar?”
Johnson responds:
Well, first of all, I don’t agree with the conclusion nor the premise of the question.
I think the best way to answer that is look at what I get on and deliver and what I say I’m going to deliver and that’s what I’m in politics to do, to try to make life better for people if I can.
I was elected at a particularly difficult time in politics, to get some tough things done.
Things then became, if anything, even more difficult because of the pandemic, but if you look at what we’re doing, we’re getting on and delivering.
He adds:
My answer about trust is people throw all sorts of accusations about all sorts of things ever since I drove around on a bus and they have all sorts of reasons for saying that.
But you’ve got to look at the record of what I deliver.
Watch the full Q&A here:
Updated
Boris Johnson’s unpopularity in Scotland is at a record high, according to a new poll for STV News. Ipsos Mori has found he has a popularity rating amongst Scottish voters of -71, with a large majority fearing they will be worse off if remains prime minister after the next election.
The poll found the prime minister’s unpopularity had grown by 3.5 points since November, a period dominated by the Partygate scandal, with 59% of voters reporting feeling worse off now than a year ago.
Support for the Scottish Conservatives has also slumped, down six points on their 2019 general election result to 19%, putting Labour in second on 23% (up 4 points on 2019) behind the Scottish National party on 44% (-1).
Nicola Sturgeon, who celebrated being Scotland’s longest-serving first minister last week, remains popular with a +12 rating. But her satisfaction ratings are on a downward trajectory, according to Ipsos. In October 2020, when she was widely credited with showing great leadership at the height of the Covid crisis, it stood at +49.
Keir Starmer, the UK Labour leader, had a slight negative rating of -2, with 38% of Scottish voters happy with his performance but 22% holding no opinion.
The poll also showed a sharp decline in support for independence compared with Ipsos Mori’s last opinion monitor in December. It ffound the yes and no votes tied at 50% each (excluding those not likely to vote). Six months ago, yes had a clear 10-point lead, at 55% and in October 2020 it stood at 58%.
Ipsos uses different methods to other pollsters (such as relying on telephone polling instead of using panels of voters taking online polls) but those figures are consistent with other polls this year consistently showing a fall in the yes vote.
Updated
The Lib Dems have called for the army to be deployed to ease queues at airports and ports, and on roads.
The party’s transport spokesperson, Sarah Olney, said:
The chaotic scenes at airports up and down the country have been nothing short of a complete disaster.
Families’ half-term getaways have been thrown into disarray and now they face the prospect of a long weekend spent sleeping in airports and sitting in traffic jams.
We need drastic action now to tackle this travel carnage and break the logjam.
That’s why drafting Britain’s best and brightest logistics minds from the army to get things moving again is a no-brainer.
Conservative ministers need to get a grip on this chaos at the 11th hour to save the jubilee weekend. Empowering the army to run point from a command centre would do just that.
Updated
Labour's Lisa Nandy says government should 'move heaven and earth' to stop airport chaos
The shadow levelling up, housing and communities secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said “any government worth its salt would be moving heaven and earth to stop the misery and the chaos” unfolding at airports.
Travellers have faced several weeks of delays and disruption at airports across the UK, with demand for foreign trips bouncing back after the easing of all UK Covid travel restrictions.
In the latest day of flight cancellations and disruption at airports, British Airways and easyJet cancelled more than 150 flights to and from the UK on Wednesday, as holidaymakers faced further departure lounge delays going into the extended Queen’s platinum jubilee bank holiday.
She said:
The government was warned all the way through the pandemic that the loss of skilled staff was going to create problems.
They need to show some leadership and take some ownership of this crisis – get around the table with management and with workers’ representatives in the travel industry in order to end the chaos.
We need a proper post-Covid plan to get the industry back on its feet and get things moving again, including filling recruitment shortages that have emerged as a result of the pandemic.
Any government worth its salt would be moving heaven and earth to stop the misery and the chaos that is unfolding for families across this country right now.
It’s time for the government to stop blaming everybody else and to start doing its job.
Speaking in Wakefield, Nandy said:
When things go wrong, it’s the government’s job to step up and try and fix it.
Updated
Asked if Christopher Geidt should resign, the shadow levelling up, housing and communities secretary Lisa Nandy said he has got to make his own decision.
Lord Geidt is the independent adviser on ministers’ interests is meant to advise Johnson over whether ministers have breached the code.
