Afternoon summary
- Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has summoned the editor of the Mail on Sunday, David Dillon, to a meeting to discuss a story published by the paper yesterday that was widely condemned as sexist. Hoyle said reporting like this discouraged women from standing for parliament. (See 2.54pm.) Earlier Boris Johnson described the article as “sexist, misogynist tripe” and said if the Tory source for the story were identified, they would be punished.
- British universities are facing a brain drain as the row over Brexit in Northern Ireland threatens £250m in research funding from the EU, it has emerged. As my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports, the European Research Council (ERC) has written to 98 scientists and academics who were recently approved for €172m (£145m) in grants telling them that if the UK’s associate membership of the €80bn Horizon Europe programme is not ratified they will not be eligible to draw down the money.
- The Labour party has vowed to abolish the “non-dom” tax loophole used by Rishi Sunak’s wife to save paying up to £20m in UK tax. Labour says the move could raise up to £1bn for the exchequer, but tax experts have questioned this, on the grounds that the 76,000 non-doms in the UK contributed £7.9bn in tax in 2019-20 (the most recent year for which data is available), including £5.6bn in income tax. “If non-dom status is scrapped, there is a real risk that the net effect on the UK tax base will be negative, not positive,” said Josie Hills, a tax manager at the law firm Pinsent Masons.
ITV’s political editor Robert Peston says in a blog that Boris Johnson has not even received a questionnaire from the Metropolitan police about his attendance at the party in the No 10 garden on 20 May 2020, even though some fines have already been issued in connection with the event. He says his brain is aching trying to comprehend the logic behind the Met’s approach. He says:
I want to stress, for the avoidance of doubt, that I am not saying it is a scandal or miscarriage of justice or wrong that the PM hasn’t been fined for the event on May 20, 2020. The point is I don’t know.
It is also theoretically possible that Boris Johnson will end up receiving a questionnaire and being fined, and that he is simply at the back of some weird bureaucratic queue. But this anomaly is not trivial. It matters, to the public reputation of the prime minister, how many times he is fined for breaching the Covid rules he wrote ...
Even when there are bigger problems directly affecting our lives to solve - Vladimir Putin, the cost of living - a police investigation of a serving prime minister is a massive deal. The lack of clarity and transparency on it undermines confidence in our version of democracy.
Public understanding of how the police conduct the probe and reach their decisions will be hugely important if the police themselves are to avoid the taint of incompetence or political partiality.
Updated
Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the national security adviser, has been giving evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about the decision to approve the decision to evacuate staff and animals from the Nowzad charity from Kabul last summer, as part of the airlift of Britons and Afghans at risk from the Taliban. (See 11.57am.) He says Boris Johnson was not directly involved in the decision. Asked about evidence given to the committee at an earlier hearing by an official who said Lovegrove was asked to get guidance from No 10 about the Nowzad staff, Lovegrove said he had “no memory” of speaking to No 10 about that matter. He said that he could not remember much from what happened that morning. His call logs and his emails showed nothing to suggest he had been in contact with No 10 about this, he added.
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Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has confirmed in a statement to MPs that the UK will be sending a small number of Stormer missile launching vehicles to Ukraine. These are from my colleague Dan Sabbagh.
Ben Wallace tells MPs UK will provide "a small number" of Stormer missile launcher vehicles to Ukraine...
— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) April 25, 2022
...also promises to "offer a deployment" of an unspecified number of Challenger 2 tanks to Poland to "bridge the gap" between Warsaw donating T-72s and the arrival of new US made tanks
— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) April 25, 2022
Stormer vehicle deployment to Ukraine is no surprise - although offer of tanks to Poland seems to have firmed up somewhat since Boris Johnson referred to it in India on Friday
— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) April 25, 2022
UK has sent 5,361 NLAWs, 200 Javelins and will provide 250 Starstreak anti-air missiles Wallace tells MPs.
— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) April 25, 2022
Adds Treasury has agreed to fund "new for old replacement" + efforts being made with industry "to replenish as soon as we can".
NLAWs are next-generation light anti-tank weapons, and Javelins are anti-tank missiles.
In his opening statement Wallace also said Ukraine had been an inspiration. He said:
At the start of this conflict Russia had committed over 120 battalion tactical groups, approximately 65% of its entire ground combat strength. As of now we assess around over 25% of these have been rendered not combat effective.