Yesterday he said there was a “legitimate question” over whether the prime minister broke the ministerial code after getting fined for Partygate and said he repeatedly told the Johnson’s team to be ready to explain if his actions stuck within the rules – even if he thought there was no breach.
But he said the advice had not been “heeded” and called on Johnson to set out his case to the public. However he dodged the question of whether the prime minister himself had done so – apparently for fear of having to resign if Johnson ignored him.
The prime minister said being fined by the police does not break the ministerial code.
Nandy said:
What is clear to the whole country is that this is a prime minister who lacks integrity, who lacks the decency and honesty that it takes to lead this country.
If you can’t trust him on whether he can follow his own rules, whether he’ll rewrite those rules or tear up those rules, because he thinks he doesn’t apply to them, how can you trust him when he says that he’ll tackle the cost-of-living crisis engulfing families and businesses across this country?
Speaking in Wakefield, Nandy said the govenrmnent was rotten to the core and that the rot started at the top.
She added:
This is just a damning indictment of the prime minister’s leadership that successive ethics advisers just feel that they can’t trust the integrity of the prime minister.
If you can’t trust a single word that prime minister says then the problems go much deeper than one ethics adviser.
Updated
Ben Riley-Smith of the Telegraph has delved into the Tory MPs who have been calling for Boris Johnson to go.
It’s fair to say it is a mixed bag. 17 of them supported the campaign to leave the EU, while 13 are remainers. MPs with tiny majorities are among the 30, with three having less than 1,000, as well as ones with large majorities (eight have majorities of more than 20,000).
Nine of them had Lib Dem second in the last election while 21 had Labour in second position. Riley-Smith also says that every intake of MPs in last 40 years is represented except for 2017.
We’ve crunched the numbers on the 30 Tory rebels calling for PM to go
— Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) June 1, 2022
- 17 Leavers, 13 Remainers
- Every intake in last 40yrs represented except 2017
- Tiny majorities (3 have below 1k) and huge ones (8 have 20k+)
- 9 had Lib Dems 2nd, 21 Labour
Ie fires breaking out all over!
Credit to @DominicPenna for digging through the stats. Our graphic in today's paper shows the spread of Tory rebels.
— Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) June 1, 2022
Our 30 MPs count comes from those publicly calling for PM to go or having confirmed letters submitted (though there are various ways to cut the numbers). pic.twitter.com/rCJcSTV5GS
Updated
The Conservative MP Huw Merriman confirmed he would not be submitting a no-confidence letter against Boris Johnson and appealed for colleagues to focus on delivering policies rather than regime change.
The transport select committee chairman, who in February suggested Johnson needed to improve or leave Downing Street, told Sky News:
Wrong has occurred, he’s apologised, put his hands up, I judge people for what they do to turn things around and I feel he needs to be given that time to do so.
Merriman added:
I have definitely not put a letter in and I will not be putting a letter in because if I do that I’m then responsible for the very policy recommendations I’ve been making through my committee not being delivered.
He said he did not know how many letters have been submitted, adding:
My point, perhaps my appeal to colleagues is that our constituents need us right now and they need the government to deliver and parliament to deliver.
We’re not going to be able to do that if we are going through a protracted leadership contest, it just changes all the focus, all the direction, all of the chances we have of making better changes in policy that will help people through difficult times. You can’t have both.
People can either focus on the theatre and want to change direction and I respect their position if they do want that, but you can’t then expect government to be able to get on and govern and deliver policy, which is ultimately the most important thing for me.
Updated
A member of the 1922 Committee has said Conservative MPs need to consider which “crimes” Boris Johnson has “actually committed” before launching a leadership coup.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said:
You’ve got to actually work out whether that new prime minister is actually going to be a positive asset to the country, compared to what you’ve got at the moment.
As to what he’s actually committed, the crimes that he’s actually committed, and work out whether we should have a change or not.
Clifton-Brown said he wanted Johnson to stay in position as “a man who knows how to handle crises”, citing his response to the war in Ukraine and the rising cost of living.
“When the big calls are being made, the prime minister has got it right,” he argued.
However, he added that “the situation is changing on a daily basis”.
Updated
Dominic Raab has said he does not believe there will be a vote of no confidence against Boris Johnson next week.
He told Sky News:
I just don’t see that. I think the Westminster bubble and village whips this stuff up. I’m not saying it’s not serious and significant. But we dealt with all of those issues, the prime minister has dealt with all those issues.
It does feel like a lot of commentary building up this issue when actually when I talk to MPs, when I talk to across the House of Commons about the issues that I’m taking forward ... they want to see us driving forward that agenda.
To be honest with you, votes of no confidence, leadership contests, all of that, is yet more Westminster talking to itself. Not talking to the public, not talking to our constituents.
I think the vast majority of MPs respect, recognise and agree with that.
The deputy prime minister said the only “two people who want a leadership contest” were the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, and SNP Westminster leader, Ian Blackford.
He told Sky News:
The two people in the House of Commons who want a leadership contest, who talk about it in the House of Commons, are Keir Starmer and Ian Blackford for the SNP.
They’re not asking for it because they think it’s in the public interest, or indeed in the Conservative interest. I think there’s some political gain for them in doing so.
Raab questioned again the number of letters which had been sent to the 1922 Committee, adding: “I don’t know what the numbers are, I don’t think anyone does. I doubt it’s that high in terms of letters, but the truth is I don’t know.”
Updated
Full story: Partygate fine does not mean Johnson broke ministerial code, says Raab
Boris Johnson’s deputy has insisted the prime minister did not breach the ministerial code even though he was fined by police for attending a No 10 party in lockdown, as the government’s ethics chief reportedly threatened to quit over the scandal.
Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, said on Wednesday that Johnson had only “unintentionally” and “inadvertently” broken the law by attending a birthday gathering in No 10 during lockdown, which led to him being fined by police.
He said this did not amount to a breach of the ministerial code, despite the prime minister’s ethics chief, Lord Geidt, querying whether it had been.
Geidt’s future in the role is in doubt after he said it was a “legitimate” question whether Johnson had breached the code. In response, the prime minister made clear he did not believe the code had been broken.
The prime minister is still the only one who can give permission for an ethics inquiry, and he made clear on Tuesday his intention to block one into his own conduct over the fixed penalty notice.
The row with Geidt is the latest headache for the prime minister as he faces a wave of discontent from his MPs over the fixed-penalty notice. More than 40 Tory MPs have publicly questioned Johnson’s fitness to hold office, including 18 who are known to have sent letters to Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, to formally seek a confidence vote.
The remainder have openly called for the prime minister to resign or said they had lost faith in his leadership.
Raab said he did not believe there would be a vote of no confidence against Boris Johnson next week. He told Sky News: “I just don’t see that. I think the Westminster bubble and village whips this stuff up. I’m not saying it’s not serious and significant. But we dealt with all of those issues, the prime minister has dealt with all those issues.”
Speaking to broadcasters, Raab said Geidt had “made clear a number of concerns but the prime minister has addressed them in his response and in particular made clear the explanation that he didn’t believe he’d broken the ministerial code”.
Dominic Raab has accused airlines of a “lack of preparation” ahead of the holiday surge.
He told Sky News:
It’s good news that more holidaymakers got the confidence post-Covid pandemic to book these flights. Throughout the pandemic, the government provided £8bn of support. There’s been some tweaks to the regulation to make it easier for the airline industry to hire.
I think also, there’s clearly been a lack of preparation for that surge back of demand of holidaymakers.
Grant Shapps has been talking to the industry for months now, saying: ‘This will come and that you need to make sure you’ve got your recruitment in place.’
So I know there’s a bit of finger-pointing going on at the moment, but that’s the support and that’s the advice.
The deputy prime minister added:
I don’t think the airline operators have done the recruitment that they should have done, and taken the advice that the transport secretary gave them.
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The UK’s special envoy for the Northern Ireland protocol has said he told US officials that it has become a threat to the Good Friday agreement.
Conor Burns, the Northern Ireland minister assigned to make the UK’s case in Washington, shrugged off a threat earlier this month by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to block a US-UK free trade deal if the UK took unilateral action to override the protocol.
The protocol negotiated between the UK and the EU established customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Pelosi said that UK plans to introduce legislation that would create exemptions to the protocol, if they could not be agreed with the EU, were “deeply concerning”.
She warned:
If the United Kingdom chooses to undermine the Good Friday accords, the Congress cannot and will not support a bilateral free trade agreement.
On a visit to Washington last week, Burns said there was a “disconnect” between such threats and the gravity of the issues at stake with the Northern Ireland protocol.
Burns said:
This is too important for us – sorting out the situation in Northern Ireland, doing the right thing for the UK and for the people in Northern Ireland – to be interwoven with any foreign policy or trade ambition.