Ukraine is an inspiration to us all. Their brave people have never stopped fighting for their lands. They have endured indiscriminate bombardment, war crimes and overwhelming military aggression but they have stood firm, galvanised the international community and beaten back the army of Russia in the north and the north east.
We anticipate this next phase of the invasion will be an attempt by Russia to occupy further the Donbas and connect via Mariupol the Crimea so it’s urgent that we in the international community ensure Ukraine gets the aid and weapons it so much needs.
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Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, was once seen as Boris Johnson’s most likely successor as Tory leader and prime minister. But his reputation in the party has collapsed in the light of the spring statement and the controversy about his wife’s non-dom status, and he is now the cabinet minister least rated by Conservative members, according to ConservativeHome’s regular survey of Tory members.
Boris Johnson is third from bottom in the league table. In their write-up, Paul Goodman and Henry Hill says:
Ukraine will have pushed him up last month; Partygate will have pulled him down this. But the driver of his low scores is that the government is too left-wing, at least in the view of many activists.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, was in bottom place last month, but her approval rating has soared following the announcement of her plan to effectively deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
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This is from the Independent Press Standards Organisation, a media regulator, on the Mail on Sunday article about Angela Rayner.
We are currently receiving a high volume of complaints about a Mail on Sunday concerning Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Angela Rayner. We are dealing with these under our normal procedures.
— Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) (@IpsoNews) April 25, 2022
A row over the legality of the Brexit deal is set to go to the supreme court.
Senior judges in Belfast agreed to allow a group of unionists challenge an appeal court ruling over the Northern Ireland protocol, which mandates customs and physical checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain.
It will be asked to decide whether the protocol had illegally trumped the Acts of Union 1800 or elements of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 which followed the Good Friday peace accord in the same year.
Three legal points of public importance were identified for consideration in the ongoing campaign being mounted by the Traditional Unionist Voice leader, Jim Allister, and other representatives.
Lady chief justice Dame Siobhan Keegan confirmed: “We have considered the papers, and in the circumstances of this case we are going to grant leave to appeal to the supreme court.”
A judicial review challenge was originally brought last year by a group of unionist politicians and supporters including Allister, former Brexit party MEP Ben Habib, former Labour MP Kate Hoey, former DUP leader Arlene Foster, former UUP leader Steve Aiken and one of the architects of the Belfast Good Friday agreement, Lord Trimble.
An adjoined case was taken by Belfast loyalist pastor Clifford Peebles.
You can read why the court of appeal dismissed the earlier appeals here.
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This is what Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, said told the Commons a few minutes ago about the Mail on Sunday article.
At the start of today’s business I want to say something about the article in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday about [Angela Rayner].
I said to the house last week, in response to a point of order about a different article, that I took the issue of media freedom very seriously. It is one of the building blocks of our democracy.
However, I share the views expressed by a wide range of members, including I believe the prime minister, that yesterday’s article was reporting unsubstantial claims [that were] misogynistic and offensive. Those are what we believe.
I express my sympathy to [Rayner], subject to this type of comment. In being demeaning, offensive to women in parliament, it can only deter women who might considering standing for election to the detriment of us all.
That is why I have arranged a meeting with the chair of the press lobby [and] the editor of the Mail on Sunday to discuss the issue affecting our parliamentary community.
As my colleague Jessica Elgot points out, Hoyle’s final comment will cause some confusion because at Westminster there is a press gallery chair as well as a lobby chair. Presumably they can both go to the meeting.
This will cause some niche confusion given we have both a chair of the lobby and chair of the press gallery https://t.co/rfPUXQo0yZ
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) April 25, 2022
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Speaker summons Mail on Sunday editor to meeting to discuss sexist article about Angela Rayner
In the Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, has joined those criticsing the Mail on Sunday for its sexist report about Angela Rayner. He said coverage like this was demeaning and offensive to MPs.
He said that he would be inviting the editor of the Mail on Sunday, David Dillon, as well as the chair of parliamentary lobby (the group representing lobby journalists), Bloomberg’s Kitty Donaldson, to discuss the matter further.
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Johnson rejects claims he is liability to Tories in local elections
And here is a full summary of what Boris Johnson said in his pooled TV interview. He was speaking to the BBC’s Nick Eardley.
- Johnson said that the Tory source behind the sexist briefing to the Mail on Sunday about Angela Rayner will be punished if they are caught. (See 1.16pm.)
- He sidestepped a question about whether he would resign if the Sue Gray report is as damning about him as some reports claim it might be. (See 10.50am.) Asked if there were any circumstances in which he might read the report and resign, he said there were no circumstances in which he would comment on the report before it was out.
- He said people should vote Conservative in the local elections because Conservative councils provided value for money. He said:
I think the case is very, very clear. It is Conservative councils that charge you less, it is Labour councils that have record council taxes. We’re the party that does more to empty your bins, does more to fix potholes - I think I’m right in saying that Conservative councils fill in four times as many potholes as Labour councils. What we believe in fundamentally is delivering value for money and getting over the job. That is what Conservative councils do.
- He did not comment on a suggestion that the Conservatives might lose 800 council seats in the elections. Eardley mentioned this figure when he asked how bad the results might be for the party. In response, Johnson just stressed reasons why people should vote for the Tories.
- He rejected suggestions he was a liability to the Conservatives in the local elections. Asked if he was an asset to the party, he said that the asset that party had was “the dynamism, energy and effort that Conservative councillors put in up and down the land to delivering better services, based on the sound Conservative principle of taxpayer value”. Pressed a second time on whether he was an asset to the party, he said “I’m not denying that”, before repeating the point about councillors.
- He welcomed Emmanuel Macron’s re-election as French president. He said:
I think it’s very important that we have in Paris, a president of the French Republic who can be relied upon when it comes to some of the most important international issues, and particularly when you look at what’s been going on in Ukraine.
It’s not right for friendly governments to comment on elections in neighbouring countries but what I can certainly say is that it is very, very important that Emmanuel and I have been able to work closely together on Ukraine over the last few weeks and months.
We share a very common, very similar perspective and the unity of the west, the unity of Nato, has been absolutely vital for the stance we’ve taken against Putin, and that will now continue and I’m very, very reassured by that.
- He highlighted government plans to create an independent regulator for football, saying the new figure would “help fans to stick up for their interests, and stick up for the interests of historic clubs”. But he sidestepped a question about when a new regulator might be appointed. Asked if the new system could be in place within months, he just said that the government wanted to make “rapid legislative progress” and that it was going “as fast as we possibly can”. Here is my colleague Paul MacInnes’s story about the new regulator.
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The Conservative party could lose more than 1.3 million voters if the government scraps its net zero target, research suggests. My colleague Helena Horton has the story here.
In his TV clip talking about what he might do to the Tory source behind the Mail on Sunday story about Angela Rayner, Boris Johnson referenced a quote from King Lear:
I will do such things,—
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.
At this point Lear is ranting about the disloyalty of his daughters. He is also starting to go mad. It is not a comparison that Johnson ought to welcome.
Perhaps he has been re-reading his Shakespeare with a mind to getting on with the biography of the bard that he has been commissioned to write. It has been claimed that he was working on it in early 2020 when he should have been focusing on Covid.
Johnson says source behind sexist story against Angela Rayner will be punished if caught
Boris Johnson has recorded a TV interview on a campaign trip, and he has used it to claim that if he identifies the Tory source who gave a sexist briefing to the Mail on Sunday about Angela Rayner, they face punishment. Johnson said:
I have to say I thought it was the most appalling load of sexist, misogynist tripe. I immediately got in touch with Angela and we had a very friendly exchange.
As PA Media reports, in a King Lear reference, he threatened to unleash “the terrors of the earth” on the source behind the comments if they were ever identified.
If we ever find who is responsible for it, I don’t know what we will do, but they will be the terrors of the earth. It’s totally intolerable, that kind of thing.
Sky News has just broadcast the clip now. As he talks about the “terrors of the earth”, Johnson frowns, and looks serious, but hyperbole like this normally implies Johnson is exaggerating for comic effect. There is a risk that a quote intended to show he is taking this seriously could have the opposite effect.
As the Lib Dems have argued in the past, if Johnson is keen to root out people in the Conservative party who have expressed sexist views, other culprits are available.
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No 10 backs Rees-Mogg over Dorries on getting civil servants back into office
And here is a summary of the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
- Boris Johnson has not yet received a fine over the garden party in Downing Street on 20 May 2020, the prime minister’s spokesperson revealed. (See 12.10pm.)