Burns has visited administration officials and members of Congress with a thick wad of documentation that he says UK businesses have to fill out in order to transport goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. The time and cost of such bureaucracy has stopped producers of foods such as shortbread and cheese from selling into Northern Ireland.
He said:
These are products that people have enjoyed in Northern Ireland for decades that have disappeared from the shelves. And that is feeding into a sense within parts of the unionist community that somehow the protocol sets them apart from the rest of the United Kingdom.
Their identity, their belonging, is undermined and that is a legitimate concern within unionism.
The UK government is asking the EU to agree to an exemption to customs checks for goods destined to be sold and consumed in Northern Ireland, and would not therefore enter the EU. It has accused Brussels of being inflexible while the EU vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, said he had put forward solutions that would “substantially improve the way the protocol is implemented”.
Read the full story here:
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Dominic Raab has said it is “very unlikely” that there will be an early election.
He told Sky News:
I think it’s very unlikely. And I think, by the way, when the election comes, we’ll win it.
Questions around whether the prime minister had broken the ministerial code “have been answered”, Dominic Raab has said.
Outlining why he believes Boris Johnson has not broken the ministerial code, Raab told Sky News:
Lord Geidt raised that issue and the PM has responded to the letter and he’s been clear that in relation to the single fixed penalty notice he hadn’t intentionally broken the law and his attendance at that gathering, as has been well rehearsed, was inadvertent.
So Lord Geidt is really important, he is a senior figure. We’ve actually been working for months to reinforce his role, that’s been done by agreement between No 10 and Lord Geidt, but actually I think those questions have been answered, both in general but also now specifically in the letter the PM has sent and, as I said, we’re getting on with the job.
Raab said he thinks it is “not that simple” that Johnson receiving a fine for breaking lockdown rules means he has broken the ministerial code.
He said:
There have been examples in the past where similarly, I think Baroness Scotland, I think in 2009, she was a minister (and was fined).
The point was, she hadn’t acted deliberately or intentionally, and therefore Gordon Brown took the view that the code hadn’t been broken.
So I’m just saying there are precedents for this... I think it’s clear from the circumstances of this particular gathering, where he turned up, was there for 10 minutes, was unaware that it was a surprise birthday cake for him, that wasn’t a deliberate breach of the rules, and that’s the key point.
The treasurer of the 1922 Committee has warned that ousting Boris Johnson would mean a leadership vacuum during a “really serious situation” citing the cost of living crisis.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown claimed a leadership contest would take at least eight weeks because of the lack of an obvious successor to the prime minister.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said:
During that time there will be complete stasis of leadership of this country at a time when we are in a really serious situation with the cost of living crisis, with potentially rail strikes.
And the other problem is, who would you have? There will be at least five or six candidates that would put in for the job.
Somebody will emerge, but there’ll be a lot of colleagues who haven’t voted for that particular candidate.
That candidate will then have the job of reuniting the party, trying to deal with all the problems that the country faces. And I think at the moment for me, we should leave matters as they are.
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The deputy prime minister has said he believes the number of letters that have been submitted to Graham Brady is “pretty far off” the required amount needed to trigger a confidence vote.
Dominic Raab has said he does not believe the former cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom has submitted a letter to the 1922 Committee.
Speaking to Times Radio, Raab said:
First of all, you said that there were 30 MPs who have been public [in their criticism of the prime minister]. There’s of course well over 350-odd Conservative MPs.
Presenter Aasmah Mir responded: “Well you need to get to 54, so it’s not that far off, is it?”
Raab said:
Well, if you’re at 30, which is what you’ve just said, I think you’re pretty far off, but my point is even then, in terms of the support for the PM, the overwhelming majority have not been public about these kind of criticisms.
Although in fairness, I want to say I understand the frustrations and the concerns.
MPs being publicly vocal in their criticism of Boris Johnson does not mean they have submitted a letter.
Outlining his thoughts on Leadsom’s letter to constituents shared on social media, which criticised the prime minister Raab said:
I’ve known Andrea a long time, we came in as MPs, I hold her in high esteem.
I think it’s clear that she’s expressing her frustration, she hasn’t put a letter in as far as I understand, she hasn’t said that.
The most important thing is the fact that the prime minister has addressed all of these points [and] overhauled the No 10 operation.
Welcome to today’s liveblog. I’ll be updating you throughout the day. Do drop me an email on nicola.slawson@theguardian.com or send me a tweet @Nicola_Slawson if you think I’m missing something or if you have a question.
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