- The spokesperson said Downing Street has not yet received the full report from Sue Gray into Partygate. The spokesperson also said that he did not recognise the quotes in The Times today (see 10.50am) attributed to an official who is said to be familiar with what it will say. And the spokesperson reiterated No 10’s intention to publish the report in full. Asked if the report would include photographs, the spokesperson said that he did not know what form it would take. But he suggested some material obtained by Gray might not be released on data protection grounds. (Previously the government has indicated that the report may not identify junior officials involved in Partygate incidents.)
- Johnson has backed Jacob Rees-Mogg over Nadine Dorries on getting civil servants back into the office. Dorries, the culture secretary, has criticised Rees-Mogg’s decision to leave notes on the desks of absent officials as a way of incentivising them to stop working from home. (See 9.47am.) Asked about Dorries’s comments, the spokesperson said Johnson “certainly supports initiatives to get people to return back to pre-pandemic [levels of attendance in the office]”. He rejected claims that the Rees-Mogg approach amounted to bullying. And he stressed that Rees-Mogg was not trying to end all hybrid working; the minister was simply trying to get civil service attendance in the office back to pre-pandemic levels, the spokesperson said.
- The spokesperson said the comments about Angela Rayner in the Mail on Sunday yesterday were “unacceptable”. He said:
Those comments are unacceptable. [Johnson] contacted Angela Rayner direct. The prime minster deplores the misogyny directed at her. There is no place for those kinds of attitudes. We recognise that there is more work to do and the prime minister would support that. There is no place for misogyny in parliament.
The prime minister wants to do everything possible not just to support women already working in politics but to encourage more.
Asked if there would be an inquiry into who briefed the Mail on Sunday, the spokesperson said as a civil servant he would not comment on party management.
- The spokesperson in effect admitted that the UK, like other western countries, had underestimated the threat from Russia in recent years. Asked about a Sunday Times investigation saying the government for many years resisted Ukraine requests to supply it with lethal weapons, because ministers did not want to antagonise Moscow, the spokesperson said:
[Johnson] has said for some time now that the international community made mistakes in responding to Russia’s aggression in the region previously. We’ve acknowledged that. The UK is one of the few international partners to have offered the full range of military, security, economic, fiscal and government support, and we have worked closely with Ukraine for a long time prior to this conflict.
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Johnson has not yet received a fine over No 10 garden party, Downing Street says
The Downing Street lobby briefing has just ended. And we’ve learned that Boris Johnson has not received a fine over the party in the Downing Street garden on 20 May 2020 – or at least not yet.
There has been speculation that he will be fined for this because at the end of last week it emerged that other people who attended the event in response to an invitation from Johnson’s then principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, are being fined. The invitation told people to BYOB (bring your own bottle).
No 10 has said it will tell reporters if Johnson receives further fines (he has already been fined for attending a surprise birthday gathering for him in the cabinet room), and this morning the PM’s spokesperson said there were no further updates.
I’ll post more from the briefing shortly.
Updated
This afternoon Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the national security adviser, will give evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about Afghanistan. He will be asked about the evidence that Boris Johnson was involved in the decision to approve the evacuation of staff and animals from the Nowzad animal charity from Kabul. No 10 has repeatedly insisted that Johnson was not involved in this operational decision.
Ahead of the hearing the committeee has released a statement from Lovegrove covering this issue. In it Lovegrove says:
I, and others in Whitehall, have been clear that the prime minister himself had no direct involvement in decisions around Nowzad.
In the statement Lovegrove also confirms evidence given to the committee in March by senior Foreign Office officials who said that, after Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, posted a message on Twitter last August saying Nowzad staff had been cleared for evactuation, they spoke to Lovegrove for confirmation.
“Following this [the Wallace tweet] I confirmed to a senior FCDO official later that morning that they should proceed to call forward the Nowzad group,” Lovegrove says.
But the statement issued this morning does not explain who authorised Lovegrove to issue this confirmation.
Minister rejects claims elections bill will undermine independence of Electoral Commission
A minister has this morning rejected claims that the elections bill is a threat to democracy.
One provision in the bill, which is due to complete its passage through the House of Lords today, would give the government a new power to issue directions to the Electoral Commission, the body that regulates elections, in the form of a “strategy and policy statement”. Last week the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee (which has a Conservative majority) said this posed “an unacceptable risk to the functioning of our democracy”. And Lord Evans, chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said in an open letter to ministers that his committee was very worried about this proposal. He said:
We remain deeply troubled by the long-term risk to our democratic system that is inherent in provisions which give the government of the day, whatever its political complexion, the opportunity to exert influence on the way the commission operates.
This morning Lord True, a Cabinet Office minister, has released the text of his reply to Evans, rejecting these concerns about the bill and saying the commission will remain “operationally independent”. He says:
The provisions of the bill providing for a strategy and policy statement are necessary and represent a proportionate approach to reforming the accountability of the Electoral Commission to the UK parliament. The statement will provide the commission with a clear articulation of principles and policy priorities, approved by parliament, to have regard to when going about its work.
I disagree with the concerns in your letter about the risk to the independence of the Electoral Commission. As a result of the provisions in the bill, the commission will be required to have regard to the strategy and policy statement. To be clear, the new duty to have regard to the statement will not replace the commission’s other statutory duties or give the government new powers to direct the Electoral Commission’s decision-making. The commission will remain operationally independent and governed by the commissioners.
Updated
Keir Starmer told ITV’s This Morning today that the Mail on Sunday story about Angela Rayner was “rank sexism, rank misogyny”. He told the programme:
It is rank sexism, rank misogyny. [Rayner] was really disgusted that all of her political attributes were put aside for this ridiculous, offensive story.
She shouldn’t have to put up with it but all women in politics shouldn’t have to put up with it. Almost every woman in politics has had an element of this in some shape or form.
We have got to change the culture. The culture in parliament, it is sexist, it is misogynist. We need to change it. That is what Angela said to me. She used this expression, she said ‘It triggered something in me about the way women are seen in politics’.
Starmer also said that there should be “zero tolerance” of sexism in politics and that he would address the issue in the Labour party too.
According to a report by Steven Swinford in The Times (paywall), the Sue Gray report into Partygate will be so damning that Boris Johnson may feel obliged to resign. Swinford attributes this to an unnamed “senior official” familiar with the Gray report’s contents. He quotes the official as saying:
Sue’s report is excoriating. It will make things incredibly difficult for the prime minister.
There’s an immense amount of pressure on her — her report could be enough to end him. No official has ever been in a position like this before.
The “could be enough to end him” comment provides Swinford with the line in his intro saying the report “could leave Boris Johnson with no choice but to resign” – although students of Johnson’s career will suspect that nothing could ever persuade Johnson to voluntarily resign as prime minister.
Alastair Campbell, who is no stranger to the dark arts of No 10 spin, suspects Downing Street may have had a hand in the story.
I have my suspicions that Johnson may be behind the briefing that the Gray report is so bad he will have to quit. As he was about the reports that the Tories will lose 800 seats in local elections. It’s like being charged with murder and claiming manslaughter as a victory.
— ALASTAIR CAMPBELL (@campbellclaret) April 25, 2022
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Kezia Dugdale, the former Scottish Labour leader, told BBC Radio Scotland this morning that the sexism directed at Angela Rayner in the Mail on Sunday article was an extreme example of what women in politics have to put up with all the time. She said:
I think this is definitely a particularly egregious example, and the idea that Angela Rayner is defeating Boris Johnson’s Oxford-based debating skills with the power of her legs alone is just a nonsense, and it’s laughable, but it’s an example of the extreme misogyny that women face in politics every single day.
You’re just hearing about this particular example because Angela Rayner is senior enough to have power and agency to call it out and demand that there are consequences for what has happened.
But for a lot of women, they just have to quietly put up with comments like this on a day-by-day basis.
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Nadine Dorries accuses Rees-Mogg of 'Dickensian' approach to civil servants working from home
Jacob Rees-Mogg is at the centre of a Cabinet row over his drive to get civil servants back at their desks, PA Media reports. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, has compared him to Scrooge, saying his approach to civil servants working from home is “Dickensian”. PA says:
Dorries accused Rees-Mogg, the minister responsible for government efficiency, of a “Dickensian” approach to the issue.
Rees-Mogg has written to cabinet ministers calling on them to issue a clear message to staff about a “rapid return to the office” and has been leaving notes in empty Whitehall workspaces with the message: “I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg is leaving this note for civil servants who aren’t at their desks… pic.twitter.com/7KzBcGKVJP
— Dino Sofos (@dinosofos) April 22, 2022
PA goes on:
The Times reported that Dorries’ response was highly critical of Rees-Mogg’s approach.
Rees-Mogg presented figures to cabinet last week showing that some government departments were using as little as 25% of office capacity in early April – the figure for Dorries’ Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was 43%.
Dorries told him his letter to government departments brought to mind “images of burning tallow, rheumy eyes and Marley’s ghost” – a reference to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
She said: “There’s a whiff of something Dickensian about it. Why are we measuring bodies behind desks? Why aren’t we measuring productivity?”
The two ministers have long disagreed about the need to return to places of work following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions. But the dispute between the two was “good natured”, one government source told the PA news agency.
Rees-Mogg used a Mail on Sunday article to warn that officials may lose the London weighting on their pay or see their jobs moved elsewhere if they were not at their desks.
“Essentially, if people are not back in their office it will be fair to assume that the job does not need to be in London,” he said.
Updated
Tories behind misogynistic claims about Angela Rayner ‘may be disciplined’
Chris Philp, the technology minister, was on interview duty for No 10 this morning. As my colleague Rachel Hall reports, Philp said that if the government whips found who was responsible for the anti-Rayner briefing to the Mail on Sunday (see 9.27am), they could be disciplined.
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Johnson’s 'line to take' criticism of sexist smear against Angela Rayner inadequate, says Labour
Good morning. The local elections are less than a fortnight away, the war in Ukraine continues, and the Labour party is announcing a new tax policy. And yet Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, who has been touring the studios to explain the non-dom tax plan, has spent much of the morning responding to a sexist report about her colleague, Angela Rayner, that first appeared in the Mail on Sunday more than 24 hours ago.
In some respects it is surprising that a “story” that appears to be based on little more than a glib comment from a Tory MP (perhaps over a drink?) has attracted so much attention. The Mail on Sunday is one of the most pro-Tory papers around, but if anyone there was assuming that this report was going to damage Labour, they miscalculated massively. (Newspaper executives often have a poor grasp of political strategy, but ultimately they prioritise selling newspapers over helping the political parties they support.)
But, despite its apparent ridiculousness, or perhaps because of its apparent ridiculousness, the story struck a chord because it illuminated the pervasive sexism that almost all women in public life still encounter – despite the enormous progress made over recent decades. One MP has said Glen Owen, the Mail on Sunday political editor, who wrote the article, should have his parliamentary press pass removed. Only last week there were calls in parliament for another journalist, the Times sketchwriter Quentin Letts, to have his pass revoked for “disgraceful” misogyny in his reporting.
If you want, you can read the original Mail on Sunday article here. Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s overnight story about the row.
Yesterday Boris Johnson joined those attacking the Mail on Sunday report, saying he deplored the misogyny directed at Rayner. It has now been reported that he texted her saying the comments were “not in his name”. It is almost certainly true that No 10 had nothing to do with the briefing, although increasingly, as he tries to refute claims that he has made outrageous comments, Johnson is in the position of the boy who cried wolf; having published so much sexist material in his career as a journalist, it is easy to see why people might not believe him when he says that this time he’s in the clear. A similar thing happened last week when he denied smearing the Church of England as pro-Putin.
This morning, in an interview with Sky News, Reeves asked asked about the official Tory response to the Mail on Sunday article, and about the fact that Johnson and Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, criticised it with identical tweets.
As much as I disagree with @AngelaRayner on almost every political issue I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 24, 2022
As much as I disagree with @AngelaRayner on almost every political issue I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today.
— Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) April 24, 2022
Reeves replied:
This shouldn’t just be a line to take. This should be actually what you feel and what you believe, and also you need some action, not just warm words.
Reeves said that the Conservatives needed to make it clear to the MPs who were briefing this story that this was “totally unacceptable”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Keir Starmer appears on ITV’s This Morning.
10am: Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities, speaks at a a Centre for Policy Studies event on UK competitiveness.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Priti Patel, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
2.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, speaks at the Scottish TUC conference.
After 3.30pm: MPs debate Lords amendments to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill.
4pm: Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the national security adviser, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.
4pm: Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, gives evidence to the public accounts committee on police recruitment.
Also, Johnson and Starmer are due to take part in local election campaign events today.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.
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